Anyone Understand NVIDIA RAID

[David]

I have a Gigabyte Mobo which has NVIDIA RAID. I have it configured with RAID 1 and two identical Samsung 500GB SATA disks.

Was working fine until one day it reported Mirroring was degraded. (I think I accidentally deleted the driver or installed an older one or whatever).

Tech support say that XP should automatically rebuild the RAID, but that was weeks and weeks ago. The only option that the NVIDIA Control Panel gives is to delete the RAID which warns that all data will be destroyed.

I was hoping I could just split the RAID and then recreate it, all w/o having to install the OS and apps from scratch (kinda the whole reason for installing RAID in the first place).

Anyone have any experience with this? What happens if I physically disconnect one of the two disks and reboot?

[GWguy]

Originally Posted by David

I have a Gigabyte Mobo which has NVIDIA RAID. I have it configured with RAID 1 and two identical Samsung 500GB SATA disks.

Was working fine until one day it reported Mirroring was degraded. (I think I accidentally deleted the driver or installed an older one or whatever).

Tech support say that XP should automatically rebuild the RAID, but that was weeks and weeks ago. The only option that the NVIDIA Control Panel gives is to delete the RAID which warns that all data will be destroyed.

I was hoping I could just split the RAID and then recreate it, all w/o having to install the OS and apps from scratch (kinda the whole reason for installing RAID in the first place).

Anyone have any experience with this? What happens if I physically disconnect one of the two disks and reboot?

Because they are mirrored, you*should* be able to disconnect one and boot off the other. It kinda sounds like one drive is failing, which is why it did not rebuild the mirror. If you disconnect one and it will not boot, try the other drive. If it boots, run diagnostics on the suspect drive. If the drive is bad, you can just replace it and the mirror will rebuild.

[clevalley (Premo)]

Originally Posted by GWguy

Because they are mirrored, you*should* be able to disconnect one and boot off the other. It kinda sounds like one drive is failing, which is why it did not rebuild the mirror. If you disconnect one and it will not boot, try the other drive. If it boots, run diagnostics on the suspect drive. If the drive is bad, you can just replace it and the mirror will rebuild.

I have NVIDIA RAID on my workstation here at the house... and GWguy is 'da man and hit the nail on the head!

[Floyd2004]

Yea I just had a mirrored array of 500's fail on a friends board... I think its a HD issue and not a driver issue

[David]

The individual disks check out OK. Something happened to the RAID.

I downloaded the latest NVIDIA software and installed it. All I got was a new option to configure SMART. Still no manual option to force a rebuild.

What's a good tool to backup my current C: drive so I can wipe it and then install it from the backup so I don't have to reinstall the OS and all the apps? No doubt it will require something that I can boot from CD/DVD so I can restore the backup to the reformatted disk...

Some folks were saying "Image for Windows" by TeraByte...

[David]

Hmmm, I ran the SMART Self-test that comes in the new NVIDIA Control Panel and BOTH disks fail with: "The previous self test completed having the read element of the test failed"

My first thought is, "Hmmm, that's a really helpful message."

thoughts?

[RadioPatrol]

Originally Posted by David

Hmmm, I ran the SMART Self-test that comes in the new NVIDIA Control Panel and BOTH disks fail with: "The previous self test completed having the read element of the test failed"

My first thought is, "Hmmm, that's a really helpful message."

thoughts?

SMART is having problems reading sectors on both hard drives .... you can find other software on the net that can check SMART and or test hard drives ...

[GWguy]

Originally Posted by David

The individual disks check out OK. Something happened to the RAID.

I downloaded the latest NVIDIA software and installed it. All I got was a new option to configure SMART. Still no manual option to force a rebuild.

What's a good tool to backup my current C: drive so I can wipe it and then install it from the backup so I don't have to reinstall the OS and all the apps? No doubt it will require something that I can boot from CD/DVD so I can restore the backup to the reformatted disk...

Some folks were saying "Image for Windows" by TeraByte...

I like to snapshot the drive with Ghost. It will create an image file that can be restored intact.

[RadioPatrol]

Originally Posted by GWguy

I like to snapshot the drive with Ghost. It will create an image file that can be restored intact.

Yes Wise advice ...

Yeah thats nice when you 1st build a box ....

I'd be re imaging my system every time I install a new game .........

[cwo_ghwebb]

Originally Posted by RadioPatrol

Yes Wise advice ...

Yeah thats nice when you 1st build a box ....

I'd be re imaging my system every time I install a new game .........

That's why my old box is going to my wife. Darn she's hard to keep up with! At least she deletes the executables.