Help!! Win 8 Storage Space suddenly says its needs to be Formatted

Savi

Savi

Gawd
Joined
Nov 11, 2009
Messages
657
:confused:

have my home server set up with win 8.1 storage space using a Supermicro MBD-X10SL7-F-O For motherboard. Was using it this morning everything was fine was watching some vids over the network. had to go do some stuff so I turned off my main pc and the home server, (only turn it on when I use it) Now I turn it on and windows is telling me my storage space is unformatted, and keeps poping up a window telling me to Format or Cancel. I just hit Cancel every time Help plz!

I am half sleep right now so just gona go to sleep for now do not want to mess up anythiing further while sleepy. I hope i did not lose my data good lord :( sorry for any typo's I have been up way to long and now worried like hell over this server, Gona go sleep it off any help be nice will try to fix it when i wake up
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Hard drive is dying or corrupted if you can get it going again back up and get new drives.

Check cables and hope it comes back. I don't have much else by way of advise other than have a backup drive ready you likely will not have much time nor will it be very stable and could go out on you at any time.
 
Last edited:
well that sucks lol, I have 12 hard drives in that Storage Space, is there any way to ID the dying or dead hard drive or drives? I am hoping it would be one of the older drives, been slowly upgrading the drives finally got rid of the 500gb drives for 3tb reds So i don't think it could be one of those. I do have 4 1tb greens 2 1.5tb green and 2tb greens left.

For now I just turned off the power supply I cant buy a new hard drive for a week maybe two I just rebuilt this system 3 weeks ago to every thing was working so good till this Will take apart system just to make sure every cable is plugged in right, But since i just built it a few weeks ago I'm sure they are but never know. I thought Storage Space's would let me know if there was a Hard Drive dying or dead not make a pop up saying I need to format it? is there a power shell command that would help ID the bad drive?
 
well while it is running you can try to access each drive which ever doesn't access or is slow to access is the failing one it would be best if you were on the machine directly then either the one that is missing or there will be a log file if it is running windows like it seemed to be from your first post i would start by checking the greens.

the popup should also say which drive based on letter.

and you dont absolutely need to replace it just attempt to get your data off i have an external i cant get to let me get anything off i pulled it apart plugged it in directly still nothing...
 
Well, first (and before you do ANYTHING) please post the relevant errors from event viewer. How was this array created (For example, a HBA with the volume handled through Windows, an SS parity pool, a tiered pool, etc). Unfortunately, since you don't have another dozen drives to make bit-by-bit images of your existing drives you must be absolutely sure before you make any modifications to this drive set since you might not be able to reverse it.
Have you checked the SMART status of all the drives and do they all pass? What does Windows Disk Management say about the members of the array? What types of drives are in the array?
 
Last edited:
Savi said:
finally got rid of the 500gb drives for 3tb reds So i don't think it could be one of those.
Click to expand...

It's more likely a new drive that went bad (especially if you didn't pre-test the drive before putting it into the array) rather than an old disk that has been working perfectly fine for years suddenly going bad.
 
Ok from what I can see the hard drives might be fine, and it could just be a motherboard problem, but not sure what to do next. The Reason I think it is the motherboard is because every time I turn the PC on and get into windows Storage Spaces tell me 8 of my hard drives are disconnected. When I go to Device Manager I see the "Yellow Exclamation Mark" on "Storage Controllers" - "LSI Adapter, SAS2 2308 Mustang" When I go to Properties I get the error "This device cannot start. (Code 10)" If I try to update that driver it tells me it is already up to date, If I uninstall that driver then press Scan for hardware changes, It reinstalled the driver and then Storage Spaces says the drives are all "OK" But windows still ask's me to format. This happens every time I restart the PC I have downloaded the most recent drivers for this Motherboard

In PowerShell using the "get-physicaldisk" all drives show as Healthy after I reinstalled the SAS driver

In Event Viewer under "Windows Logs - System" I see a ton of errors every time I turn on PC, seems to be about 26 errors every time, the source being LSI_SAS2 The Error says " The driver detected a controller error on \Device\RaidPort0. "

From what I can see it does seem to be something wrong with the motherboard or maybe windows 8.1 needs to be reinstalled. I might just pullout my old Q6600 setup I was using before the Supermicro Motherboard Setup just to check if it really is the Driver are ok or not will wait till I get some more advice, I am at just a hobby level when it comes to PC repair knowledge Still do not know how to do many things so any help is nice thank you :) Oh yea The Storage Space I made is using Parity, Forgot to mention that in the first post.
 
Last edited:
In my experience, sometimes when Windows starts referring to an existing device under new a generic driver or name, its related to a hardware failure on the device. That seems to be potentially corroborated with the controller errors reported on \Device\RaidPort0. If possible try the controller in another PC or another OS to see if its behaving as expected.
 
The controller is on the mainboard, so no chance on testing it elsewhere. If you have another controller with enough ports around you can try that.

I just have to ask because I am using the same board in my server... how is the LSI controller cooled in your setup? Do you have a server type rack case or do you use a normal tower? The thing is that the LSI controller cannot really be passively cooled and depending on your CPU cooler it may not get enough cool air. This is not a problem for high airflow server cases the board is designed for, but the airflow in a normal consumer tower will not properly cool a component in that place with such a small heatsink. My controller got so hot that I could burn my fingers on it, that is why I installed a small fan on it. There is a reason why so many consumer boards use these "pipeworks" of heatpipes for the onboard components, and those components have a lower power consumption than the LSI (up to 13W if I remember correctly and is seems to be largely independent from IO load).

EDIT: On another note: If the way Storage Spaces handles a disappearing controller is to suggest to the user to format whatever is left of that pool, it cannot be recommended to anyone as a safe solution.
 
Last edited:
TGK said:
In my experience, sometimes when Windows starts referring to an existing device under new a generic driver or name, its related to a hardware failure on the device. That seems to be potentially corroborated with the controller errors reported on \Device\RaidPort0. If possible try the controller in another PC or another OS to see if its behaving as expected.
Click to expand...

I agree with this. Best of luck. System failure sucks to deal with.
 
omniscence said:
I just have to ask because I am using the same board in my server... how is the LSI controller cooled in your setup? Do you have a server type rack case or do you use a normal tower? The thing is that the LSI controller cannot really be passively cooled and depending on your CPU cooler it may not get enough cool air. This is not a problem for high airflow server cases the board is designed for, but the airflow in a normal consumer tower will not properly cool a component in that place with such a small heatsink. My controller got so hot that I could burn my fingers on it, that is why I installed a small fan on it. There is a reason why so many consumer boards use these "pipeworks" of heatpipes for the onboard components, and those components have a lower power consumption than the LSI (up to 13W if I remember correctly and is seems to be largely independent from IO load).

EDIT: On another note: If the way Storage Spaces handles a disappearing controller is to suggest to the user to format whatever is left of that pool, it cannot be recommended to anyone as a safe solution.
Click to expand...

Just a quick update, On the LSI controller after I read your post I checked and yes it really does get hot gonna order a 40 or 50mm fan and some how attach somehow it to the heat sink, I use a Cooler Master Cosmos S tower case, with 3 120mm front intake 3 120mm top outtake 1 120mm back outtake, and the side intake 200mm fan blowing onto the motherboard So I think my cooling should be ok no? but just encase I will add a small fan to that heat sink.

I spent the night trying a few things nothing has worked, I did pull out my old Q6600 and sata cards setup i was using before and same problem. So it seems the motherboard is fine, it seems that Lunas is most likely right a hard drive is failing or dead already even though storage space say all drives are OK, Will buy a few drives next week and pray every thing works out ether way I will let you guys know what happens next week. thank you for the advice so far :)

Once this is sorted out going to have to rethink my home server and what OS and storage scheme I use
 
Just one hail-mary thought that has worked in the past with some Windows/integrated HBA problems. Remove the device/driver from Windows, go into the BIOS/UEFI and disable the LSI controller, shut down, re-enable it let windows find it again and install the drivers. See if that makes any difference and you might get lucky..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top