RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?

[mfusick]

OK.. I might really have messed up. My desktop started acting strange, with very slow boot ups. Even the first Bios screen had like a 40 second delay. The PC in general was acting weird, and my RST Intel program kept warning me, but nothing seemed to be wrong.


Anyways, I decided to upgrade my OS to a new OS drive which has been on my list of things to do. First I updated my BIOS to the newest version thinking that the BIOS update would fix the boot up lag. It did not.


But now after re-install not only do I have slow boot up, but my RAID drive is gone :mad:


I was using fake raid on Z87 to RAID. Something is wrong. I have data on that drive I need to recover.




Windows wants me to format the drive. But I think that' a huge mistake.



Anyone know a good way to rebuild this array or save the data from these three drives? HELP!


That is my immediate problem. The second problem is figuring out why my mobo and system boot so slow. It boots slow with two different OS drives on different ports. I boots slow with the RAID not hooked up or hooked up. Something funny going on with my mobo I think.



Moderator Note (- wardog -): I replaced your 4 letter slang with "messed" in this post. I also removed that same 4 letter slang from the Title. Please refrain.

[mfusick]

re: RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?



hmm.. pictures don't seem to want to work here ??

[mfusick]

re: RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?

[parsec]

Re: RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?

When you updated your BIOS, all settings were set back to default, including the SATA mode, whose default value is AHCI. You didn't mention resetting the SATA mode to RAID, so I can only assume that you didn't, given what your screenshots show.

IF you did not remove any of the drives, or format them in Windows (which may only remove your data, and not the RAID setup data on them), just set the SATA mode back to RAID in the BIOS, save and exit, reboot, and normally your RAID 0 array will be back.

When you said "fake RAID", I thought you meant Windows pseudo-RAID, not IRST RAID. Besides a RAID card that costs more than your board and CPU together, any software/hardware RAID like Intel's is hardly fake RAID, IMO.

[- wardog -]

Re: RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?

"Fake RAID' is loose nomenclature for any array that is not connected to a dedicated hardware RAID controller/card.

[parsec]

Re: RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?

"Fake RAID' is loose nomenclature for any array that is not connected to a dedicated hardware RAID controller/card.

Yeah, I suppose so, but considering some of the benchmarks I've seen for "RAID cards", that were inferior to those done with AMD and Intel RAID, I have a problem calling the latter "fake RAID".

P.S. Day three of sending you PMs that fail... OTOH, I might get that...

[- wardog -]

Re: RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?

Yeah, I suppose so, but considering some of the benchmarks I've seen for "RAID cards", that were inferior to those done with AMD and Intel RAID, I have a problem calling the latter "fake RAID".

Meh, 0 and 1 are simple/basic arrays. Get above those somewhat and dedicated controllers pay for themselves. Shine actually.

P.S. Day three of sending you PMs that fail... OTOH, I might get that...

Ha! Looks like what you're getting is another 4-8ins of white stuff. Lucky guy that you are.

re: OTOH, I might get that - Lost me there. Yesterday I cleaned house. Why is it seemingly only you that has probs sending? Check yor Inbox here in amin or so.

[mfusick]

Re: RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?

Yeah, I suppose so, but considering some of the benchmarks I've seen for "RAID cards", that were inferior to those done with AMD and Intel RAID, I have a problem calling the latter "fake RAID".

P.S. Day three of sending you PMs that fail... OTOH, I might get that...

I agree with you. I recently got into an argument on AVS with those guys about this, but in the end they insisted it was "fake" so I kinda just gave up.

What should I call RAID0 on a Z87 motherboard ?

[mfusick]

Re: RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?

Back to my problem,


I have a thread here that has more details and some more information:

Mfusick's How to build an affordable 30TB Flexraid media server: Information Requested.! - Page 101

It's not my server though, this is my desktop that has the issue.

Here is a recap:

I updated the BIOS to the newest version from Asrock webpage using USB stick and easy bios flash process. It went great. Same as my other 5 Asrock mobos (Z87/Z77/Z68). I also seemed to have bricked my OCZ vector SSD, it's gone from bios. I think it's unrelated to my mobo and my problem. So no big deal, I had a 256GB OCZ Vertex450 so I clean installed windows to that and booted up. My RAID drive was gone (RAID 0 with 3 Toshiba 3TB drives).

It seems flashing my BIOS probably broke down my raid array or something.

I switched back and forth from ACHI to RAID mode but no luck.

I originally installed in ACHI mode to the new SSD (the replacement) and when I switch to RAID mode I get BSOD. I assumed it was an ACHI thing.

So I decided to try installing in RAID mode. I grabbed two VERTEX 120GB's and created a RAID0 array of 240GB and installed windows into that. That is my current OS (but I could hooked back up the 256GB ACHI install). In RAID mode still nothing.

I deleted the RAID array since it only showed 1 member disk and tried recreating it exactly like it was. I never removed the SATA cables from the hard drives so I am pretty confident everything is on the same port. I did remove the SATA power from the hard drives when I was installing windows.

Now I see this:



But when I go into windows I see this: (See next post)

[mfusick]

Re: RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?



Anyone have any ideas?


Would switching back and forth from MBR to GPT create this problem ? If that happened somehow? I never formatted or did anything to my hard drives so I am hoping I can recover the data from them.

Anyone have advice on how to recover? or is there software or process that would allow me to reconstruct to another drive.

I have a fair amount of PC hardware at my disposal, including storage to copy the recovered data over too. I made a huge mistake and I really need to recover my data. I almost never trust RAID0 arrays for such purposes, I have a Flexraid server I use for more secure storage but I just made a stupid mistake. I deleted the data from my server thinking I would just copy it back from my RAID0 scratch disk when I was done, but of coarse flashing my BIOS I did not realize would cause all this.

Thanks in advance for all the help and intelligent replies. I am super appreciative and sincerely thankful.

-Mike

[mfusick]

Re: RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?

OK- so some more updates. I still have my thread going on AVS : Mfusick's How to build an affordable 30TB Flexraid media server: Information Requested.! - Page 104

I broke down the array in the BIOS. They drives show as 3TB drives. But in windows they still show up as only 746GB each.

WTF is going on with that? I need to fix that.

I tried this program called "file scavenger" which was recommended on overclockers. It's scanning my three drives now and I can see it is recovering data. It's working !

but I think it's only scanning the first 746GB on each drive. What is up with that ? How can I get my drives to show up as full sized again?

When I booted into windows - windows asked me to initialize them as either MBR or GPT. I chose GPT. What that wrong ?

[- wardog -]

Re: RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?

OK, I just last week ran into seeing that same 746.39GB on the same drive, Toshiba Bulk DT01ACA3(00)/Retail PH3300U-1I72. Yes, I have a few of those drives myself. Quite a few actually. No data lost as I was only adding a new drive to the box and it was with one I was partitioning in an external enclosure for it's backups that I saw that 746.39GB. Unrelated, somewhat, to your situation. Mine, Disk Management and Acronis Disk Director both froze while accessing but it turned out here to be a esata controller issue Damn Marvell, but once I added a Sil3132 add-in card things progressed as expected. This all after swapping MB's around. Still not sure if it was a driver issue or not.

Good luck with that. I'm thinking flashing the BIOS from within Windows while the machine and drives were spinning while it(flashing) reset your controllers and also any other drive related changes you made in the motherboards BIOS, not the RAID BIOS.

Maybe parsec has an idea on this but I don't see any way around it.

[parsec]

Re: RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?

First, please STOP doing semi-random things like changing from RAID to AHCI mode and back again, hoping it will do something. Sorry but that just tends to make things worse.

The SATA port number or order the disks are connected to does not matter for Intel RAID, so that is not the problem.

If I follow your sequence of events, I noticed this a few posts back:

Back to my problem,


I have a thread here that has more details and some more information:

Mfusick's How to build an affordable 30TB Flexraid media server: Information Requested.! - Page 101

It's not my server though, this is my desktop that has the issue.

Here is a recap:

I updated the BIOS to the newest version from Asrock webpage using USB stick and easy bios flash process. It went great. Same as my other 5 Asrock mobos (Z87/Z77/Z68). I also seemed to have bricked my OCZ vector SSD, it's gone from bios. I think it's unrelated to my mobo and my problem. So no big deal, I had a 256GB OCZ Vertex450 so I clean installed windows to that and booted up. My RAID drive was gone (RAID 0 with 3 Toshiba 3TB drives).

It seems flashing my BIOS probably broke down my raid array or something.

I switched back and forth from ACHI to RAID mode but no luck.

I originally installed in ACHI mode to the new SSD (the replacement) and when I switch to RAID mode I get BSOD. I assumed it was an ACHI thing.

So I decided to try installing in RAID mode. I grabbed two VERTEX 120GB's and created a RAID0 array of 240GB and installed windows into that. That is my current OS (but I could hooked back up the 256GB ACHI install). In RAID mode still nothing.

I deleted the RAID array since it only showed 1 member disk and tried recreating it exactly like it was. I never removed the SATA cables from the hard drives so I am pretty confident everything is on the same port. I did remove the SATA power from the hard drives when I was installing windows.

Now I see this:

[ATTACH]6653[/ATTACH]

But when I go into windows I see this: (See next post)

So you, "I deleted the RAID array since it only showed 1 member disk and tried recreating it exactly like it was", which you did via the Intel RAID utility available during POST, as your screen shots show.

Bad news, deleting the RAID 0 array most likely just destroyed all your data. Actually, the data is still there (given what you've said in your posts so far, IF that is everything you did), in RAID 0 format on the three HDDs, but the information used to assemble the data spread across the three HDDs into files that the Windows file system can understand was removed when you deleted the RAID array in the RAID utility.

Working my way along in this thread, I see this:

OK- so some more updates. I still have my thread going on AVS : Mfusick's How to build an affordable 30TB Flexraid media server: Information Requested.! - Page 104

I broke down the array in the BIOS. They drives show as 3TB drives. But in windows they still show up as only 746GB each.

WTF is going on with that? I need to fix that.

I tried this program called "file scavenger" which was recommended on overclockers. It's scanning my three drives now and I can see it is recovering data. It's working !

but I think it's only scanning the first 746GB on each drive. What is up with that ? How can I get my drives to show up as full sized again?

When I booted into windows - windows asked me to initialize them as either MBR or GPT. I chose GPT. What that wrong ?

I hope File Scavenger works for you, it is your only hope. So you created and deleted a RAID 0 array on those disks again... I'm sorry but you keep doing things that hurt you, not help. When you created the RAID 0 array this second time, did you see a message about saving the data on the member disks? That might not appear in the basic Intel RAID utility, have you ever used the Windows Intel Rapid Storage Technology UI that is installed as part of the Windows IRST driver? That's a much easier and fuller interface for creating and managing RAID volumes. If you had used that program immediately after your issue appeared, you might not be in your current situation.

So you are using 3TB HDDs, but you are not aware of the standard MBR format limitation when using drives larger than 2.2TB? That is, they must use a GPT format file table to use the full capacity of each drive, AND certainly the capacity of a 9TB RAID 0 volume. You've mentioned MBR and GPT a couple times, so you must be somewhat aware of that, and used it in the past.

Why is File Scavenger only scanning 746MB? Since the disks are not formatted (DON'T format them now please!!) just Initialized (given what you said) there is no file address table to work with, so the program likely defaults to MBR file address limits, which are also wrong due to the actual size of the disk being larger than an MBR file table can address (notice that the MBR limit of 2.2 TB + ~746MB = ~3TB, the size of your HDDs. Why it then uses what should be the undefined space beyond 2.2TB as the capacity of the drive is a good question, and an interesting bug, but that is what always happens with MBR addressing on a HDD beyond MBR limits.)

My only suggestion that may do nothing is try the Windows IRST UI program (listed in Control Panel if installed), and see what can be done, if anything. Do NOT expect a fix using it, unless by a miracle it can, but after two RAID 0 creates and deletes on those drives, I doubt it.

I truly hope File Scavenger works for you. Do you have the correct version for recovering from RAID arrays? I'm not sure if the trial version contains that option, check here: File recovery and hard drive data recovery software

[- wardog -]

Re: RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?

Meh, he's back home on AVS now. Happy that he got it "recovered".

If I followed and read the linked thread right his flipping between RAID and AHCI did indeed "break' the array. But not having any Intel RAID experience myself I fail to see why the "Fix' linked offsite there, being itself updating from RST 10.0 to 10.1 would do much.

Only unless upon reinstallation of the 10.1 RST did it correct the geometry of the volume and re-write it to the disks. Which I imagine, in hindsight, the reinstallation of his older 10.0 would have done also.

mfusick, glad to see it working w/o data loss. And I saw that M1015 auction at $50ea too but took a pass as I already enjoy having 4 of 'em. Two in passthrough IT mode and two yet in RAID. $50 shipped WAS a tempting price for a 5th one though.

[parsec]

Re: RAID 0 on Asrock Extreme 4 Z87 recovery ?

Frankly, I don't believe that. Plus given the multiple RAID volume deletions in the IRST utility, it makes no sense, if that happened all data would be gone.

Also, booting in AHCI mode should do nothing to ruin the RAID metadata, no reason at all for that to happen.

Also, the recovery was installing a different version of IRST?

What really happened was booting in AHCI mode apparently loaded a different AHCI driver, but that also does not make sense, since the IRST RAID driver is a perfectly good AHCI driver.

Let's assume the standard MS AHCI driver was installed when booting in AHCI mode. Which meant no RAID driver was installed. The "update" of the IRST driver was really an installation of the IRST driver. The different version is just an aside that had no significance. Still many things posted do not make any sense, particularly given the apparent outcome.

I had a feeling the confused chain of events posted was far from what really happened.

P.S. Tutelage???