RAID 1 partitioning problem

[hardlyworking]

I'm a noobie and have little knowledge regarding partitioning and don't want to spend hours looking through posts for the solution to what is probably a simple problem. I have Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit and I have a RAID 1 setup - C: is my main drive and D: is Recovery. They should be identical, but recently C: is showing a volume capacity of 365.05 GB (OK) but D: is showing a volume capacity of 7.55 GB, volume free space of 602.83 MB and volume used space of 6.96 GB. C: has a partition starting offset of 32,256 bytes; D: has a partition starting offset of 391,967,493,120 bytes. Can someone walk me through the steps to get the RAID partitioning back to normal?
Thanks!

 

[crjdriver]

OK, I am not understanding your post at all.

1 Are you sure you in-fact have a raid array?
2 Partitions are part of the array. What does disk management show for your array? Post a screenshot of DM.
3 Are you by chance calling the two drives of the array C & D? If so, this is not correct. C, D, etc refer to partitions of the array not separate drives that make up the array.

 

[hardlyworking]

Sorry for the confusion. I will include the applicable info from Disk Manager:

Volume: HP(C
Layout: Simple
Type: Basic
File System: NTFS
Status: Healthy (System, Boot, Page File,Active, Crash Dump,Primary Partition
Capacity: 149.05 GB
Free Space: 135.36 GB
% Free: 91%
Fault Tolerant: No

Volume: Recovery(D
Layout: Simple
Type: Basic
File System: NTFS
Status: Healthy (Primary Partition)
Capacity: 7.55 GB
Free Space: 903 MB
% Free: 12%
Fault Tolerant: No

Info from System information report for disks shows:
Description: Disk drive
Manufacturer: (Standard disk drives)
Model: RAID1
Bytes/Sector: 512
Media Type: Fixed hard drive
Partitions: 2
SCSI Bus: 0
SCSI Logical Unit: 0
SCSI Port: 0
Sectors/Track: 63
Size: 372.60 GB (400,077,619,200 bytes)
Total Cylinders: 48,640
Total Sectors: 781,401,600
Total Tracks: 12,403,200
Tracks/Cylinder: 255
Partition: Disk #0, Partition #0
Partition Size: 365.05 GB (391,967,460,864 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset: 32,256 bytes
Partition: Disk #0, Partition #1
Partition Size: 7.55GB (8,110,126,080 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset: 391,967,493,120 bytes)

I hope that makes things a little clearer.

 

[crjdriver]

OK, I am not understanding your problem. You have a raid array with a C partition and a recovery partition ie D. Where is the problem? Next you have not posted a screenshot of disk management.

 

[crjdriver]

BTW this is what a screenshot of disk management looks like.

 

[hardlyworking]

The problem is that the Recovery partition D is almost maxed out and the partition offset is way too high. Screenshot is attached. I have run error checking and defrag on D to no avail. Partition D should be identical to C, right?

 

[crjdriver]

No. You are not understanding. You have two physical drives that make up a raid1 array. That array is approx 372gig or so. 365 is used for C and the rest is the recovery partition.

If you think D should be the same size as C, that is incorrect. You have one partition [C] that is usable; D is simply the recovery partition.

With raid1, the array is only as big as the smallest drive that makes up the array. As an example if you had an 80gig drive and a 40gig drive that made up a raid1 array, the array would be 40gig. If it were raid0, it would be 80gig [2X the smallest drive]

In your case, you have 2 400gig drives in raid1. Your array would be 372gig. The other 28gig is lost due to the different ways of measuring drive size. The drive maker uses one way and the os uses another [binary]

In short, you have no problem.

 

[crjdriver]

BTW raid for the average user is just about useless. Raid1 is not a backup plan. It is only hardware redundant. It does noting for a virus, malware, corrupted driver install, etc. Every error is mirrored on the other drive. In short the only good it does is allows you to have a drive failure and not lose any data. You can simply replace the failed drive and rebuild the array.

If you are not backing up your data/work files, you are asking for data loss. Remember data you do not backup is data you do not care about.

 

[hardlyworking]

Thanks for the explanation. Previously, I could have sworn that both volumes showed near the identical size. Plus, the Recovery (D space used was showing a red bar, which led me to believe there was a problem. Sorry for being technically challenged.

BTW, I do have scheduled backups on an external drive.

 

[crjdriver]

You may have a problem with one of the drives in the array however your partitions are correct. Most system builders hide the recovery partition however in this case I guess it was not done.

You can test the drive with the drive maker's diagnostic. You download this from whomever made the drive; ie WD, Seagate, etc. It runs from bootable media; CD or floppy.