Dear all
I actually don’t know where to place my question, as all the other boards do not seem to fit for it.
Background:
I use a HP Z400 workstation with Intel based option rom still fashioned as MSM 8.6.0.1007 ICH10R/DO.
Up to now I had 2x 250GB disks attached and configured as RAID 0 (Stripe) with two Volumes
ID 0 System with 60GB
ID 1 Software with the rest of the usable space
Now I wanted to extend the Storage and basically replace the existing disks with 2x 1TB
I was able to add the first disk to the RAID Array but failed to detach one of the smaller disks,
since then the System doesn’t find the OS (Windows Server 2016) anymore.
I have already re-created the RAID setup, without luck to resolve the issue.
I assume my data should still be on the disks, but I don’t know how to manage to bring the system to boot.
Intel doesn’t provide much help and just refer to the discontinued products forum.
I would appreciate If you guys could help me to get the things working again.
Kind regards
Stefan
@smhswiss :
Hello Stefan,
welcome to the Win-RAID Forum!
Since your request may be interesting for other RAID users, I have moved it into this Sub-Forum about the topic “RAID”.
Now to your problem:
To be honest, I doubt, that you will able to boot into your previously used OS.
It was not a good idea to change the RAID0 array configuration without having done a backup of your important data.
This is what you may try:
1. Attach one of your 1 TB sized Disk Drives and do a fresh install of any Windows OS onto it.
2. Boot into the freshly installed OS and hope, that you get access to the most important data of your previously existing RAID0 array.
If you should succeed, I recommend to do the following:
1. Make a backup of the important data and store it somewhere outside.
2. Delete the existing RAID0 array from within the RAID Utility.
3. Remove the old RAID0 members and insert the desired future RAID0 array members.
4. Create the new RAID0 array.
5. Do a fresh install of the OS onto the just created RAID0 array.
6. Recover your old data.
Good luck!
Dieter (alias Fernando)
Hi Fernando
Meanwhile I’m a step further.
At several points / forums I’ve read about using the testdisk (https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk) to fix issues like that.
My problem here was that my emergency boot media (CD, USB stick) was not recognized at all, but this is fixed now.
The computer does now also see the System volume and even tries to boot, but there seems to be a consistency problem.
I’m now running repair mode from Windows Server 2016 setup media to see if this helps.
Status update:
After issuing: bootrec /FixMbr; bootrec /Fixboot and bootrec /repairBCD
Windows Server 2016 was now able to boot up
Partitions on second RAID Volume are still missing.
Repair work ongoing.
Status Update:
I was able to get the 2nd partition on the 2nd RAID volume back. The 1st partition was lost, no chance to restore it.
As matter of fact I also lost my Hyper-V environments stored on that server.
So - The disaster issue is resolved.
But the main question is still not answered: Why isn’t it possible to detach a physical disc from a RAID 0 setup (i.e. replace a small one with a bigger one)?
Kind regards
Stefan
Because - contrary to other RAID arrays - a RAID0 is not a „Redundant Array of Independent Disks“.
You can only break an existing RAID0 array and create a new one consisting of the same or other members, but not simply replace a member of an existing RAID0 array by another Disk Drive.