RAID on Tyan S2865

I'm having an odd problem with the RAID on this device. Even though
now the arrays show Healthy, Windows still shows each of the drives
separately under Drive Management and My Computer.

The motherboard is Tyan S2865, and I have configured two SATA RAID-1
arrays in it. What happened was I noticed extra drives had appeared
under My Computer. When I looked at them, it seemed like they were the
#2 drives of the RAID arrays.

I went to the BIOS RAID setup, and I had three arrays listed. Two for
adapter one, one for adapter two. The two adapter ones showed as
Degraded, but the adapter two array showed Healthy status.

So I removed other one of the drives from adapter 1, and rejoined it
into the other adapter 1 array. And its status returned to Healthy. But
still, instead of two volumes, Windows sees four. And they're all
independent. If I put a file on one of the volumes, it won't get
replicated to its other array counterpart, and so on.

Any advice?

I think what I'll try next is taking out the #2 drives of each array,
wiping the drives completely, then try to rejoin them to their
respective arrays.

Or is this something I need to fix within Windows, as opposed to the
BIOS RAID setup?

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Mikko Peltoniemi wrote:
> I'm having an odd problem with the RAID on this device. Even though
> now the arrays show Healthy, Windows still shows each of the drives
> separately under Drive Management and My Computer.
>
> The motherboard is Tyan S2865, and I have configured two SATA RAID-1
> arrays in it. What happened was I noticed extra drives had appeared
> under My Computer. When I looked at them, it seemed like they were the
> #2 drives of the RAID arrays.
>
> I went to the BIOS RAID setup, and I had three arrays listed. Two for
> adapter one, one for adapter two. The two adapter ones showed as
> Degraded, but the adapter two array showed Healthy status.
>
> So I removed other one of the drives from adapter 1, and rejoined it
> into the other adapter 1 array. And its status returned to Healthy. But
> still, instead of two volumes, Windows sees four. And they're all
> independent. If I put a file on one of the volumes, it won't get
> replicated to its other array counterpart, and so on.
>
> Any advice?
>
> I think what I'll try next is taking out the #2 drives of each array,
> wiping the drives completely, then try to rejoin them to their
> respective arrays.
>
> Or is this something I need to fix within Windows, as opposed to the
> BIOS RAID setup?
>

When you look in Device Manager, what driver is being used for the
hard drives ? Is a RAID driver being used, or a default Windows
driver ? It almost sounds like an ordinary driver for hard drives
is being used, instead of a RAID driver.

Along with the RAID Windows driver, there should also be some
RAID Management software, which would allow monitoring the
arrays while in Windows. I expect the RAID Management software
will not run, if the wrong driver is being used.

A puzzle would be, why the device enumeration doesn't prevent
this from happening.

*******
Chipset is Nvidia Nforce4 Ultra, with four SATA ports and two
IDE connectors, supporting a total of eight storage devices.

This board uses the same chipset as the Tyan board.
http://support.asus.com.tw/download/...us&model=A8N-E

Just a guess,
Paul

Paul wrote:

> When you look in Device Manager, what driver is being used for the
> hard drives ? Is a RAID driver being used, or a default Windows
> driver ? It almost sounds like an ordinary driver for hard drives
> is being used, instead of a RAID driver.

I do have the NVIDIA nForce RAID Controller driver installed, but I
can't tell from the Device Manager if it's actually being used. Under
it is also the NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller drivers, two of
them.

> Along with the RAID Windows driver, there should also be some
> RAID Management software, which would allow monitoring the
> arrays while in Windows. I expect the RAID Management software
> will not run, if the wrong driver is being used.

You're right, there is the nVidia RAIDTOOL, downloaded from TYAN's
support site - when you try to run it, it just closes itself.
This would support your theory.

> A puzzle would be, why the device enumeration doesn't prevent
> this from happening.

Right. I tried reinstalling the driver downloaded from TYAN's
website. Although it looks like the driver hasn't been updated.

Long time waiting for boot... But there it is. Now it's only
two volumes in My Computer. And it looks like it's rebuilding the
arrays now.

The only problem is that the array manager software still crashes.
But at least the arrays seem to be OK now.

> Just a guess,
> Paul

A good one. Thanks, Paul.

--
My Flickr Page
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Mikko Peltoniemi wrote:

> The only problem is that the array manager software still crashes.

I wonder if removing the vanilla SATA drivers from device manager
would help here... I'm not sure if I want to try though, since
the array itself seems to be working fine now, which was the main
concern.

--
My Flickr Page
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25892068@N07/

Mikko Peltoniemi wrote:
> Mikko Peltoniemi wrote:
>
>> The only problem is that the array manager software still crashes.
>
> I wonder if removing the vanilla SATA drivers from device manager
> would help here... I'm not sure if I want to try though, since
> the array itself seems to be working fine now, which was the main
> concern.
>

If the RAID driver is in place, the RAID management software will
talk to that driver. Other drivers sitting on the boot drive,
unused, won't make a difference.

Paul