Rebuild Raid 1 after drive failure

[plainlanguage]

I have a SBS2003 server runing on an asus A8V - Deluxe MB and using the
ICH6 Intel SATA RAID with 2x Maxtor 160GB SATA drives in RAID 1 mode.
One of
the drives failed so I ordered up EXACTLY the same drive to repalce it
with. I popped the new disk in and then, after spending an hour
figuring out I needed to resetting the raid aray to "non-raid" in the
Intel BIOS so the system
would boot tried to use the Intel Application
Accelerator program to rebuild the RAID array. Problem is the new drive

I put in reports at 149GB and the old drive reports at 152GB and the
Intel application won't build an array onto a smaller drive.


As I said, these are the EXACT same drive from Maxtor (model 6Y160MO).
Any
ideas why they report as different sizes? I thougth maybe it had to
do with the fact I had to make the system drive a dynamic disk to
finish setting up Windows SBS (something to do with the hardware driver
for the
raid disk(s)).


Anyhow, I picked up a 200GB SATA to put in a rebuild the RAID to but
I'd like to use the 160GB if possible and not burn that extra 40GB of
space.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

-Eric


Thanks.


-Eric

 

[Mercury]

The second disk in a RAID 1 array must be >= in size to the first.
You were correct by ordering the "exact same" drive, but in this case Maxtor
has let you down. I suggest you complain as this is happening quite often,
demand your money back and demand a refund for the difference on costs of
the drives - they stuffed up - simple as that.

Bad news is you did not need to demote the RAID 1 - it does not make a lot
of difference at the end of the day - the reason why is that it would
(should) have auto-rebuilt as soon as the 2nd drive was installed and you
booted into windows.

Because this is H/W RAID, the types, shapes and sizes of partitions are
irrelevant. You already have all drivers present - now is *not* the time to
change anything at all.

Recreate the raid array using the old good along with the new to fix the
problem. From experience it takes about 1 minute per GB to establish the
RAID 1 or recreate it. I suggest strongly that you do this out of hourse and
disable all extra services for the duration of the rebuild. The build will
occur in Windows and does (experience on ICH5R) degrade Windows performance
significantly.

You will unfortunately not be able to use the remnant of disc space at the
end of the 2nd HDD as is in 'no mans land'.

I suggest you get a spare now of the same sizze as the 2nd dis and verify
its size.

If anything else goes amiss, report back

HTH

 

[plainlanguage]

Okay, here's a new twist, the drive I'm trying to repair the raid from
is a dynamic drive (windows SBS 2003). Intel Matrix Storage manager
say I can't build a Raid from a dynamic drive and to revert it back to
basic. MS documentation pretty clearly says this can't be done.

Anyone know a workaround other then to wipe and start over?

Thanks.

Eric

 

[Paul]

Okay, here's a new twist, the drive I'm trying to repair the raid from
is a dynamic drive (windows SBS 2003). Intel Matrix Storage manager
say I can't build a Raid from a dynamic drive and to revert it back to
basic. MS documentation pretty clearly says this can't be done.

Anyone know a workaround other then to wipe and start over?

Thanks.

Eric

Can you rebuild it at the BIOS level ?

The rebuild operation, should be a sector by sector copy
from one disk to the other.

Paul