Intel Matrix RAID 1 rebuild time frame?

[splash]

I have set up my first RAID array. I choose RAID 1and used two new WD Clavier Black 640GB HDD's just finished install everything last night plus all MS updates and everything was fine . This morning I couldn't get the computer out of sleep mode so I pushed the reset button for a soft reboot. It took XP 5 or 6 times the normal times to start back up but it did start. The Intel Matrix icon it the tray looked different so I opened it and it said "there was a disk failure and both drives are fine" so I had to chooses one was rebuild the RAID1 or setup a RAID0. I chooses to rebuild RAID1 and was home for about 20 mins. before I had to leave. The HDD light was cranking so it was rebuilding the RAID1. My 2 questions are:

1. How long should the rebuild take on 640GB HDD's?

2. The fact I had a disk failure in 24 hours means I got HD problems already or could it be from installing all the MS updates and installing all my 3rd party software to cause a syncing problem?

Thanks to all that reply!!!!

[Wraith44]

I'm running a similar setup (Dual WD 640GB AALS drives) with both a RAID 0 and RAID 1 array, allocating 50% of the space to each. Unfortunately, one of the drives failed within a week, so I had to return and rebuild it. The rebuilding the 300GB RAID 1 array took about 8 hours to complete. As far as I'm aware, performing a rebuild copies both used and unused disk data, so even if the whole disk isn't full, it's still going to take the same amount of time to rebuild. Extrapolating from that, I'd guess that it will take about 16 hours to complete a full 600GB mirror.

As for the bad disk, I'd run the Western Digital diagnostic disk check on it. You can get it from their website. Note that in order to run the utility, you'll need to disable the RAID controller in your BIOS first, otherwise it won't be able to see the disks.

[splash]

THANKS I would have never let the computer run thr rebuild for 16 hours! I would have thought it had locked up. Since I started it 7 hours ago I'll let it finish and see if the problem goes away. THANKS AGAIN!

[Wraith44]

Happy to help. :)

[AreEss]

Matrix RAID rebuilds vary, depending on your exact configuration. If you build a RAID and switch to AHCI mode for installation and operation, RAID rebuilds are performed in the background (at the cost of reduced performance. Badly reduced.) A pair of 250GB drives in a full stripe set can run anywhere between 2 hours and 6 hours to rebuild fully.

Note that improper shutdowns in AHCI mode or with the Matrix RAID driver installed, e.g. bluescreens, hard resets, deadlocks, etcetera WILL always trigger a rebuild. This is normal (and proper) behavior, since these DO leave the array in an unknown and unsynchronized state. The problem is that the Matrix RAID does not appear to do a comparison, only a forced recopy.

[rogue_jedi]

My 500gb (pair of hitachi t7k500's) raid1 on Intel ich9r takes around 9 hours to rebuild, IIRC. Also, if you look in the Intel Matrix Storage Manager, somewhere under the array you should be able to find the rebuild status which will tell you how far along it is.

[splash]

Great info everyone! I freaked this morning when my brand new HDD RAID array had froze. This board never takes long to get an answer! THANKS AGAIN!

[Wraith44]

Actually, a rebuild and a verify are two different things and Intel's Matrix does support both. A rebuild should only occur when there are too many errors to recover from (bad sectors, corrupt data, missing volume, etc) whereas a verify is triggered by a bad shutdown, lockup, reset, etc. I've had both happen and a complete verify takes about an hour to complete on my 300GB array, vs 8 hours to rebuild. You're right about the time though. Since it's a software RAID, the time it takes to run either one is going to be dependent on your system specs. I'm personally running a Core2Duo E6600 with 4GB RAM, so it's not exactly cutting edge anymore.

[splash]

The strange thing is when I soft booted and got XP to open the Intel Matrix icon in the system tray didn't look normal so I opened it and it said something like "there was a disk failure and both drives are fine" and it showed both drives as the color green. Which made me think they had become out of sync with each other. But the use of the word failure would lead me to believe that one or the drives is bad or dead!

Do you think Intel Matrix is just needing to rebuild/verify or do I have a dead drive already?

[Wraith44]

If you haven't already, I would definitely run at least a quick scan of the drives using the Western Dig diagnostic disk. That said though, if both drives are showing up as fine, then I'm thinking it was just performing a verification and not a rebuild. In the console, if you look at the status of the array, it will either say it's verifying or rebuilding. Going back to rogue_jedi's post, if you turn on the progress bar (going off of memory, I think you have to right-click on the RAID 1 array to get the option), it will tell you the estimated time to complete.

[splash]

I will so I go into the "Ctrl-I" keys to go into the RAID array utility and turn it off so XP can see the too drives. Or do I turn RAID off in the BIOS by selecting "disable"?

Do I want to use Data Lifeguard Tool 11.2 for windows OR Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for windows I found both of these on the WD download page. Thanks for the help!

[Wraith44]

You want to go into the computer BIOS and turn it off there. If you were to do it through the RAID controller, you will most likely break the RAID and lose your data, so definitely don't do that. ;)

As for which download to use, you want the Diagnostic for DOS. It's bootable, so just burn it and restart your system with it in the drive. The Lifeguard tool is just for partitioning the drive and getting basic drive info like serial, model, etc. You will need to select each drive in turn (first menu option) and then perform a quick scan on them. It should take about 5 minutes apiece. If you have the time and want to be doubly sure, you can run an extended scan, which will take about an hour and a half each.

[splash]

THANKS Wraith44! I got home and the rebuild or verify had finished by then and it showed that the RAID1 was fine! nothing more to do. I think I might have the Lifeguard on my Ultimate Boot Disk I make a few months ago.

Hey will the Ultimate Boot Disk work on my new RAID OS install or do I need to make a new UBD? Sorry for all the newbie questions!

[AreEss]

Okay, there are a lot of people spreading very bad information here. That needs to stop right here and now.

The Intel Matrix RAID is a pretty damn intelligent (for an integrated) solution, and is aggressive about failures. It's reporting on the other hand, sucks. It will flag a drive as having had a failure event in the following cases:

Windows bluescreens
System does not shut down properly
Driver does not mark drive cache as clean on shutdown
System deadlocks
Loss of power during operation
Any unplanned event

Just because the Matrix RAID marks your drive as failed, does NOT mean you should be wasting time doing all these useless diagnostics. It means the exact opposite. Only when you see errors in the Event Log (which Matrix RAID does) should you suspect or even think about doing any diagnostics on the drives.

So, in summary; Matrix RAID will say it had to do a rebuild often. It will usually not actually need to do much. (Comparison capability seems to vary between ICH9R and ICH10R.) Freaking out over it is counterproductive.

[Wraith44]

Okay, there are a lot of people spreading very bad information here. That needs to stop right here and now.

The Intel Matrix RAID is a pretty damn intelligent (for an integrated) solution, and is aggressive about failures. It's reporting on the other hand, sucks. It will flag a drive as having had a failure event in the following cases:

Windows bluescreens
System does not shut down properly
Driver does not mark drive cache as clean on shutdown
System deadlocks
Loss of power during operation
Any unplanned event

Just because the Matrix RAID marks your drive as failed, does NOT mean you should be wasting time doing all these useless diagnostics. It means the exact opposite. Only when you see errors in the Event Log (which Matrix RAID does) should you suspect or even think about doing any diagnostics on the drives.

So, in summary; Matrix RAID will say it had to do a rebuild often. It will usually not actually need to do much. (Comparison capability seems to vary between ICH9R and ICH10R.) Freaking out over it is counterproductive.

I think you're confusing a drive failure (rebuild) with a drive inconsistency (verification). His original message stated that he had a failure and had to rebuild the drive. While I agree that Matrix RAID does seem to be overly aggressive on error reporting, I would hardly call my advice very bad information. Since he didn't have the exact error message, it's always better to err on the side of caution rather risk losing data due to a bad assumption. When the drives are in the RAID array, you don't get any SMART error reporting, so it's possible something could have happened that wasn't reported. But then I suppose the fact that when I started seeing verifications occurring on my system after a hard reset/system hang, assuming they were due to that, summarily ignoring them, and then having a drive failure occur might have jaded me just a bit. :D

So, to be clear, I was not recommending that a diagnostic be run every time an error is detected. I was recommending it, in this case, because he didn't have an error message and was forced to perform a rebuild and not a verification.

[splash]

Thanks AreEss & Wraith44 you have both been very informative. FIRST thing I did wrong was to NOT write down the EXACT ERROR MESSAGE, I know how the wording or codes can make all the difference in the world as to what the next step would be. What I now know is that the Matrix is over agressive in handling what it feels is a error so don't get stressed out. Let the Matrix try to fix the problem first before rushing to try to fix or diagnose a problem. I'm sure I will have this happen more, I'm always multitasking and something ends up hanging up and I have to do a soft boot. So if the Matrix wants to verify than thats what it needs to do. I have other computer I just don't want to have to continuely reinstall OS or have extended down times because as a newbie ever events is a stressful one... Thanks for everyone thoughts!

[Stereodude]

The rebuild time depends on the drives and what else the PC is doing at the same time. I have a ICH9R RAID-1 with 2 750GB Samsung drives in this PC, and it takes several hours to rebuild if I leave the PC alone.

[splash]

OK time to cut my wrist! I updated to my gigabyte EP45-UD3P mobo to the newest beta F9b and I guess I need to do something in the bios to not loss my RAID1 because after the update windows started and started finding new hardware which were the drives used in my RAID1 one. Now I tried to open the Intel Matrix Console and it said the plug-ins failed! So Have I lost the RAID1 for good or is there a fix? God I don't want to have to reinstall all that again! FINGERS CROSSED YOU ALL KNOW A WORK AROUND!!!!

Oh I tried going back to the last used bios when the RAID1 was built and that didn't fix the problem. I'm screwed!

[Stereodude]

Not sure. The gigabyte controller can add a "new" drive to an existing one for RAID-1. I'm not sure if the Intel ICHxR controller will let you do that or not.

[rogue_jedi]

Probably what happened is the new bios set the sata mode to AHCI instead of RAID. That happened to me on my system (bios reset and i forgot which computer had to be in AHCI mode to work, I guessed the wrong one :o) I was able to recover from it, though. I forget exactly what the steps were, though. I know it involved chkdsk and setting the controller to RAID again. Sorry I can't be of more help, but if what I think happened, happened, you can recover. The intel raid1 is a very laid back implementation; it doesn't do much to tag the disks, thus them being recognized as individual volumes once it was back in AHCI mode.

[AreEss]

I think you're confusing a drive failure (rebuild) with a drive inconsistency (verification). His original message stated that he had a failure and had to rebuild the drive. While I agree that Matrix RAID does seem to be overly aggressive on error reporting, I would hardly call my advice very bad information.

Sorry, fair bit that. I'm just a bit touchy of late; trust me, you do not want to know.

My reason for saying so though, is that almost all versions of the Matrix RAID log it as a FAILURE and not as an INCONSISTENCY. This drives me up a wall, because I have had more than one drive actually mechanically failing, and it didn't even register inconsistent.

My bad. :)