Help with this laptop fault please

silure130

silure130

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Rick
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hi
My laptop HD is 1TB ( 500GB*2 Raid 0 ). Thats what it says on the label. When it starts up it 1 drive says it has a fault. Any idea on a fix for this
thanks

 
Looks like one of your hard drives has a fault - but RAID 0 Stripe is the feature where it puts a bit of data to both disks... There's no mirror copy... So if one disk dies, the other is dead as well... Don't think there's an easy option to repair from my experience of RAID 0 - but maybe some other clever clogs can help a bit more :)
 
New disk and restore. You do have a backup don't you?
 
arad85 said:
New disk and restore. You do have a backup don't you?
Click to expand...

I need a new hard drive? Can you recomend one or shall I just get the same. Laptop is working OK and I hardly have anything on it, but I'll do a backup just in case.
ta
 
I would backup everything thats of any value to you as quick as you can, then remove the faulty drive. Because it is striped you lose the data on both drives. One thing to take note of is when you get a new drive it ideally needs to be the same size as the existing drive and the same speed.

If you didn't use over 500GB on your original setup I would stick another 500GB drive in and set it to RAID 1 (Mirror) instead. That way everytime the data is written to the first drive it is also written to the second drive so you would always have an instant back up.

If it was me personally, I would get a 120GB SSD Drive, stick this in as the master drive and put Windows, Lightroom, Photoshop, etc on it and then put the working 500GB drive in the 2nd slot and use this for all your data. The speed difference between a normal hard drive and an SSD is very noticeable, my laptop boots in 6 seconds from cold to the desktop.
I would then get an external hard drive as well and use that to do regular backups of everything just to be on the safe side.

I put loads of customers on to SSD's when I had my computer repair shop and they were all chuffed to bits at the speed increase.

If you need any further help feel free to PM me.

Chris
 
Yeah, what he said . your data is about to be toast. RAID 0 is a silly option for a laptop. Back up, swap the faulty one for an ssd, install Windows on it and use the other drive for data.
 
Too late for backup, surely?

Other than that, I'd agree with all Chris says. Raid 0 is for those who needed ultimate speed from conventional hard drives and didn't mind an increased risk of drive failure. An SSD makes raid 0 redundant for most people.
 
You will have lost your data if not already backed up. There is no parity in RAID0 so if a drive fails, everything goes. I'd agree with SSD for main drive and (possibly) a second for the other drive (if you don't mind spending). Otherwise 128G SSD main plus 500G/1T for your user data.
 
Looks like the array is still functioning normally (see the "normal" status above).

Might be that the second drive is about to fail.

As said get your data off ASAP and bin raid0 for a ssd + larger storage drive.
 
neil_g said:
Looks like the array is still functioning normally (see the "normal" status above).

Might be that the second drive is about to fail.

As said get your data off ASAP and bin raid0 for a ssd + larger storage drive.
Click to expand...

As Neil said it is still working but about to fail. Get rid of RAID 0, you can get another hard disk and ghost all the data to it then swap the drives out and boot to the new drive. You can then use a 2nd drive for data.

If you want to use an SSD, you may need to remove data from the drive fast and shrink the partition down before you image the disk.
 
ChrisWXM said:
I would backup everything thats of any value to you as quick as you can, then remove the faulty drive. Because it is striped you lose the data on both drives. One thing to take note of is when you get a new drive it ideally needs to be the same size as the existing drive and the same speed.

If you didn't use over 500GB on your original setup I would stick another 500GB drive in and set it to RAID 1 (Mirror) instead. That way everytime the data is written to the first drive it is also written to the second drive so you would always have an instant back up.

If it was me personally, I would get a 120GB SSD Drive, stick this in as the master drive and put Windows, Lightroom, Photoshop, etc on it and then put the working 500GB drive in the 2nd slot and use this for all your data. The speed difference between a normal hard drive and an SSD is very noticeable, my laptop boots in 6 seconds from cold to the desktop.
I would then get an external hard drive as well and use that to do regular backups of everything just to be on the safe side.

I put loads of customers on to SSD's when I had my computer repair shop and they were all chuffed to bits at the speed increase.

If you need any further help feel free to PM me.

Chris
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice everyone.

Looking around the internet there seems to be problems with fitting SSD drives to my MSi GX660R laptop. Seems only certain makes will work. I was going to buy this Samsung 120 GB 840 Evo 2.5" SSD for £75 from PC world and have a go fitting it. I have the ipad for backup to ask for advice. Probably just safer to get the same type and fit it.
 
Is the issue with the thickness of the drive? If so it will be because some laptops will only take 7mm thick drives while others will take 9mm.
 
Looking on the msi forums , its with the bios not recognising the new drive. I was thinking about taking the faulty drive out and just using the good one on its own . Would this need changing to Raid 1 and would I have to do a fresh install of Windows.
thanks for your time
 
Going to just one drive would work fine. Just make sure the bios is set to AHCI and that the RAID function is turned off.
 
You will need a complete reinstall.. Taking one drive out will take away half the data you have....
 
Yes original windows 7. Might have a go tomorrow. What I don't get is that one drive has 320gb free and the other 400gb. I always just save everything to the c drive, I don't remember ever selecting the d drive.
 
I searched this problem a bit when I first saw this post. I've not touched raid in years so not fully understanding the problem I gave up without replying. I did see some stuff about this version of the intel raid software (don't know if its bios update or what) and suggestions that it loses drives sometimes. Fix was to update the raid version.

If everything is backed up and you are prepared to replace the drive anyway it might be worth looking into.
 
I've taken out the faulty drive and reloaded Windows. Seems to be working fine and a bit quicker.
thanks for the help
 
Did you turn off raid?
 
Not sure, would it still be on even though there is only 1 drive in now
 
No, RAID will be off with a single drive. Your RAID controller is smart enough to work this out.
 
But this was in RAID 0 config....true what you're saying but what I'm getting at is a clean install on single drive will have turned it off...
 
Its only seems quicker when browsing etc. I have been hours updating all my programs and it is a lot slower doing these sort of tasks. SSDs will work but it needs a custom bios flash and thats out of my depth. I know someone who does this so if it works then I will get a SSD fitted.

However I might stick with it for a while because I have my eye on a new one.
 
RAID 0 is faster than non RAID as all disk I/O is spread over 2 drives rather than one. But v risky. An SSD is going to be quicker than a RAID 0 magnetic drive array anyway. What do you mean by the laptop needs a custom bios flash to accept an SSD? What make/model is the laptop? Usually it's a plug in replacement...?
 
landwomble said:
RAID 0 is faster than non RAID as all disk I/O is spread over 2 drives rather than one. But v risky. An SSD is going to be quicker than a RAID 0 magnetic drive array anyway. What do you mean by the laptop needs a custom bios flash to accept an SSD? What make/model is the laptop? Usually it's a plug in replacement...?
Click to expand...

It's an MSI GX660R. I've been looking on various forums and that's what people are saying. It's supposed to be easy to do but I don't fancy it.
 
hmm, just did a search and see what you mean. I suspect if you set the BIOS mode from AHCI to IDE that it'll work, but obviously there's a risk as you'd have to buy an SSD to test...
 
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