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On my system (running Windows 7 x64) I have an Asus Z87 Deluxe motherboard, with a built-in Intel RAID controller; my config includes a Kingston 240GB SSD disk for the OS and two Western Digital 4TB HDDs for data. I purposefully bought two data disks in order to mirror them, because I want to minimize the risk of data loss on this system. All disks are 6.0 Gbit/sec SATA.

I configured the two disks as a RAID 1 array using the onboard Intel controller, and the system has been running with this config for a while; however, it has always beens awfully slow, and I struggled with it for almost a year, before finally breaking the RAID and reconfiguring the controller for standard disk access, in order to be able to troubleshoot that incredible slowness (the WD diagnostic tool is unable to talk with RAIDed disk, it needs direct access to the physical disks).

As soon as I broke the RAID, lots of disk errors started popping up in the system event log, and the WD diagnostic tool immediately discovered one of the disks was faulty; it's still under warranty, thus I called WD for a replacement which is presently shipping. The other disk is fine, thus no data loss occurred.

However, there's a big problem here: the system has been running for almost a year with a faulty disk, and not only the Intel RAID controller completely failed to diagnose this, but it also actually worsened the situation by hiding the disk errors from the OS, which had no way to know a disk was failing.

Over the course of this troublesome year, I tried all the released version of the Intel RAID software (Rapid Storage Technology); no one of them changed this behaviour or brought any performance improvement (which I was assuming was caused by the RAID config or controller, and not by a faulty disk, of which I had no knowledge at all).

Why did the controller fail to diagnose a disk was faulty?
And how can I make sure it actually warns me if a disk is failing, if I configure it for RAID mode again?

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  • Without more information about the particular failure of the drive I don't see how this can be explained.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 19:06
  • Windows is throwing errors left and right in its System event log; things like Atapi event 11 and 52, Disk event 11, 15 and 51, and even DiskDiagnostic event 1 ("SMART says the disk is failing, replace it ASAP"). Also, the BIOS warns about the bad SMART status of the disk at every boot, and the WD diagnostic tool says "this drive is so much broken I can't even complete my tests on it".
    – Massimo
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 19:29
  • But all of this, only after disabling RAID in the controller; while that disk was in a RAID array, all of this was hidden from the OS, and the RAID software never bothered diagnosing this mess or giving any warning about what was happening.
    – Massimo
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 19:30
  • It says more than "the drive is failing" what attributes is it failing exactly?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 19:32
  • Attribute 1, Raw Read Error Rate.
    – Massimo
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 19:40

2 Answers 2

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If it was always affully slow then one of the original drives was probably faulty since the beginning. Which means you have been running a mirror in a degraded state. This should have been reported but the drivers (IRST is software RAID handled by the OS and drivers; not in hardware).

However I never used IRST since it is the worst of both worlds, no performance advantage or extra ports gained from HW RAID, nor the full flexibility of software RAID. So I have no idea how loud windows will complain if the array gives errors.

Since it moved the controller off the normal AHCI setting you also will have to adjust to read the HDD SMART parameters. Which is also part of the driver and softwaqre package I am sadly (or not so sadly?) not familiar with.

Regardless: Best bet is a failing drive since day 1, and since you ran in a mirror the array succesfully covered for this. At the cost of extra delays.

Now from some assumptions and background to your actual questions:

Why did the controller fail to diagnose a disk was faulty?

Sadly I do not know. I would assume that iRST would install a control panel item or status program. Unless you hid or disabled it some message should have been available.

And how can I make sure it actually warns me if a disk is failing, if I configure it for RAID mode again?

Now this one is much easier. Set the SATA controller to the normal AHCI mode. Install the OS on the SSD. Then add both harddisks and use windows software RAID, which is not the same as irst, to combine both drives to a mirror.

The advantage to this is that is is more portable (read: easier to recover if a failure occurs) and it leaves your SATA controllers in its normal mode. Any SMART tools should be able to communicate with the disk.

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  • Intel RST installed a management application, but it always said everything was ok; this is exactly what I was complaining about: I suspected a disk was faulty, but the RAID software totally failed to diagnose it. I only discovered what was actually going on when I broke the RAID and Windows was finally able to directly access the disks.
    – Massimo
    Commented Mar 29, 2016 at 20:20
  • And yes, I ditched RST, configured the controller for AHCI mode and switched to Windows software RAID; after replacing the faulty disk, of course. Everything has been running fine since then.
    – Massimo
    Commented Mar 29, 2016 at 20:22
  • Bah. I knew this was an old post and I know my lack of irst knowledge is a hinder. I hoped to point out part of the reasoning and how to make it better. It seems you already got to that part. Not tempted to install irst on my test rig just to find out how to prperly diagnose that part though. :(
    – Hennes
    Commented Mar 29, 2016 at 20:25
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On windows, you can use smartmontools, which for years can see smart attributes and run tests on individual drives, even if they are members of intel fake-raid.
The easiest installer is at http://www.netpower.fr/smartmontools-win which lets you setup email warnings, pop-ups, etc.

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