8 replies to this topic

[donwieber]

I built a test machine with 6 drives, 5 in a Storage Spaces volume and a C:\ drive, the C drive was an older drive that I am now getting Windows errors stating that I need to backup the drive and replace it. My question is when I replace it will the Storage Spaces volume rebuild itself or will I have the option to rebuild it or will I have to reload everything after rebuilding the volume?? I tried looking for a tutorial but did not see one.

Any ideas?

TIA

Don  Win8 HD Error.jpg   83.37K   4 downloads

[jmwills]

You could try and clone the drive as this sounds like a physical issue with the drive. however, you never know if all the bits will be transferred over from a bad drive. How much data is in the Storage Pool?

[donwieber]

The pool has about 3TB of media, I am testing it out to be a media server.

[ikon]

I know with other Windows-based drive arrays I've been able to reinstall the OS and keep the array without rebuilding. All I had to do was go into Disk Management and import the array into the fresh install. I've even moved the drives from an array to a new computer and imported the array. I was just really careful to keep the order of the drives correct.

I wonder if Storage Spaces works the same.

[jmwills]

Is this the only copy of the data you have? If not, I would do as ikon suggested. One thing for sure, that drive is history.

[ikon]

As far as the 'failing' drive is concerned, first, check if that drive is still under warranty. If it is, RMA it.

Assuming it's not under warranty, it's still quite possible it's not a 'goner'.

Often, a drive will start to exhibit issues that are really only bad sectors that the drive's internal SMART system hasn't properly identified and replaced. This happens a lot because SMART is basically brain dead. SpinRite can often put a drive like that back into working condition. It does this by forcing the drive to recognize bad sectors and replace them.

Sectors going bad is just part of the natural life of hard drives. As long as there are spare sectors to replace bad ones, the drive is still viable. The real concern is mechanical or controller board failures. Controller board issues can be customer repaired, providing you have a spare board on hand. Nothing can fix mechanical failures short of a hard disk repair center.

In the end, it's up to the user to determine how much time and effort they're willing to spend fixing a drive vs spending money to get a new one. I tend to cycle out older, smaller, slower, noisier drives in favour of larger, faster, quieter ones, but I almost never have to get rid of a drive because of failure (I can't remember the last time I had a drive actually 'fail' and couldn't get it working again).

[donwieber]

All is well and good. I replaced the drive, reloaded Windows 8, and the pool I built with parity was already available, I did not have to do anything to re-establish it and all the data was there.

Thanks for all the replies.

Don

[ikon]

Not even having to import the array = sweetness! Congrats, and thanks for the feedback.

[ImTheTypeOfGuy]

All is well and good. I replaced the drive, reloaded Windows 8, and the pool I built with parity was already available, I did not have to do anything to re-establish it and all the data was there.

Thanks for all the replies.

Don

Hey, Microsoft got something right.