Intel On-Board RAID 1 Failed Array Member Replacement Method

A system we have on our bench has some serious gremlins working in it.

We have since replaced the original 150GB Raptors with 150GB VelociRaptors, we replaced the RAM, and we replaced the motherboard.

The replacement of the Raptors and then a subsequent OS install served to really stabilize the system. There were no more spontaneous reboots happening every couple or three random hours.

But, the system would still spontaneously reboot every two or three days. We have had the full Season 2 of 24 run through the box alternating with a local radio station for good measure. All multimedia runs through Windows Media Center on Windows Vista Ultimate with a Hauppauge PCI-E multimedia card providing the radio and a Radeon HD3870 providing the DVD decoding. A SoundBlaster X-Fi rounds out the configuration.

The onboard Intel Matrix Storage BIOS would not let us replace the defective hard drive no matter what methodology we tried.

A call into Intel support provided the guidance we needed to get things working as they should.

We had to delete the RAID 1 set the last good array member was on. From there, we booted into Windows Vista and needed to start the Intel Matrix Storage Console.

In the Console, we needed to switch to advanced mode, then select Create RAID Volume from Existing Hard Drive.

We chose to create a RAID 1 array.

The next step, which is choosing the source drive for the array, is critical. Since the failed drive was on Port 0, we knew that the drive on Port 1 need to be the source drive.

Once we selected the source and destination drives we let the Migration process run. It took about 45 minutes for it to complete. We then did a reboot to make sure that the OS was still good to go.

Hopefully the flaky behaviour we have seen so far will disappear now that one of the array members has outright failed … hopefully!

We will run Season 3 of 24 through the machine, balancing that with some local radio station tunes to make sure. :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer