Messed up RAID array

  • Thread starter Thread starter Cyde Weys
  • Start date Start date
C

Cyde Weys

Alright, here's the story. I'm running a RAID 0 array with 2 250GB
SATA hard drives. My RAID card shows up as "Silicon Image SiI 3112
SATALink Controller" in the Windows XP Device Manager. The RAID array
uses the NTFS file system.

Now, what happened is that for some strange reason, my Windows decided
to install a critical security update on its own. When I got back to
my computer it had rebooted and the RAID array no longer showed up. I
rebooted again and it installed drivers for the RAID card
automatically and the RAID array correctly showed up, only it is now
seen as unformatted. I've been very careful not to allow any sort of
"initialization" or formatting on my drives since this problem
started, so all of the data should still be there. My only question
is - how to recover it? Thanks a lot.
 
Alright, here's the story. I'm running a RAID 0 array with 2 250GB
SATA hard drives. My RAID card shows up as "Silicon Image SiI 3112
SATALink Controller" in the Windows XP Device Manager. The RAID array
uses the NTFS file system.

Now, what happened is that for some strange reason, my Windows decided
to install a critical security update on its own. When I got back to
my computer it had rebooted and the RAID array no longer showed up. I
rebooted again and it installed drivers for the RAID card
automatically and the RAID array correctly showed up, only it is now
seen as unformatted. I've been very careful not to allow any sort of
"initialization" or formatting on my drives since this problem
started, so all of the data should still be there. My only question
is - how to recover it? Thanks a lot.
Click to expand...

1) Turn off windows'update.
2) Uninstall this/these last update(s).
3) Install same driver it used previously.
4) Check array.
5) Restore backup of system partition prior to the update
if #4 is not the desired result.
 
kony said:
1) Turn off windows'update.
Done.

2) Uninstall this/these last update(s).
Click to expand...

Not sure how to go about this - is there a list of updates that were
recently installed?
3) Install same driver it used previously.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure which driver I originally used - all I know is that I
setup the RAID array, Windows started up, it detected the drives,
automagically installed a suitable driver, and it worked. Is there
any way to find out what driver my drives used to use?
4) Check array.
5) Restore backup of system partition prior to the update
Click to expand...

How would I go about doing that?

I have one more question - what is this "Initialize" array option that
pops up? Will this make me lose the contents of my drives, like
"Format" would?
 
Not sure how to go about this - is there a list of updates that were
recently installed?
Click to expand...

I advise making a restorable backup of the system partition
before any windows changes.

In your windows folder there should be (providing you've set
the folder options to show hidden & operating system files)
several hidden folders. They might look something like
"$NtUninstallKB841356$" (only an example).

Within each should be the uninstall method, perhaps a BAT
file, or INF, and these folders can be seen to correspond to
the date.
I'm not sure which driver I originally used - all I know is that I
setup the RAID array, Windows started up, it detected the drives,
automagically installed a suitable driver, and it worked. Is there
any way to find out what driver my drives used to use?
Click to expand...


Well, I may not be too helpful then, I don't use window's
drivers, always opting to install latest from chipset
manufacturer instead. Hopefully uninstalling the update
will help. If not, maybe using the change driver wizard for
that device will show both (I don't know)?
How would I go about doing that?
Click to expand...

By making a backup of the partition prior to this, knowing
at that point how to restore it, and now doing so? In other
words, a specfic action you took previously to make backups
independent of windows.

I have one more question - what is this "Initialize" array option that
pops up? Will this make me lose the contents of my drives, like
"Format" would?
Click to expand...

Dont' know, read the documentation for the controller or
software. Initializing could indeed loose the data, though
I dont' know about your specific situation. It should be
avoided since the array worked prior to the update...
assuming the update and/or driver change was the cause of
this then the only thing you should be doing is reverting to
the prior state of the OS/driver.
 
kony said:
On 15 Oct 2004 21:19:30 -0700, (e-mail address removed) (Cyde Weys)
wrote:

I advise making a restorable backup of the system partition
before any windows changes.

In your windows folder there should be (providing you've set
the folder options to show hidden & operating system files)
several hidden folders. They might look something like
"$NtUninstallKB841356$" (only an example).

Within each should be the uninstall method, perhaps a BAT
file, or INF, and these folders can be seen to correspond to
the date.
Done.



Well, I may not be too helpful then, I don't use window's
drivers, always opting to install latest from chipset
manufacturer instead. Hopefully uninstalling the update
will help. If not, maybe using the change driver wizard for
that device will show both (I don't know)?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I should have paid more attention when installing my RAID array.
I should've inserted the CD that came with the RAID card at least and
let it use those drivers :-/ So far I've tried the drivers that came
with the card and the default WinXP Unknown Manufacturer - SCSI/RAID
Host Controller drivers - neither is recognizing my array as anything
other than something in need of formatting. So I used some other
driver to install the RAID array - presumably it should still be on my
system somewhere? How would I go about locating it? It's not showing
up in Update Driver -> Install from a specific list or location ->
Don't search. I will choose the driver to install.

Does anyone make some sort of RAID tool that will look at an array,
see how it is formatted, and figure out what driver it used
accordingly? This is very frustrating.
 
Yeah, I should have paid more attention when installing my RAID array.
I should've inserted the CD that came with the RAID card at least and
let it use those drivers :-/ So far I've tried the drivers that came
with the card and the default WinXP Unknown Manufacturer - SCSI/RAID
Host Controller drivers - neither is recognizing my array as anything
other than something in need of formatting. So I used some other
driver to install the RAID array - presumably it should still be on my
system somewhere? How would I go about locating it? It's not showing
up in Update Driver -> Install from a specific list or location ->
Don't search. I will choose the driver to install.

Does anyone make some sort of RAID tool that will look at an array,
see how it is formatted, and figure out what driver it used
accordingly? This is very frustrating.
Click to expand...

At this point I'd check the RAID bios to confirm that
they're assigned same as previously, just for the heck of
it. Then I'd head over to http://www.sysinternals.com
where they should have a DOS NTFS driver (read only on free
version) and see if the array shows up in DOS... I'm not
too familar with their DOS driver but am thinking that
removing windows from the equation might reveal if the array
is intact at all, as I would've expected a different driver
for same controller to still work, that maybe it's windows
doing something differently and/or broken but I have no idea
what that problem might be.
 
kony said:
At this point I'd check the RAID bios to confirm that
they're assigned same as previously, just for the heck of
it. Then I'd head over to http://www.sysinternals.com
where they should have a DOS NTFS driver (read only on free
version) and see if the array shows up in DOS... I'm not
too familar with their DOS driver but am thinking that
removing windows from the equation might reveal if the array
is intact at all, as I would've expected a different driver
for same controller to still work, that maybe it's windows
doing something differently and/or broken but I have no idea
what that problem might be.
Click to expand...

I don't know what to say ... I pressed F4 to view the RAID bios as it
was booting up, didn't change a thing as everything seemed to be in
order, and then let Windows boot normally ... and the array was good!
All data intact! Thanks so much for all the help, kony.

I still have one question though. Now that I have my array up and
running, how would I go about backing up my current driver so that it
will be much easier in the future to fix things if they go wrong
again?
 
I don't know what to say ... I pressed F4 to view the RAID bios as it
was booting up, didn't change a thing as everything seemed to be in
order, and then let Windows boot normally ... and the array was good!
All data intact! Thanks so much for all the help, kony.

I still have one question though. Now that I have my array up and
running, how would I go about backing up my current driver so that it
will be much easier in the future to fix things if they go wrong
again?
Click to expand...

Image the OS partition with something like Ghost or
Driveimage. Doing so you don't have to depend on windows
working, can simply restore prior known good config. Of
course the timeliness of the backups count, in some cases
it's good to have personal data stores like My Documents,
Email, etc, elsewhere instead of on the OS partition.
 
kony said:
Image the OS partition with something like Ghost or
Driveimage. Doing so you don't have to depend on windows
working, can simply restore prior known good config. Of
course the timeliness of the backups count, in some cases
it's good to have personal data stores like My Documents,
Email, etc, elsewhere instead of on the OS partition.
Click to expand...

My OS partition is 40GB large (a full hard drive, actually) - would I
be imaging it onto multiple DVDRs or something? I could easily store
the 40GB OS partition on my 2x250 RAID array, but that kind of defeats
the point :-)
 
My OS partition is 40GB large (a full hard drive, actually) - would I
be imaging it onto multiple DVDRs or something? I could easily store
the 40GB OS partition on my 2x250 RAID array, but that kind of defeats
the point :-)
Click to expand...

I suggest a smaller OS partition.
 
kony said:
I suggest a smaller OS partition.
Click to expand...

Yeah, in theory that would be a good idea - but in practice, I don't
have a smaller OS partition :-/

Next Windows install I'll be sure to do that though.
 
Yeah, in theory that would be a good idea - but in practice, I don't
have a smaller OS partition :-/

Next Windows install I'll be sure to do that though.
Click to expand...

Even with a large partition you don't have to fill it up
with data. If a 40GB partition had only 2GB of files on it,
that'd fit on 2 CDRs after Ghost/Driveimage/etc compressed
it. The issue there is the wasted space on the partition.

After you have this restorable backup of (whatever size, 2GB
of data was the example above) you should be able to delete
the partition, create a smaller sized partition (so long as
it's big enuff to store the data) and restore the backup
image to the "resized" partition, providing your backup
imaging app supports restoring to different sized
partitions. Ghost and Driveimage do, but don't know about
other apps.
 
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