Adding hard drives puts bootable drive offline. How do I solve this?

[obucc]

I have a Dell precision computer with two 2TB hard drives that I setup, using RST, in RAID 1 configuration. Now I bought 2 additional 4TB hard drives for data that I want to configure as a second RAID 1 volume. these drives are brand new.

The problem arose when I added the new hard drives since all the hard drives went offline, including the original, boot drives.

I did not find a way to put the hard drives back online without loosing all my applications and data, and I did not find the reason why adding hard drives caused this problem. Can somebody help me?

Thanks in advance for your time and consideration.

Osvaldo

[n_scott_pearson]

This feels like a power issue; that the power supply was providing sufficient power to work previously but cannot with the two additional drives in the system. What happens if you remove the two new drives and return to the original configuration?

...S

[obucc]

Scott,

Thanks for your reply.

I do not think that this is a power issue. The power supply is more than capable to support these drives and more. When I removed the drives the original drives stayed offline.

My belief is that the controller placed the drives offline. I could not find the access to the Intel controller during boot. I read online that CTRL-I could give me access, but that did not work...

My belief is that if I can access the RAID controller during boot, I can put the drives back online...

Osvaldo

[n_scott_pearson]

In modern, UEFI-based BIOS, the entry point to the RST interface will be exposed within BIOS Setup.

...S

[obucc]

Thank you Scott.

This was really helpful.

Osvaldo

[n_scott_pearson]

Did you get into the tool? Were you able to reset the drives to a usable state?

...S

[obucc]

Hi Scott,

Sorry for the delayed response.

Yes, I was able to get my system running again.

The tools available through the UEFI-based BIOS screen are somewhat different. I also learned that setting the BIOS to legacy and pressing <CTRL- I> during boot can access the controller interface directly.

Thanks for your help.

Regards,

Osvaldo