just a little back-ground info and how someone solved the problem I currently have (but haven't had time to test out the solution yet). I nutshell. During file transfer suddenly your HD dissappears just like that. And it won't come back with the next boot. I think you physically have to switch wires/HDDs and such. My problem started when I changed an existing SATA drive to a larger one.
Quote:I had the same issue and I believe I figured it out. I had the same problem myself: Switch on PC, both disks are fine. After a little while, my second disk (d-drive) "dissappears". It drove me nuts.
I have an Asus P5K mobo. After digging deep into windows disk manager, BIOS, etc. I decided to open up my PC and switch the connections of the disks on the mobo to see if that would help. Then when I looked into the manual of the mobo I noticed a remark that the System disk MUST be on SATA 1 or 2 and the Data disk MUST be on SATA 3 or 4. I followed this instruction and everything works just fine again. Hope this helps.
And I also can narrow down the problem to concern to Vista / 7 with SATA II generation drives. Never had any problems with XP, multiple HDDs, or the exact same gear with older and smaller SATA I generation HDD. If you google you'll find that I ain't the only one. The problem is one annoying one I truly think will be solved if you just "group" windows HDD and DVD-drive to SATA 1 and SATA 2 ports and put the rest of your HDDs to SATA ports 3 and 4 if you have them.
But my plea for help/knowledge is about RAID and RAID 1 specifically. I dug up by googling that you can't put hardware RAID to an existing system. You need to reinstall the Win 7. Which is out of the question, so anyone here know if you can do a SW RAID and specifically can you configure the said RAID 1 concern only HDDs you specify?
I mean I want to do like this: HDD 1 = Win 7 (NO RAIDing for this), HDD 2 & 3 = RAID 1. I.e. I want to RAID my photo HDDs only. Can you do mixed systems like this?
My mobo is a MSI P67A-C45 which has SATA 1 & 2 capable of SATA III transfer level (the ports are unused atm) and SATA 3-6 SATA II levels (they all are currently in use) Even more interesting is that I might want to put the said RAID system to ports 1 and 2.
I've had the same trouble with a striping array kapoofing every now and then. Turned out to be one of the SATA cables Asus had supplied wasn't quite up to spec... replacing the data cables on both the disks in the array sorted the issue for me.
The Vista issue you reference isn't a Vista/7 issue, but a driver issue. Check for updated drivers at the mainboard vendor's driver website.
Quote:But my plea for help/knowledge is about RAID and RAID 1 specifically. I dug up by googling that you can't put hardware RAID to an existing system. You need to reinstall the Win 7. Which is out of the question, so anyone here know if you can do a SW RAID and specifically can you configure the said RAID 1 concern only HDDs you specify?
Bullcrap, especially if you intend to boot from a non-RAID drive. It's true that all data on the disks you plan to make an array out of will be destroyed, but Windows should pick up the new hardware just fine. Adding hardware RAID to a system involves putting a controller for such in one - most mainboards these days have such a controller onboard. Just make sure you tell it to boot from the non-SATA drive first instead of trying to boot from RAID.
Software RAID isn't something I would advise using.
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' Wrote:I've had the same trouble with a striping array kapoofing every now and then. Turned out to be one of the SATA cables Asus had supplied wasn't quite up to spec... replacing the data cables on both the disks in the array sorted the issue for me.
The Vista issue you reference isn't a Vista/7 issue, but a driver issue. Check for updated drivers at the mainboard vendor's driver website.
Bullcrap, especially if you intend to boot from a non-RAID drive. It's true that all data on the disks you plan to make an array out of will be destroyed, but Windows should pick up the new hardware just fine. Adding hardware RAID to a system involves putting a controller for such in one - most mainboards these days have such a controller onboard. Just make sure you tell it to boot from the non-SATA drive first instead of trying to boot from RAID.
Software RAID isn't something I would advise using.
I have hard time believing it's a driver issue since I got the latest (it was the first thing I actually did. Updated the SATA drivers) and people have had the same disappearing HDD problem with diverse mobos. The only common thing I managed to gather was Vista / 7 and my own personal experience that an older SATA I worked just fine for months since I have had this mobo/setup. I thought I had a faulty Western Digital HDD, but yesterday I changed that 1TB WD -> 1TB Samsung and I after I was happy that the new Samsung was "working" I was thrilled. But as soon as I started copying my 300GB of photos from my C to E (the brand new Samsung) the same problem came as with the previous "broken" HDD (teh WD HDD was like 2 weeks old). First the transfer rate drops abysmally and then it just informs rather cheerily that the target drive does not exist anymore. And true that since Win 7 does not show it anymore (not is disk manager or device manager or anywhere). BIOS shows it being present though. But like I said. I have try grouping the HDDs tonight if I have time.
Thanks for the info about the RAID. I'm not going to go through Win 7 re-install though, so I need more info about the SW RAID. If I understood you correctly. Might have read your reply wrong too. The impression I got browsing the web is that you just have to do a reinstall if you want to roll with the hardware controller RAID. But maybe it's people who want to RAID their OS disks.
Umm. Often there is a lot of confusion about RAID. First of all most motherboards that claim to have RAID are simply so-called "fakeRAID" solutions: all the "magic" is mostly done in software with all processing offloaded to main processor, whereas true hardware RAID solutions have their own processor and memory. Some operating systems can do RAID themselves (mdadm in Linux for instance), and there is nothing wrong with that really. I've been using purely software implementations, fakeRAID as well as real hardware RAID configurations, they all have their pros and cons, deciding which one to use is a matter of what you're trying to achieve with RAID, what are your needs and what your budget is.
So, my understanding is that you're doing fakeRAID (judging by configuring it in your motherboard BIOS). Onboard Intel RST isn't bad though, I rarely had problems with it, but if you'd like to use it I would suggest to check for BIOS updates first. Also don't forget to update RST drivers too (linky). I would also suggest to check SMART data of your hard drives in array. It may help to determine if there is a problem with your hard drives and what problem it is. If amount of reallocated sectors is above zero you might want to get yourself a new hard drive. Though some lived just fine for years and years, but typically it indicates there is a problem with your hard drive. Other parameters, like read error rate, might point out at bad cables.
If you prefer purely software implementation in windows software RAID is done in disk management utility. Though again it will result in reinstallation.
I can totally confirm that the grouping of the HDDs solved my problem. That is if you put your OS HDD to Sata 1 and DVD to sata 2 then it does not matter where you put the rest of the HDDs. This makes OS letter to C, DVD to D, HDD2 to E and so forth. If you dislike that your DVD is D then you can fool the system a bit. Just disconnect the cable for DVD and boot to Win and change the drive letters to what you want. Reboot so that the changes take effect. Shut down, reconnect the DVD cable and boot. Then your DVD letter is the first available letter.
My holidays started today and frankly I'm bit fed up with computer and doing maintenance to them for now. I have setup 2 comps and taken care of 2 more within a month and enough is enough. I'll leave the RAID to a back burner but keep it in mind.
