Identifying a Bad drive in NVIDIA RAID 5 Set

[TedDavid]

After seeing a closed thread on this topic, I decided to experiment. Found the answer in reasonably simple steps

(Using Win XP Pro)

1. In My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Manager Print Screen or otherwise record the picture.
2. Start system, enter BIOS Setup. Restore Defaults, Exit w/ save
(this disassociates the RAID array into single drives - you'll be able to redefine them in BIOS later.)
3. In Windows, go to My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management
(You'll get a dialog to initializa a disk. Cancel that)
4. The disk Manager will show an unallocated disk. Print again this pictoure to compare w/ the previous one.
5. Use Western Digital Diagnostics tool to discover the Ser Nos of all drives. Note these. The drives are listed in the same order as in Windows Disk Manager, so you should now know the disk to replace. (Other HD manufacturers - e.g. Seagate - also have tools to help. I simply use WD Diagnostics)

Now you should be able to locate the bad disk and replace it, followed by redesignating a new RAID array in BIOS and rebuilding in RAID BIOS

 

[rclarke250]

The raid manager doesn't do all of this for you? Raid 5 and you have to break the array, and rebuild the whole array, if one drive fails? Seems a poor management system to me. In a good raid system, the rebuild of the failed drive, and marking of the failed drive is handled by the raid controller, and management software.

 

[DrB0b]

^^^^ He is right, sounds like you tried to work around the easy part of using your Raid controllers tools to do it. My Raid 5 is set with an Adaptec controller and the software that came with it tells you the failed drive and allows you to blink the corresponding Drive bay. Change it out and let that one drive rebuild all actively(while still in Windows).

 

[TedDavid]

As in the earlier thread that got me started thinking about posting with this, it was an NVIDIA H/W RAID controller on an ASUS MB. If you've read any discussions about that particular setup, you can't fail to have noticed the frustration with how little info is available. Sorry - I should have mentioned NVIDIA from the gitgo.

 

[goombawaho]

Wow - that type of system would be totally useless on a very important system where you need to be able to easily identify, replace a hard drive and have it rebuild with no drama (or much thinking).

Goes to show you need to research a RAID controller and how it handles drive failures/drive replacements. That unit might be suitable for home use, but anything more than that, it doesn't cut the mustard.