Problem Creating RAID 1 - Page 2

idata · ‎04-17-2009

I have an Intel(R) ICH7R/DH SATA RAID Controller on an HP box running Vista Ultimate. The PC has three hard drives; Two (2) 320 GB Seagate drives (with the first of the two being the system drive), plus a 700 GB drive used for backups. I have made sure that the controller is set for "RAID" in BIOS (versus IDE or AHCI). The non-system 320 GB drive (which is the one I want to use when mirroring the system drive) currently has some backup data. Both 320 GB drives are marked as Basic drives in Disk Manager. I have downloaded and installed Intel Matrix Storage Console version 8.8.

The Problem. When I try to Create RAID volume From Existing Hard Drive (pointing to the first 320 GB drive as the source, and to the second 320 GB drive as the destination), the "Specify Volume Size" screen is always disabled, and I always get a "Volume creation failed" message after a delay of about 30 seconds. In addition, the second 320 GB destination drive is no longer visible in Windows Explorer after attempting to do this (but shows up again after a reboot).

Does anyone have any idea where I am going wrong here? Please let me know if additional info is needed.

Thanks!

Dan

idata · ‎04-29-2010

See other posts. I think the only solution is to start from scratch, it won't allow you to do this with a drive that has data on it.

I didn't want to go to that trouble for minimal performance improvement. According to what I've heard the speed goes up the more drives that are involved. But the converse is that reliability goes down. I decided it wasn't worth it and gave up. One of these days when SSD are cheaper I'll go that route.

idata · ‎04-17-2009

Also, Elizabeth, the destination drive DOES have a Vista backup of the system drive. That's really all it has on it.

idata · ‎01-17-2010

Try disabling one or all of the following if installed: Norton Ghost (has to be stopped in services), Acronis True Image (also in services), antivirus, firewall.

In my case antivirus was AVG and firewall Zone Alarm (I have disabled my network adapter before that, don't wanna catch flu, do ya )

After that I have successfully created RAID 1 array containing my system drive and same size second drive.

I have Intel Rapid Storage Technology 9.5.0.1037 whql installed but I guess it should be the same story with Intel Matrix Storage Manager 8.9.

idata · ‎04-17-2010

I am having the exact same issue and I think I know the problem, but don't know how to fix it. I have two identical SATA hard drives connected to the ICH10R chipset. The controller is already running in RAID mode; I enabled this in the BIOS. When I launch the Intel Matrix Storage Console and look at the information about the two drives, they are both correctly listed as having a capacity of 153.3 GB. It's when I try to try to create a RAID array from an existing drive that I run into problems. I am trying to create a simple RAID 1 mirror array. I am able to select the source drive and member drive. On the screen after that, I receive a message stating the the Minimum Volume Size is 154.9 GB. That's 1.6 GB larger than either the source drive or the member drive! How is that possible? I have even modified the source drive partitions to create over 1 GB of unallocated space on the source drive and this doesn't change anything. It still says that the minimum volume size is 154.9 GB. How is minimum volume size calculated? How can the Matrix Console be calculating a Minimum Volume Size that is 1.6 GB larger than any drive in the system??

Thanks for any help that can be provided.

idata · ‎04-18-2010

I had exactly the same problem with an old Dell Dimension 8400. I was using Storage Manager Version 7. Freeing space at the end of the drive didn't help.

Now I tried with the old Application Accelerator Version 4.5 and it works.

idata · ‎04-18-2010

Thanks for the reply. I was actually considering reinstalling Application Accelerator (which I uninstalled to add Matrix Storage), but I wasn't sure it was worth the effort. Since it worked for you, I'll give it a try and let you know the results.

idata · ‎04-25-2010

When I looked into it, the Application Accelerator does not support my RAID controller (ICH10R). I tried going to the newest Intel application: Rapid Storage Technology. I uninstalled the Matrix Storage Solution and installed Rapid Storage Technology. I still had the same problem, it would not create the RAID array on an identical hard drive. Which RAID controller do you have on your Dell? Does the old Application Accelerator that worked for you "officially" support the RAID controller that your Dell has?

idata · ‎06-02-2010

Thanks to everyone who posted in this thread, especially the guy who suggested it was firewall or anti-virus software causing the problem.

We were pulling our hair out but then we tried uninstalling NOD (anti-virus software) and all of a sudden the weird time out and "unknown error" has gone, and the migration works now! What's strange is that some machines in the office didn't require us to do this, but some machines did. (we were migrating raid 0s or raid 1s to raid 5s)

idata · ‎09-05-2010

Deactivating ESET NOD32 antivirus helped me as well (didn't have to uninstall it: just disable the service and reboot). After this, the "unknown error" while trying to create a RAID volume disappeared.

idata · ‎07-25-2010

I was getting unable to create volume error message from recreating Raid 1 from matrix storage console 5.5. The new drive will disappear from Windows Computer Disk Management. Window won't reboot, and it had to be hard rebooted. After hours of trail and error the only different that I made before it worked, was not to change the volume name/label and had it as Volume_0000. I was renaming to something else and may be it didn't take space.....