pc-tecky Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 :'( So I updated my BIOS, and that made my mass storage drive (raid 5) disappear in windows 7 x64. Made some minor changes in the BIOS and the drive was back. Updated the drivers and the utility and now the drive is gone again. Is AMD's RAID hardware or software based? Is there a way that I can restore the contents of this raid 5 drive or its configuration?? Is all now lost? (hard drives have not been formatted yet) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 It's been a long time since I ran anything RAID on any of my systems. Most RAID in Windows was "fake RAID" (software based). I'm so long out of this that I can't even begin to offer you advice, pc-tecky. Please stand by for some of the other more MS Win oriented members here to comment. Luck! ~Eric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pc-tecky Posted February 17, 2012 Author Share Posted February 17, 2012 I was afraid of that. My thinking is that its hybrid hardware/software. The sad part is the lack of warnings for possible loss of data and/or configuration(s). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 Did you build this system yourself? Did you install Windows initially? If so, you would have had to insert a RAID driver CD sometime very early on in the MS Win installation. I seem to remember in XP, the installation asked you to key in F6 if you needed to install RAID software. If you did this, then you're definitely running fake RAID. Not that there's anything wrong with fake RAID, except that I think it's limited to RAID 0 and 1 only. I could be wrong about that. Like I said, it's been a while. Pure hardware RAID on home systems was pretty rare back when I was piddling around with Windows systems in '05 and previous to that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Hardware-based_RAID P.S. And why O' why did you upgrade your BIOS? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pc-tecky Posted February 27, 2012 Author Share Posted February 27, 2012 (edited) Why? Because of this little update utility flagged it as having an update. And it had been six months since I initially build the machine. (Other home projects came up.) So I was activating windows and updating the drivers, etc. The new feature is that AMD's RAIDXpert software is now flashing a warning every 30 seconds about "Task 20 timeout on disk (Port 3, Target ID 1) at LBA 0x0#(some semi-random 7 character hex number)# (Length+0x40)". There appear to be several posts (one main one at HP) but nothing specific and perhaps related to a power supply issue too (not enough power for the HDDs). Maybe even a bad build of the software. Did I answer all of the questions? Custom home built, Nvidia 465 GTX, 16GB, Phenom II 1090t, windows 7 x64 pro, 120 GB SSD, 1TB local storage, 3x3TB in raid 5 (yields ~6 TB) mass storage on MSI 890FXA-GD70 mobo w/ 760W (modular) PC Power & Cooling. Edited February 27, 2012 by pc-tecky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 Hmm... very nice machine. I'm jealous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burninbush Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 ... 1TB local storage, 3x3TB in raid 5 (yields ~6 TB) mass storage ... Passing by and saw this question -- I don't have an answer to whatever question you were asking, but in particular I don't understand your size computation above. Wouldn't a real hardware RAID5 require 5 hard disks? And how did the other ~3TB get used up? And finally for anybody with that much disk storage, what is the plan to back it up? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted February 28, 2012 Share Posted February 28, 2012 RAID 5 requires three disks. Counterintuitive, I know. RAID 5 has a two disks striped with a parity disk. Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tushman Posted February 28, 2012 Share Posted February 28, 2012 (edited) Wouldn't a real hardware RAID5 require 5 hard disks? And how did the other ~3TB get used up? The 5 in RAID 5 does not mean 5 hard drives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_5#RAID_5 :'( So I updated my BIOS, and that made my mass storage drive (raid 5) disappear in windows 7 x64. Made some minor changes in the BIOS and the drive was back. Updated the drivers and the utility and now the drive is gone again. Is AMD's RAID hardware or software based? Is there a way that I can restore the contents of this raid 5 drive or its configuration?? Is all now lost? (hard drives have not been formatted yet) pc-tecky, before you flashed your BIOS - did you bother writing down all your settings? Sometimes when you flash the BIOS, depending on the motherboard, this will often reset the settings back to default. I would suggest that you look in the settings and verify if RAID has been enabled after the flashing process. Edited February 28, 2012 by Tushman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted February 28, 2012 Share Posted February 28, 2012 Why are you asking about, Is AMD's RAID hardware or software based? When you have a , MSI 890FXA-GD70 mobo ?? Have you made sure that the three sata sockets that you use for the Raid 5 are enabled for Raid in the Bios ? Have you tried reinstalling your mobo Raid utilities/drivers since the bios update ? Can you not roll back your bios using the tools provided ? M-Flash Compared to common mainboard which need extra BIOS chips, MSI’s M-Flash has a double advantage which doesn’t need extra components and secondly, all your BIOS data will be saved in the USB drive. The stored data does not only have backup and upgrade function, moreover it can also be seen as a portable BIOS chip which is actually able to boot up your PC. Features - Backup/Restore Your BIOS to/from Any USB Flash Disk - Avoid Unnecessary Repair Due to Accident Failures During The Upgrading Process - Earn more BIOS Lifespan by Reducing Unnecessary Rewriting Process Live Update 5 MSI Live Update 5 is a powerful and useful application for updating the latest BIOS and Drivers, saving you time and lowers the risk of updating. End-users can install and run the Live Update 5 software on their computers with the companion CD or downloading the app from the MSI website. Features - Automatically Detect the BIOS/Driver/VGA/Utility Update - Support Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/7 32/64bit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burninbush Posted February 28, 2012 Share Posted February 28, 2012 RAID 5 requires three disks. Counterintuitive, I know. RAID 5 has a two disks striped with a parity disk. Adam +++++++++++++++++ Yeah, so I see. Also explains where the 3tb got lost. But this was not always the case; the first RAID 5 arrays I ever saw were at work in the late 1990's -- and those required 5 physical drives. We sold an option to customers that had 5 full-height 9.1gb scsi drives in a box, very expensive. Also very unreliable. Even now, if you google "RAID 5 configuration" many of the articles are about 5-drive assemblies. For example http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/RAID. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tushman Posted February 29, 2012 Share Posted February 29, 2012 Can you not roll back your bios using the tools provided ? The OP should not have to roll back to a previous BIOS version just to get RAID working again. What is the whole point of flashing the BIOS - to get upgrades/new features/address bugs in the current BIOS! Like I told the OP in my last post - he needs to go back to the RAID menu options and make sure that RAID has been enabled for the SATA drives. More than likely when he flashed his BIOS, it set his settings back to default. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pc-tecky Posted February 29, 2012 Author Share Posted February 29, 2012 (edited) A recap: Yes, MSI Live Update is installed and that's what I used. So I had a minor issue after updating the BIOS, but was quickly resolved when reviewing the settings in BIOS (changed the SATA options back to RAID from the choices of Legacy, AHCI, or RAID). I should have stopped here. When the RAID drivers and the utility for the OS were updated, all broke loose and was lost. Thus my question, with the MSI 890FXA-GD70 mobo, is the AMD's RAID option on the 8xx (apparently 7xx and 9xx too) south bridge chip truly hardware based, software based, or some hybrid? In other words what does most of the work, the CPU with software or the hardware chip with the proper drivers? Why did I loose my RAID 5 configuration (and the data) when installing the new drivers?? Ideally the configuration information should have remained untouched. Roll-back/system restore disabled as Win7 sits on SSD. Moved page file, temp, users, etc. to 1 TB drive. I wouldn't mind system restore if I could place it where I want it. First time playing with RAID. P.S. - So how does $50/TB sound? Now its $130/TB or so. I laughed when a few months later I saw $400+ for the 3TB drives. My wife doesn't think I'm so crazy now. Edited February 29, 2012 by pc-tecky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted February 29, 2012 Share Posted February 29, 2012 The OP should not have to roll back to a previous BIOS version just to get RAID working again. What is the whole point of flashing the BIOS - to get upgrades/new features/address bugs in the current BIOS! Like I told the OP in my last post - he needs to go back to the RAID menu options and make sure that RAID has been enabled for the SATA drives. More than likely when he flashed his BIOS, it set his settings back to default. Have you made sure that the three sata sockets that you use for the Raid 5 are enabled for Raid in the Bios ? That was my second question. As far as updating bios goes I was under the impression that it was best practice to only update if the newer bios were offering some new features for your particular set up. As an example there are bios updates for my mobo but they only offer features for inclusion of newer cpu's than mine so I have not updated. Looks like the problem is solved My bad as well, of course the 890FX is a AMD chip and as far as I know it is a software raid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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