I have an i7 computer with Windows 7 which originally had a 1TB drive and I installed a second 1TB drive and set them up as RAID-1 and all worked fine until one of the drives failed. I then decided to replace the drives with a 2TB so cloned the 1TB to a 2TB drive I had and again everything went fine and the drive boots and the entire 2TB are seen by the system. I installed a second 2TB drive however when opening Intel Rapid Storage Technology it sees both drives but there is no tab to create a RAID. I installed a third 1TB drive just to see if anything would change and then it has a create tab and options for creating a RAID but only with the 1TB drive I just installed and the second 2TB drive but does not show the original 2TB drive as available for the RAID and as soon as I remove the 1TB drive the option to create a RAID is no longer shown.
I would think this is likely an easy fix but am not sure how to proceed so would appreciate your assistance. I have attached a capture of both my drive controller as well as my drives.
The CPU details are not interesting regarding the RAID configuration. What I would rather like to know are a) the sort of your computer (desktop or mobile), b) its chipset and c) the sort of the Win7 installation (LEGACY or UEFI mode).
When you are talking about "RAID", you probably mean a "RAID array", because all your SATA devices, which are connected to an Intel SATA port, are automaticly running in "RAID" mode, when you have set the Intel SATA Controller to "RAID" mode. Questions: 1. Have you deleted the previously created RAID1 array before you started to created a new one? 2. What have you done with the 2TB sized HDDs, before you tried to create a RAID array with them? Have these drives been already used or were they new and untouched? 3. Are you sure, that all your 2 TB sized HDDs are connected to Intel SATA ports?
It is a desktop running legacy Windows 7 (at least I am pretty sure but perhaps you can tell me how to confirm that) and have attached a capture of the info from device manager, and yes you are correct in mentioning a RAID array.
Your questions 1 About deleting previous RAID array. When one of the two RAID-1 drives failed I simply carried on using the second drive without changing or doing anything to it and then purchased a new 2TB drive and used Acronis to clone the still working 1TB drive to the new 2TB drive.
2 As far as the two 2TB drives, one was new and untouched until I cloned it from the 1TB drive and when I started the Intel Rapid Storage that I previously used when I setup the 2-1TB drives there was no tab to create a RAID array like there had been when I setup the RAID array with the original 2-1TB drives. The second 2TB drive was not new and had some data on it but just assumed it would be overwritten once the RAID-1 was setup.
3. No I am not sure they are both connected to Intel SATA ports and simply thought all four ports were Intel SATA ports. In reviewing the capture I attached it would appear that perhaps port 2 is different from the other three ports and if that is the case that could well be the problem as the second drive is connected to port 2, but again am inexperienced with this so perhaps I am looking at the wrong info from the capture I attached. It would certainly explain why when I plugged in a third drive the “create” all of a sudden appeared and I had the option to create a RAID array.
I have a couple of other questions relating to setting up a RAID-1 array on my laptop as well but need to resolve this first so don’t want to take advantage by trying to cover several topics in one thread. I assume there are differences between setting up a RAID-1 array on a desktop considering you had asked if it was a desktop or laptop?
According to my experience with RAID arrays it is much better to break a not properly working RAID array and to create a new RAID array, when any of the RAID array member drives has gone faulty resp. is not usable anymore. Only this way the Intel RAID Utility will write the correct RAID array data onto the drives, which are members of the freshly created RAID array.
This was not a good idea. By cloning the content of a drive, which was and according its "Track-0" data still is a member of a RAID array, to another drive all data will be copied to the new drive, inclusive the previous RAID array data (2x1TB HDDs as RAID1 array), which are not valid anymore.
If you only have 4 SATA ports, they probably all are Intel ones, but to be sure, please look into the manual of your mainboard.
If I should be right regarding my suspicion, that your 2 TB sized HDDs got wrong RAID0 data, which are hidden within the "Track-0" of the HDDs and not removable by just doing a "normal" formatting, you may have to erase these data by a special method (e.g. by doing a low level formatting of the drives. Anywhay I recommend to connect all your HDD drives to Intel SATA ports running in RAID mode and delete all RAID arrays, which are still shown by the Intel RAID Utility. This way you should be able to use the 1 TB sized HDD for other purposes as non-member of a RAID array.
So if I am understanding correctly, what I should do is reconnect my 1 TB drive and remove it from the RAID array and then do a lower level format of my new 2 TB drive? How do I get the drive contents back onto the drive after the lower level format? If I clone the 2 TB drive to anther 2 TB drive it would seem I will have the same issue as I have now.
If the 2 TB drive is considered part of a RAID array because I cloned it from the 1TB that had been part of the array why does Intel’s RST not see the drive as a RAID drive? The RST program does not allow the creation of a RAID array but if I connect a third drive that has never been part of a RAID array RST immediately allows for the creation of a RAID array but doesn’t have that option with only the 2-2TB drives?
I also video taped the boot as I know there is one screen that comes up during the boot that is on the screen for less than a second and all but impossible to see what it says as it goes by that quickly. It shows the drives as both non RAID drives and Crtl-I takes you to the utility that creates a RAID drive. I didn’t use it to create a RAID drive as I wasn’t sure if it would delete all of the data on the drive or not or whether this would be the solution to my problem so would appreciate your advice on how to proceed.
The only information I get there is, that the mainboard has 4 SATA ports, but the SATA Controller’s manufacturer is not mentioned. Nevertheless I think, that all of them are Intel ports.
Why should it be not possible to copy the data from the 1 TB HDD to a 2 TB HDD? Important question: Where is your system drive C: containing the OS and the boot sector? Is it inside or outside the RAID1 array?
I am not sure, but I suspect, that this is caused by the wrong hidden RAID1 data, which had been cloned from the 2x1 TB RAID1 members.
You can hit CTRL+I and enter the LEGACY mode RAID Utility without any problems. Maybe you can see more this way.
According to my knowledge it would be better to have the system drive with the OS outside a RAID1 array, but this is your decision.
I am not 100% sure about that, because I have never created a RAID1 array, but according to my knowledge the data of the first drive will just be mirrored to the second one. Even the breaking of an already existing RAID1 array should not end with a complete data loss as with a RAID0 array. Nevertheless I recommend to do a backup of your data, before you are breaking or creating the RAID1 array from within the Intel RAID Utility.
Well I’ll do a little more experimenting after doing a complete backup, but have another question if you don’t mind.
I would also like to setup a RAID-1 array on my laptop which has space for two drives, and have installed a second drive, same model as the original 1TB drive. I checked with Intel and they confirmed the chipset supports RAID however the BIOS does not have a setting for RAID and in addition it uses UEFI so unsure if there is a way to implement RAID. There doesn’t appear to be any options to select during the bootup like there is on my desktop where I can select CRTL-I. I have run Intel’s RST but it is the same as my desktop in that it doesn’t offer a create option.
