Degraded Hard drive in a Raid 1 format

Hello Everyone First off, let me tell you what kind of computer I'll be talking about. It's a Dell Dimension 9150 tower running windows xp pro. I'm trying to help a friend who has this computer that was set up as a Raid 1 configuration. The primary hard drive is degraded so it's no longer working and I was wondering if there is a way to check the mirrored drive to view what's on it? I'm not sure when it stopped writing to the mirrored drive so I want to make sure everything was saved on it. Also, would she still be able to use the computer and do her regular business with only the mirrored drive working? This dell set up is called Dell Data Safe. And calling the Dell tech support made things worse! They don't even know about this Dell Data Safe setup?? Go figure…….I could use some well needed help please

Well.. can u give us a bit more info..? Is this a nested RAID configuration? Are there just two drives..? In some (what I call) "never down" configurations you can split the mirror and then declare a drive as inactive. Then what you do is backup that drive and then simply rebuild the mirror.





By the way, I recently found a pretty good guide on RAID array's here Bjorn3d.com- RAID: A Guide For All … just in case you might want to read some on it. (im sure you have probably read till blue in the face but this dudes "guide" is fairly understandable)

Crow, The computer has just two 160 gig drives and the primary C: drive was degraded. I am awaiting the new drive to arrive from Dell, so far they have sent me the wrong drive twice already. They sent me a 250 gig twice already. In the mean time I'm trying to get any help I can to try and do this myself instead of contacting Dell because I've already talked to 7 different tech people and none of them knew about the Dell Data Safe? Funny thing about that, I found the explanation on their own Dell website……go figure! Apparently what dell does is raid 1 the two 160 gig drives, and then they put a 40gig partition on the C: drive, that apparently is what they call Dell Data Safe. I'm not sure how easy this will be for me because my friend spoke to the tech people from Dell and I guess they were trying to remedy the situation but instead totally messed things up so I'm trying to figure out what was done to see what I have to undo? This whole thing with Dell is a mess! I think what the Dell tech told my friend to do was to go into the Control I menu and change the configuration from Raid to Combination because he insisted that she didn't have a raid configuration. And this was done before I arrived at her home. I'm hoping things are not all screwed up! How can I check to see if the mirrored drive still contains all the information? I tried to look on the Intel Matrix Manager software but it won't let me see anything. And the funny thing is I've removed the bad drive but I still see the C: drive there in My Computer, why is that? And I can also see the D: partition that was created on the C: drive too. Sorry for the long winded paragraph! Gail

Ok i'll try to answer this the best I can so bare with me.


Question: "How can I check to see if the mirrored drive still contains all the information"

When it writes data to the drive, and this being the reason RAID 1 is more of a "safe" configuration in my opinion, it writes it to BOTH drives simultaneously (given the controler is a newer one).. meaning that within a very short amount of time the data has been wrote to both drives..or.. in other words what I mean to say is that it would be unlikely that the data is NOT there. The drives should be mirrored up to the point where the configuration was changed.


Question: "And the funny thing is I've removed the bad drive but I still see the C: drive there in My Computer, why is that? "

Because the (lets call the remaining good drive… drive 2) drives are mirrored. Drive one is a replica of drive 2 so you would expect to see the identical information on drive 2 as you would drive 1. The controler chooses which drive can access the data the quickest and easiest (persay).

Something important you might want to think about. Dell, in their infinite wisdom, usually has a recovery partition, it is usually hidden. You might want to look into finding a recovery utility based on the information given and see if its possibl to recover the configuration. MAKE SURE AND BACKUP FIRST

If you just absolutly cannot find anything to help, shoot me a PM.

Thank you for your help and thank you for the website link also!

When I try and do a rebuild, will the information on the mirrored drive be erased? I have already backed up the information to an external hard drive. And actually it's also on that small partition that Dell created.

No, it should simply mirror the good drive.. make sense.. ? I was just looking at dell … is this a SATA RAID..?

Yes, it is a SATA raid. So for now I can still use the existing drive until I receive the new one? And yes, I understand what you are trying to say

Sorry, I forgot to ask if it is possible to do a raid with two different size hard drives? And if so, what needs to be in common………the speed, the brand?

Yes I believe that you can .. and without any issues however, just to be on the safe side (and to make sure that I have not missed anything stupidly simple) I have a friend there at Dell.. I just sent him a message and.. he is on the other side of the pond from me so hopefully he is sitting in front of his computer now and it wont take very long for a reply. Lets see what, if anything, he can offer for help.

I hope that I'm not keeping you from going to bed, I know it's very early in the morning there and it's only midnight for me here so I don't want to be rude and keep you from getting some sleep……I can wait for your answer in the morning or during the day, I'm on my computer most of the day so you don't have to lose sleep over trying to help me tonight or rather this morning.

Its ok, I dont mind…really (to be completly honest with you… its either this… or laying in bed thinking about it. Sleep seems lately to be a luxury I rarely get, and its time for me to get up almost anyway so… ) I see that my friend is here now… so it shouldnt be to long for him to reply

My goodness! I don't know how you can manage functioning without any sleep? But I hate to admit I do the same thing when there is some kind of problem with either my computer or my friends. It bothers me until I find the answer and that is how I discovered this wonderful forum website. You are all so friendly and helpful, I really appreciate it! And if not on this computer, I listen a lot of tech podcasts on my ipod haha! I'm thinking of investing in the new Macbook Pro just to get a feel of how the apple OS works. Do you know much about a mac?

Ewwwww… mac's…. *hisses*


lol.. unfortunately no, I know little about mac's. My buddy ChrisRLG reccomends you post your question Here at Dell Forums . Which I tend to agree with (Chris is a pretty sharp dood really). I hate to "shuffle" you around back to Dell I just had rather be safe than sorry and if that fails you are always welcome to come back and throw the heaviest object you can find at me ..

But seriously, if you do not find the answers you are looking fr just come'on back and wil get you hooked up.

EWWWW DEll!!! Only joking, I will do that and see what answers I can get there! Thank you again so much for going out of your way to help me Have a great day!