0xA0050053 error while trying to setup a Raid 1

[Atfinger]

 

Hello everyone.

I had two RAID 1 setups on my computer, one on an SSD for the operating system and another on an HDD for data.

One SSD started to show problems, so I decided to replace both drives with larger ones.

I followed the instructions from the link https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005837.html and everything went smoothly until step 18, when the error 0xA0050053 occurred and the step could not be completed.

I saw that the same error was addressed in a previous post here in the community, but since that thread was closed, I'm opening a new question.

I am attaching screenshots of the error and the SSU report.

In response to the questions asked on 08-28-2024 in that thread, I inform:
2 – The disk that I am trying to create the RAID 1 contains the Windows installation;
3 – It is a custom PC (in my case);
5 – Despite the final message stating that the RAID 1 creation was successful, it was not created, and the secondary disk shows a message to "clear metadata."

Thank you for your attention.

[RandyT_Intel]

Hello Atfinger,

Thank you for sharing the system report and screenshots. I have reviewed the steps you followed, and it seems we are encountering issues completing the RAID setup. The error code 0xA0050053 in a RAID 1 setup typically indicates an unknown error occurred during the operation, preventing it from completing successfully.

There are several factors that could be causing this error:

• Outdated or incompatible drivers and firmware: These can often lead to such issues.
• Compatibility issues: There might be an issue with the compatibility of the drives or the RAID controller.
• Metadata on the drives: Based on your description, it appears that the disk shows clear metadata, which means existing metadata on the drives might need to be cleared before creating a new RAID volume.

We have an article on how to clear the metadata, but I need to confirm first if we can apply this method to this particular error when setting up RAID 1. I will attach the article for your reference for the meantime. Due to the complexity of your technical concern, I need to verify and confirm these steps internally before proceeding.

How to Clear Metadata Using Intel® RSTCLI with Intel®...

Please give me some time to prepare a troubleshooting guide. I appreciate your patience and understanding.

Thank you for your cooperation

Best regards, 

Randy T. 

Intel Customer Support Technician 

[Atfinger]

Hello RandyT,

Thank you for your attention in resolving my issue with the IRST system.

I will be awaiting your guidance so I can reestablish the RAID 1 of my SSD drive.

Thanks

[RandyT_Intel]

Hello Atfinger,

May I confirm if you have already completed a backup?

You may try to rebuild RAID 1 in the BIOS UEFI environment. Once there, load the image you created on the RAID drive. Additionally, I wanted to confirm the current status of RAID 1, as you mentioned that the error message appears only on the second drive.

Before proceeding with these steps, please ensure that you back up all important data/image. I will attach an article that you can follow for rebuilding RAID 1.

Why Does the RAID 1 Fail after Replacing One Defective Disk?

How to Rebuild the RAID1 Volume

Let me know if this works.

Randy T. 

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Atfinger]

Hello Randy,

Currently, my operating system disk is in a non-RAID configuration, so I can't rebuild it.

The guidance to set the disk as non-RAID is item 9 in the link https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005837.html . This was necessary because I was replacing the disks with larger ones and needed to change the partition sizes (item 14 in the link).

I have already transferred the data to the larger disk and am running the OS from a single disk.

As I mentioned in my first message, the error occurred during steps 17-18 of the instructions in the link, when I was trying to (re)create the RAID1 structure.

[RandyT_Intel]

Hello Atfinger,

Allow me to further research this matter, and I will get back to you with alternative solutions as soon as I have more information.

Thank you for your patience.

Randy T. 

Intel Customer Support Technician

[RandyT_Intel]

Hello Atfinger,

We are currently investigating your recent inquiry and need some additional information to proceed further. Could you please help us clarify the following points?

• You mentioned having two RAID 1 setups on your computer: one on an SSD for the operating system and another on an HDD for data. Based on the System Support Utility (SSU) report, we see the following: WD Green 2.5 240 GB with the OS: This drive does not appear to be in a RAID 1 configuration and seems to be a single drive. Could you please confirm if this is correct?

• 1 TB RAID 1 volume (2 HDDs): Will this setup remain unchanged, or are there any modifications planned?

1. Additionally, are you planning to convert the OS drive to a RAID 1 configuration?
2. Do you have backups of your data from both the OS drive and the 1 TB RAID 1 volume?
3. You mentioned seeing a similar error addressed in a previous community post. Could you provide us with the link to that thread so we can correlate it with your current issue?

Your prompt response will help us resolve your issue more efficiently. Thank you for your cooperation.

Randy T. 

Intel Customer Support Technician 

[Atfinger]

Hello Randy,

I HAD two RAID 1 setup, one with a 120GB SSD (containing the OS) and one with a 1TB HDD (with the data). One of the SSDs (120GB) stopped working without any prior warning, so I decided to replace that setup with 240GB SSDs (which I expected to work in RAID 1, just like the previous ones).

I followed the steps from the Intel link (which I’ve already posted here), and after resizing the partitions to use the full volume of the new disk (and not just the 120GB of the old disk), the error occurred when I tried to re-establish the RAID 1 structure between the two 240GB disks using the IRST software.

I generated the SSU report after all the events, which is why the 240GB disk is not in RAID 1 (which was my original intention if the error hadn’t happened) and the operating system is running only on that disk.

Regarding your follow-up questions:

I do not intend to alter the RAID 1 structure of the 1TB HDDs, nor transfer the operating system to those disks.
I don’t have a backup of the 1TB disk, but I can make one of the 240GB disk.

The post with the same error, which I mentioned in the ticket, is at this link: https://community.intel.com/t5/Rapid-Storage-Technology/Error-0xA0050053-while-trying-to-setup-a-Raid-1/m-p/1618916

To summarize everything, I have a 240GB SSD in a single disk setup simply because of the error I reported, which prevented me from restoring the previous configuration I had. My goal has always been to have the OS in RAID 1 (240GB SSD) and the data in RAID 1 (1TB HDD).

[RandyT_Intel]

Hello Atfinger,

Thank you for clarifying everything. I will now forward this information internally. I will get back to you once I have the recommendation from our team. Kindly give us some time to review and assess this data and check the link you provided.

Thank you for your patience.

Randy T. 

Intel Customer Support Technician 

[Teeter02]

Randy,

It has been 2 months+ since you said you'd get back and no response.  I'm having the exact same problem as @Atfinger and it is exactly for the same reason.  I upgraded hard drives and followed the very direct guidance here:

Move a RAID 1 Volume to Larger Hard Drive

...on moving a RAID 1 Windows 10 boot volume to larger hard drives without data loss, and I'm getting the same exact error (0xA0050053) when I try and create the RAID1 again with new, larger drives from a single drive.  And to finish the details, once that error occurs and the creation of the RAID fails in the Intel RST GUI, metadata is written onto the blank (2nd) drive marking it (in the boot RAID Ctrl-I screen) as "Marked for RAID", so that you must "Clear metadata" in order to try and use it to build a RAID1 again.  But the original system drive that was to be used as the source of data to build the RAID from (in the boot RAID Ctrl-I screen) is marked as a "Non-RAID Drive" - so it appears that the original system drive is not allowing Intel RST to write the metadata necessary to mark it as one of the two new RAID1 drives.  I'm wondering if it is possible that there is a missing system partition on the source system drive that Intel would use to write this metadata to that prevents the proper instantiation of the RAID1 metadata on the system drive.

Anyway, please help.

- Blaise

[Teeter02]

Randy et al:

Ok.  I figured this one out myself.  Turns out my initial suspicion was correct.  The partitions on my original system drive (specifically the last partition) was not able to be resized by the Intel RST tool to create the proper RAID metadata which was why the creation of the RAID1 was failing on the system drive.  So, here's what I did:

1.  I realized I wasn't running the latest version of Intel RST so I upgraded to the latest - v18.1.1041.0 as I'm writing this - and rebooted.

2.  I then retried creating the RAID1 before changing anything with partitions on the original system drive that I suspected was causing the failure before.  However, the newer version of RST actually gave me a more substantive error explanation.  It said that it failed specifically "because it couldn't resize the last partition on the system drive".  (Above - I thought maybe it was the first partition that was the problem - and creating an initial system reserved partition and also leaving unallocated space at the beginning of the drive had no effect on fixing RST's ability to create the RAID.  But it turns out Intel RST RAID metadata is actually written to the end of the drive - so the last partition was the issue.)

3.  I used MiniTool Partition Wizard to move my "Windows RE tools" and "Recovery Image" partitions a leave ~90MB of unallocated space at the end of the system drive - hopefully so that RST could use that to do what it needed to do, write the RAID metadata, and create the RAID1.

4.  Turns out step #3 was the key.  Once I made the unallocated space at the end of the drive, RST happily created the RAID1, right inside Windows and now I have full data protection again with bigger drives and with no loss of my boot drive.  (It is likely that the update of RST in step #1 above was not necessary, if I'd have known to create the unallocated space at the end of the drive.  But having the latest version of the RST tool gave me the proper context to solve the problem when it gave me much more detail as to why the RAID creation was actually failing.)

Hopefully this helps @Atfinger and anyone else who experiences this particular issue when following Intel's instructions on expanding the size of a RAID1 drive per the method listed at this link:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005837.html

Thanks,

Teeter

[RandyT_Intel]

Hello Atfinger,

@Teeter02 I wanted to take a moment to express our sincere gratitude for your valuable contribution to the case. Your insights and expertise have been incredibly helpful to our team.

Upon reviewing your input, we noticed that the step you mentioned in step 3 aligns closely with step #14 of our Knowledge Base article titled " Move a RAID 1 Volume to Larger Hard Drive" This correlation has been instrumental in enhancing our understanding and approach to the issue at hand.

Regards,

Randy T. 

Intel Customer Support Technician 

[RandyT_Intel]

Hello Atfinger,

Have you had a chance to review my previous update about your concern? If you have any questions or need more information, please feel free to reach out. I'm here to help!

Regards,

Randy T. 

Intel Customer Support Technician 

[Atfinger]

Hello Randy,

I saw the solution found by @Teeter02; however, I haven’t been able to apply it yet because I need to back up my entire disk to ensure I don’t lose any data when changing the partition sizes (after all, I would prefer the disk to be in RAID1 as the data is important).

As soon as I apply the suggested solution, I will get back to you to confirm if it was effective in resolving the issue.

In any case, I believe it would be appropriate to revise the text in step #14 of the tutorial " Move a RAID 1 Volume to Larger Hard Drive " to indicate that it is not desirable to "resize the drive partition so that it uses the entire capacity of the drive," since space is needed for the RAID metadata on the disk.

Thank you for your attention, and I will get back to you once I have successfully backed up and implemented the suggested solution.

Regards.

[RandyT_Intel]

Hello Atfinger,

Thank you for the update. I will continue to monitor this thread and await your future updates regarding this recommendation.

Regards,

Randy T. 

Intel Customer Support Technician 

[RandyT_Intel]

Hello @Atfinger ,

Regarding your case, I am following up to find out if you were able to complete the actions provided by @Teeter02 align with step #14 of the tutorial " Move a RAID 1 Volume to Larger Hard Drive " 

Regards,

Randy T. 

Intel Customer Support Technician