Broke raid, booted to W7 instead of w10

Ok, so, I got to W10 from W7 or, so I thought. It was super slow and doing 100% disk usage so, I thought, maybe it was due to my Raid disks not being synched. So, I looked for IRST, but it wasn't there so, I tried to install it, but I got a message saying something about needing a newer version.

When I tried to install the new version, it said I had to reboot so I did.

When I rebooted, the little balls kept spinning all night so, obviously something is stuck.

I turned the computer off and back on and got the message on the raid screen that one of the drives was "bad" (don't remember the actual word used). So, I decided that I didn't need Raid and due to some of the other problems I've had, figured that the disk really was bad.

So, I broke the raid on both disks and rebooted.

So, both disks this time were good and, believe it or not, it booted to W7!!!!! WTF

I detached one of the disks (I think the one that was listed as "bad" before and turned the machine back on. This time it's trying to boot to W10, but the balls have been spinning for the past five minutes and I'm concerned it will never come back. On the optimistic side, I think I hear the disk spinning so, *maybe* it will eventually come up?????

Anyone that can tell me why the heck the above happened?????

Did you go into the Bios to disconnect the second Raid disk?

No, I just disconnected it in the PC. I don't see the bios screen pop up which shows me the disks any more.

So, it seems that I can either boot to W7, or have the W10 hang with the spinning balls and a black screen. Ugh

Hi there

@joethejet4

you won't see the HDD's in the BIOS probably because now there's no power to them !!!.

You need to "Disentangle" the RAID system -- BUT doing that you will probably lose data so it's your choice.
Some older RAID cards - especially with older slower HDD's attached aren't very good performers -- you might be better off removing the RAID card completely and using the HDD's as standard SATA AHCI drives. You'll probably need to re-install Windows in this case though.

If you remove / disconnect the RAID Card you'll need to directly connect the HDD's to the SATA ports on the Mobo and the power connectors to the other connector on the HDD's -- the bigger one. You can use a MOLEX -->SATA power connector if you've only got Molex (the 4 pin power cables) and also a SATA splitter -- i.e a Y shaped connector -- connect one end to the sata power supply and the other 2 ends to two HDD's.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

@joethejet4

you won't see the HDD's in the BIOS probably because now there's no power to them !!!.

You need to "Disentangle" the RAID system -- BUT doing that you will probably lose data so it's your choice.
Some older RAID cards - especially with older slower HDD's attached aren't very good performers -- you might be better off removing the RAID card completely and using the HDD's as standard SATA AHCI drives. You'll probably need to re-install Windows in this case though.

If you remove / disconnect the RAID Card you'll need to directly connect the HDD's to the SATA ports on the Mobo and the power connectors to the other connector on the HDD's -- the bigger one. You can use a MOLEX -->SATA power connector if you've only got Molex (the 4 pin power cables) and also a SATA splitter -- i.e a Y shaped connector -- connect one end to the sata power supply and the other 2 ends to two HDD's.

Cheers
jimbo

Well, one of the HDs is still seen now because I unplugged the one that booted to Windows 7. I still think that's super weird and have no idea how that could happen when the two disks, I think, should have been indentical. I haven't plugged it back in because I been having trouble with the display driver. In breaking the RAid 1 I didn't lose anything so far.

I should probably post a separate thread on that situation, but I'm hoping that one will resolve itself on my next reboot.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Suppose win7 was formerly installed on RAID1. If one disk boots to win10 and other to win7, there is definitely broken RAID. It can happen during win10 installation if clean install (not upgrade) is performed and no RAID driver is manually provided (at least for NVraid & SiI & Highpoint & Jmicron controllers; not sure for IRST); without proper RAID driver, win10 installer sees two independent disks and installs system only to one of them.

I wold say that you have Win 7 on the failed drive because it did a Factory recover on it.
All your data should be on the other disk that still has Win 10 on it.

With only the Win 10 disk attached, try to do a boot repair.

Megahertz said:

I wold say that you have Win 7 on the failed drive because it did a Factory recover on it.
All your data should be on the other disk that still has Win 10 on it.

With only the Win 10 disk attached, try to do a boot repair.

Yeah, I broke the Raid, that's when it happened. I detached the disk that booted to windows 7 and it now boots to W10. I guess I will try to plugin the second drive again, but make sure that I specify the boot order to the W10 disk.

Do I need to change any settings in the Bios for how I access the disks? I've read some places that I should set something to ACHI. Does that make any sense?

Yeah, I think I want to keep the drives separate actually. Should I change anything about the way the disks are set up (ACHI?) I have already broken the RAID.

Thanks for all the help.