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Lightning strike yields failed raid when trying to boot

T

TKESlinky

n00b
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
22
I've been running my current machine for some time now. Even upgraded from win7 to 10 without issues...suprizingly. Consists of an Asus MB, core i7 920, 12 gigs of ram, and 5 WD blue 500gig drives running in raid 5 on the ICH10R. The raid is partitioned to 3 volumes, one for OS, second for programs, and third for storage.

Yesterday, I was playing around and a crack of lighting caused a power failure at my house for maybe 2 seconds. Went to reboot my computer and it couldn't identify the HD on the sata3 port of the ICH10R. Listening closely you could hear it buzz and click like the head was stuck. Of course the controller stated the raid volume failed. I powered everything off and ordered a new drive.

Today, on a whim I gave the 'bad' drive a tap with a screw driver while trying to boot the computer and it freed itself. The bios controller still showed the raid as failed, but windows tried to load. Windows of course complained and asked for a reboot to fix the problem. I did and this time the raid array came up as 'rebuild'. The machine continued to boot into Windows and has been trying to rebuild the array. HD use is pegged at 100% via task manager.

Now the main problem...I can't seem to identify what is trying to rebuild the array. I can't even find an installed raid manager. It used to have intels matrix storage manager or maybe is was rapid storage technology back when I built it. I can't locate either on the machine now. Does anyone know what's trying to piece things back together?
 
If you only had a single drive fail, it would have gone into degraded mode. As soon as it saw the "failed"/missing drive come back online it probably either marked it as spare and started a rebuild or just rebuilt the array from degraded.
 
Understood, and I believe it is in the process of rebuilding. I'm even using the computer now to right this. That being said, it is slow. However, the question is what program is performing the rebuild? Windows itself? Surely not. Nothing stands out in Task Manager. Also, I can't locate Intel's Matrix or Rapid Storage installed on the computer. I'd like to know where, whatever it is, is at in the rebuild process. What percentage completed, how much longer, etc. I cant find anything that will provide me with this info. Also, after the rebuild, I'd like to run a test on all the drives and see if there are any glaring issues or if its just some sort of fluke.

Even though I've been using Windows 10 for some time, it has always just worked (to my surprise) and I haven't had reason to go snooping around. Now that I'm trying to, I find it harder to navigate and locate things that would have been easy on win7 or earlier versions.
 
Welcome to the pain of RAID! Years ago I ran a 5-drive RAID 5 setup, starting with 9GB Seagate Cheetah SCSI3 drives, then moving up to 18GB, 36GB, then finally 146GB drives, on an Adaptec controller (3940 if memory serves me). When it worked it was pretty damn quick (for the time) with the 10,000 RPM drives. Ultimately though I gave up on it because ANYTHING that caused an abnormal shutdown (power loss, frozen system, etc) and the RAID would go into rebuild mode. Wasn't too bad on the 9GB and 18GB drives, taking only a few hours (6-8) to complete. Once the drives got bigger the rebuild time became excruciating! Even at that I could have tolerated it if it didn't bring the system to its knees performance wise. I'm sure things are faster now but the capacities are so much greater that the rebuild times are still just as long. Anyway, I gave it up years ago and haven't looked back since.

Doesn't help with your problem, but I sympathize with you!
 
First.. Backup your data. Disassemble your raid and rebuild it with the replacement drive you ordered. Also get yourself a decent ups with line conditioning. Especially if you are running raid. (or any kind of memory caching for your Samsung drives.) it will save you headaches in the long run.
 
Grimlaking said:
First.. Backup your data. Disassemble your raid and rebuild it with the replacement drive you ordered. Also get yourself a decent ups with line conditioning. Especially if you are running raid. (or any kind of memory caching for your Samsung drives.) it will save you headaches in the long run.
Click to expand...
Absolutely this! The first time I had a rebuild was after a brief power outage. Ordered the UPS the next day!!
 
Well, the machine is up and running again. I haven't replaced the faulty drive yet as it has been doing a rebuild and I didn't want to disturb it. Picked up a 3TB Mybook and backing up all the data I'd rather not loose. Still haven't determined what is doing to rebuild. I don't think it is being done by the bios, but maybe some low level thing being done by the driver in windows? After the backup I intend to install intel RST console and reboot. We'll see what condition the 5 drives are then after that. Hopefully, it won't brick the array.
 
Have you tried Process Explorer to determine what is doing your rebuild? It's kind of like a task manager on steroids. It shows information that task manager doesn't. Useful for all sorts of troubleshooting.
 
I assume your using a P6T variant mobo with a legacy BIOS rather than UEFI. Have you tried entering Intel RAID Manager immediately after POST (I can't remember for sure,but I think you need to press CNTL-i to enter). All RAID functions on ICH10R are handled in/by the Intel Option ROM. This is the Option ROM that's enabled by the BIOS when you select RAID under SATA mode in the BIOS screen. Bottom line is that Process explorer/task manager in Windows won't see anything, as the rebuild of the array is being handled by the firmware in ROM.
 
It is a P6T Deluxe V2. The machine is currently up and running, just with higher than normal disk usage (currently around 30%). I didn't want to do anything with it until the rebuild was complete for fear that it would need to start over from scratch. Is it possible to rebuild it without booting to windows? The RAID ROM suggested that it could only be rebuilt once inside the OS.
 
TKESlinky said:
It is a P6T Deluxe V2. The machine is currently up and running, just with higher than normal disk usage (currently around 30%). I didn't want to do anything with it until the rebuild was complete for fear that it would need to start over from scratch. Is it possible to rebuild it without booting to windows? The RAID ROM suggested that it could only be rebuilt once inside the OS.
Click to expand...

You should be able to. You can build, delete, rebuild the array(s), create partitions, etc. in ROM, before windows boots (or before windows is even installed, for that matter). You can also do some of these functions in windows using the Intel utility (which interfaces with the ROM firmware.)
 
MRFSYS said:
We've found, over many years, that the following wiring setup
appears to survive any serious spikes, brown-outs and black-outs:

(a) plug a relatively inexpensive surge protector into your 110v outlet

(b) plug your UPS into that surge protector

(c) plug your PC and/or external enclosure into the UPS

The idea here is that the least expensive device
"takes the hit" in the event that a destructive transient
reaches your 110v outlet. Thus, if you fry a $20 surge protector,
spend another $20 and your back up and running.

If, by some rare chance, a surge is intense enough
to blow right thru the surge protector, any good
UPS should be able to detect such a transient,
switch over to battery and block the transient
from reaching any devices being powered by the UPS.
Click to expand...
While this sounds good in theory and it may actually work in practice, most UPS manufacturers warn against using a surge protector either before or after a UPS. Most will not honor warranty or damaged equipment claims with this configuration. I don't know why. That said, I have used a power strip plugged into the UPS simply because the UPS didn't have spacing that was conducive to plugging in wall warts, of which I have many!
 
Well, the machine is back up and running as it should. I managed to install the Intel RST GUI to monitor the array in the future. However, before rebooting, I rolled back the driver to what came preinstalled with win10. I read too many horror stories of the upgraded driver causing a non-bootable OS. After the last few weeks, I finally rebooted the machine and crossed my fingers. When Windows started to load it performed a few 'disk repairs' and rebooted the machine. It came up fine the second time and win10 was also back to activated status. Disk usage is a little higher than I would expect, but I'm going to give it some time and see if it settle down. Interesting enough, the drive that was originally causing the issues has been performing basically like new. At this point I no longer intend to replace it. I plan on building a new machine at some point over the next year anyway. It just needs to last until then...
 
You do not need any driver for Raid ( IRST ) installed in your OS to have Raid working. The Intel chip, as bad as it is, does a rebuild without any OS help, you could boot into Ubuntu from a USB stick and it would still rebuild your array.

I plugged in 2 x 2TB drives lately that were RAID-1, despite my board was set to NON-RAID the drives worked in RAID mode from start up, did a rebuild when 1 drive went nuts etc... and all without ever changing BIOS to RAID MODE or installing any driver in Win10.

Still, for proper RAID I prefer Adaptec ever since. It has never let me out in the dark.

- Have a UPS connected
- Have a (global) Hot Spare
- Use Hardware driven Raid

I personally prefer Raid-6 over Raid-5. Seen it often enough that 2 drives fail soon after each other and Raid-6 saved me from big headaches.
 
RedWagnum said:
While this sounds good in theory and it may actually work in practice, most UPS manufacturers warn against using a surge protector either before or after a UPS. Most will not honor warranty or damaged equipment claims with this configuration. I don't know why. That said, I have used a power strip plugged into the UPS simply because the UPS didn't have spacing that was conducive to plugging in wall warts, of which I have many!
Click to expand...

Correct, even a surge suppressor into another surge suppressor strip is a no no. Most strips have this on the label, reason being is it can cause the UPS to not work correctly in the event of a power surge because of the wiring in the suppressor or reduce its response time, risking damage. There are new suppressors out there that CAN be daisy chained, but they are labeled as such and can only be done with the exact same model. You also have to consider most UPS draw lots of power through a single port, something a strip can't support, notice most UPS have very heavy gauge cabling to support this.

Also keep in mind most surge protectors are NOT rated for lightening, most that are cost $60+ and only help with indirect strikes (they should list the wattage they can dissipate), direct strikes require lots of gear and a separate dedicated grounding rod.
 
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