[EagleMan76]

Hi, I have been running a RAID 10 for some time with 4 drives, all 640GB WD Black. I had one drive drop out of the RAID so I replaced it with an identical one and ran WD Data Lifeguard to test it. My problem comes when I try to rebuild onto it. I am using the AMD RAID controller built-in on my motherboard (Asus M4A78-E). I have the drive plugged in the same SATA port the old failed drive was in and I replaced the SATA cable as well. I also tested all drives using WD Data Lifeguard, all tested good, no errors. I boot to Win7 (the RAID 10 is my OS drive, could that be the issue?) and run AMD RAID Xpert. I select the drive to rebuild onto and start the rebuild process. Every time I try it locks the whole system up when it gets to 9% and I have to do a hard reset. This happens no matter which drive I use. When I restart it says "Rebuilding" when the RAID controller does its drive check, but I see no drive activity until it fully boots to Win7, where it proceeds to resume rebuild and lock up again. This is a fresh copy of Windows 7 that I installed 2 weeks ago.

I made an observation of my computer's activity while trying the rebuild again. CPU core 3 (CPU cores are numbered 0-3 on my machine) stays ~85%-90% while the drive rebuild is active. Once the rebuild is at 9% for a couple minutes (I'd estimate about 9.8%) the drive activity stops and 5 seconds later the whole machine locks up. When it does I notice CPU cores 0-3 all above 95% on the frozen display, then I have to do a hard reset.

I'm not sure if this is related or not, but I will throw this out there anyway. When I try to run Windows Backup to do a full image backup onto another drive the system hangs every time it gets close to 80%. It did this even before I had the RAID issue. This is the second incarnation of Windows 7 on this machine, and it did the same thing in the first incarnation.

Has anyone else had this problem? If so, how would I go about fixing it? I have no data loss, so I guess I could completely redo that array from scratch and redo Win7 again, but if I can avoid that I will.
Thanks in advance for any help!

[crjdriver]

I almost never use onboard raid however you generally rebuild an array from the raid bios. Enter your raid bios and see if you can add the drive to the array and rebuild.

FWIW this is one of the many reasons I consider onboard raid useless. With a real raid card like a promise card, this would be a no brainer. The raid bios would detect the new drive and offer to rebuild it for you.

[EagleMan76]

I'll give that a try. Just wondering, I know this is a long-shot, but if I do get a real good RAID card will it detect the existing array if I plug it into the card, or will I just have to redo the array again? I'm thinking not, but it never hurts to ask. I'm really starting to consider getting that new card as this onboard one is pissing me off. lol. Thanks for the advise!

[EagleMan76]

Well I tried the RAID bios, and all the options is has are View drive assignments, Define LD, Delete LD, and exit. Nothing to rebuild the RAID. I looked at RAID cards and it seems anything decent is well over $100, seems you get what you pay for. I looked around and it seems AMD's controller is made to be managed with the web-based RAID Xpert (I hate web-based setup programs btw).
I'm still at a loss on why Windows Backup won't work. This is the second installation (had to reinstall the first time because of this problem, but apparently that was in vain). Hell, even programs like HDClone won't work to copy the drive image (the system hangs when I boot HDClone from CD, USB, or Floppy). I'm at the point of throwing up my arms and saying WTF.

EDIT: Just looked at some RAID cards, found this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816124032 yay/nay?

[crjdriver]

That card is pretty much junk. Good brands are highpoint or promise. Next you cannot plug in your drives to a new card and have the array IDed. You can use the old drives however whatever data is on them will be destroyed when you create the new array.

FWIW raid is not for the home user. It is for servers that need hot swap capability and hard drive redundancy. If you really really must have raid, then here is what I would do.

1 Buy a quality raid card
2 Install your current drives and create a new array
3 Install windows to your array
4 Make a backup image of your array using acronis true image.

[crjdriver]

Yes, you are correct. With regard to raid controllers you get what you pay for. The only cards I recommend are either promise or highpoint. IMO the promise card gives a little better performance however the highpoint bios is easier to use/navigate so it is a wash as to which brand to go with.

[helpful]

Remember it is not just the quality of the raid controller but also the type of the harrdrives (enterprise/desktop) that both impacts raid stability and performance.

The problems you have stated, typicially are caused by TLER not being enabled. Check out the link below and please let us know if this helps with your problem.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1285254

[EagleMan76]

Thanks for the advice guys. For now I'll see about imaging the array onto another drive using Acronis and update the image periodically until I get the RAID card. I'm looking at the RocketRAID 1740. I also got the WDTLER utility I'll use when I build the array on the new card (and unplug the drives not in the array while doing this). I'll try installing the drivers for the new card before I do the image, mb I can just image straight onto the new array, mb not, I'll try it though. I plan on keeping the RAID 10 for its performance, fault tolerance, and no need of parity. (2x write speeds and 4x read speeds is good stuff ). Looking at the benchmarks of these drives and the specs of PCI slots, should be OK as far as bus capabilities go to handle the expected read speeds. Should be a win-win!

EDIT: Just got the Windows image backup to work!

Once again, thanks for the advice!

[crjdriver]

You can image the system to a highpoint card without any problems. Here is how you do it.

1 Install the highpoint card on your current install.
2 Install drivers and reboot when prompted. Let the system fully boot and check device manager for any yellow marks.
3 If all is well, make an image of your current system drive. Store this on an external, NAS, etc.
4 Shutdown and connect your drives to the highpoint card
5 Restart and enter the highpoint bios ctrl>H and create your array. Do not attempt to partition or format; just restart after you have completed creating the array.
6 Now enter the system bios [not the highpoint bios] Make sure your CD is the first boot device and the highpoint card is selected as a boot device.
7 Boot the system from your acronis TI boot CD and have whatever you used to store the image connected/turned ON.
8 Restore the image to the array. Done.

Note you may need to extend the partition if your raid array is larger than the drive from which you created your image. With either vista or win7, this is no big deal. You can just use the built in partition tool in disk management.

[EagleMan76]

Sounds good! Thank you!!!