Another Hard Drive topic

[JohnnieRat]

So I got this PC like 2 months ago and it has a RAID drive in it and I'm getting a message:

"A RAID volume is degrades because of missing hard drives"

The other day it told me my backup folder is full and am in the process of tinkering the settings so it doesn't backup EVERY single file I have but rather just important ones.
Computer smart people input?

[Avelandra]

What OS do you have? Also, how many physical Hard drives do you have, and also, what type of RAID is it?

[JohnnieRat]

I use Vista, 1 physical hard drive, and i dunno about type of RAID... maybe 25 man?

[Nixphire]

Hmmm, usually Raid drives have more then one hard drive. That's the purpose of raid. If one of your hard drives fail you have another that has back up, but it depends on how the raid is setup. If you only have 1 hard drive that could be why you're getting the message. What level of RAID you have depends on the hard drive setup. Is the raid setup from windows or do you have some kind of raid controller?

[JohnnieRat]

i checked my specs on the package and it's 2 500gb hard drives in some sort of RAID thing. I don't know what any of it really means or how it works. I just know it does things. And it's run thru my windows

[Air]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks

[Gutboy]

To summarize, what you've probably got is a RAID 0, with two 500GB drives set up to act like one big drive. This makes your disk access faster, but if one of the drives fails, all your data is at risk. Anyone running a RAID as their C: drive needs to back up files religiously (which doesn't just mean praying that they don't disappear!  ).

GB

[JohnnieRat]

so... how do i fix this?

[Nixphire]

It depends on the raid utility. I've seen some where you just open the utility and do a type of repair, others, you might need to replace the hard drive (data might be recoverable, might not depending on how bad the array is).
Need more information from you. Like what kind of RAID level you're running and if it's a software or hardware controller. Give us what you got

[Shadowwolf]

Raid 0 = "Spanning" (Data is spaced out across all disks and it appears as 1 physical disk) No Redundancy
Raid 1 = "Mirroring" (Data is "mirrored" onto both disks, both disks need to be of equal size. 1 disk will always remain unusable in the event the other fails that disk will become active). Maximum Redundancy
Raid 5 = "Striping" (Data is saved across all disks as with Raid 0 however additional data is also saved so that in the event one drive fails there is no data loss.) Redundancy w/ Maximum Space

If I had to guess, most performance machines come with Raid 1, as thats the latest home performance PC craze, and the error you are getting likely means 1 of the drives has failed or is having issues and is unstable so the computer is telling you that your failover is no longer in place. Meaning, if the second drive fails now without you fixing the first, then you are screwed and will lose everything.

More than likely your computer came with some sort of Raid Management Software either installed in Windows or at the bootup screen. You'll need to open that utility to see exactly whats wrong. If its a bad drive, generally with raids 1 and 5 all you need to do is swap a good drive in its spot and it will rebuild on its own. I highly doubt you have Raid 5 because it takes at minimum 3 drives to do and Ive yet to see that level in home PC's, thats usually reserved for servers. If you had 0, chances are your machine wouldnt work at all, because if one drive fails the data is trashed. You then likely have Raid 1, and if the machine is still under warranty, call em up and order a replacement drive. You'll still have to get some help figuring out what drive is the bad one as I have no clue how your machine is set up. The manufacturer would prob know whats what.

Edit:

If Windows is doing the raid management itself via software, someone at your PC manufacturers company should be shot. Software raid is god awful, slow, troublesome, and unstable. I have no experience with Windows Vista builtin raid management at all because its just generally a bad idea to use. Hopefully you have some sort of hardware managing the raid array or if Windows ever crashes you are SOL =P

[JohnnieRat]

Calling Dell today

Edit: Turns out my backup hard drive ate the big one. Fortunately I'm still under warranty and I'll have a new one installed on Friday. Thanks for the pro-tips

[JohnnieRat]

Ugh... still rebuilding the RAID setting on the new hard drive with some Array thing or something... do things faster mr computer!

[Shadowwolf]

Buy a server and top end RAID card, then itll do it in the background 

[JohnnieRat]

It was doing it in the background but I figured it would be better to just let it do its thing undisturbed

[Shadowwolf]

The raid array will handle it. You can continue to use the machine while it rebuilds the new drive image. Otherwise you'll likely be waiting a very long time for it to finish.