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Intel Matrix Storage Manager - breaking a mirror

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  • 18-08-2014 9:19pm
    #1
    zagmund
    Registered Users Posts: 2,501 ✭✭✭


    I'm helping someone try to recover from a failed disk in a on an Inspiron 530 with an AHCI controller, and from what I can tell the useful bits of the functionality of the controller are only available from the OS . . . which isn't booting because it's on the failed drive.

    The machine had 2*Barracuda 7200.11 500g drives which were set up as a single 500g RAID1 array by the controller. Unless significant post purchase wizardry was involved, then it probably shipped this way from Dell. One of those drives failed and I replaced it with a 7200.12 drive. From what I can see in the manual, the drives don't need to be an exact match so we should be good to go.

    When I powered on, the only thing that happened was that the controller gave out that it had one drive in the array and one not in the array. I was hoping that it would ask if it should add the new drive to the array, but no such luck. Previously the first disk (0) just wouldn't initialise at all, so the controller only saw disk 1.

    The only options on screen are "Create RAID volume" and ""Reset Disks to Non-RAID". The manual says both of these options will blow away the drives.

    The manual has a section which covers rebuilding a RAID1 array - http://www.dell.com/support/troubleshooting/us/en/19/KCS/KcsArticles/ArticleView?docid=606182#Rebuilding_RAID_1 - but this requires booting to the OS, which we can't do.

    I was hoping the controller would at least have an option to break the mirror and treat the one working disk as the primary bootable disk and let us take it from there, but that's not happening.

    So . . . given the above, does anyone have any suggestions on how to get this machine back in action? An option I've considered but not tried yet include building the OS on a new drive entirely with the two RAID drives disconnected, then once the OS is up and running, re-introduce the two drives and get the controller to re-build. I also have considered taking the working original disk out, putting it in a caddy and attaching it to another machine to see if by some chance it was just readable as normal. This would be good and I will try it later.

    I'm hoping someone here can give me some pointers and see if there's a way to recover the data.

    z


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    #2
    Serephucus
    Registered Users Posts: 7,179 ✭✭✭Serephucus


    The two things I was going to suggest are the only things I can think of. I'd give the caddy option a go first. If that does work it'll be the fastest/easiest way of getting the files back.


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