Intel Matrix Storage Manager Help Needed

[idata]

Hi all, I'm new here,

I have a server that's down, customer isn't happy. Have been here for 10 hours so far.

Disk went bad in array, have a hot spare, but IMSM V7.5 doesn't have a rebuild function.

IMSM V8 and V9 seem to have a rebuild function, but are both EXE downloads, and I'm working through the EFI Shell boot and seem to need an NSH file.

Server board is an Intel S3200SH, chassi has a hot-swap cage. O/S is Windows SBS 2008 (but it's not booting).

Tried the LSI Embedded RAID II Config utility (choice in AMI BIOS), but it doesn't recognize the present array, and it says it doesn't do RAID5, and I don't want to lose data, if at all possible (last backup - last weekend!).

Any help is greatly appreciated.

You can answer here, but I'd rather any really good replies (like ones with the right update file) should send to mailto:aortenzio@little-pines.com aortenzio@little-pines.com, which I'll be monitoring more often.

Thanks to all in advance,

AndyO

[Daniel_O_Intel]

I am a bit confused by your post. IMSM 7.5 does have a rebuild function. The option ROM that is accessible during boot doesn't need an EXE or an NSH to run - you press Ctrl-G or Ctrl-C or Ctrl-E, depending on what you see on the screen.

[idata]

OK. Thanks for the reply, but way too late.

I ended up restoring to a point last week and they lost a week's worth of data.

Anyway, the Rebuild choice was not in the menu and it never offered to rebuild it when it was "Degraded", so I never got to make that choice.

The hot-key is "CTRL+I", just in case anybody else reads this.

The NSH file I was looking for was to UPGRADE the version from 7 to 8 or 9, which I saw had a Rebuild function in the main menu. Never found a way to update this.

I have found since that they have "moved" the IMSM (Intel Matrix storage Manager) to the newer IRST (Intel Rapid Storage Technology). Which, I'm sorry to say, RUNS IN WINDOWS, instead of from the boot environment, so it's useless if you can't boot to the array. Stupid.

Anyway, what I DID do was to get another disk, set it up as a normal SATA (no RAID), set the BIOS to boot to it, install Windows SBS 2008 to a point, install IMSM and/or IRST within Windows, then run an array Rebuild.

NOTE TO ALL: The rebuild "re-ran" 3 times (4 times total, from 0% to 100%) and took three solid days to rebuild a 1.5TB array (3x500GB disks). And when it was done - it was STILL DEGRADED!

I deeply suggest to all to do a full backup the instant you see a "Degraded" array.

One more thing: I added a fourth 500GB disk and created a 2TB RAID5 array, then did a Windows SBS Image restore, it re-created the 1.5TB volume. I then had to "expand" the volume using the "Manage", Disk Sorage, Expand Volume function.

AndyO