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CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

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on individual drives. There are a couple of errors unique to RAID, however,

that need their own separate discussion.

Drive Not Recognized If you’re using hardware RAID and the

configuration firmware doesn’t recognize one of the drives, first check to

make sure the drives are powered and that they are connected to the proper

connections. This is especially true of motherboards with onboard RAID that

require you to use only certain special RAID connectors.

RAID Stops Working When one of the drives in a RAID array fails,

several things can happen depending on the type of array and the RAID

controller. With RAID 0, the effect is dramatic. Many enthusiasts use RAID

0 for their OS drive to make it snappier. If you’re running such a rig that then

loses a drive, you’ll most likely get a critical stop error that manifests as some

sort of proprietary crash screen. Windows will show a Blue Screen of Death

(BSoD), for example. On reboot, the computer will fail to boot or you’ll get a

message such as OS not found. You lose all your data because there’s no

redundancy on a stripe set. You may see error messages before the crash

related to read/write failures. On macOS machines, a failing drive or array

may result in the Spinning Pinwheel of Death (SPoD). If there are no other

systemic problems such as low RAM or low disk space, it’s time to break out

RAID- or disk-diagnostic tools such as S.M.A.R.T. reader software.

All the other levels of RAID tend to do nothing extraordinary when one

drive in the array fails. When you reboot the system, that’s when the RAID

controller (if hardware) or Windows (if you’ve used the built-in tools) will

squeal and tell you that a drive has failed.

Often, the failure of a drive will cause access to the contents of the drive to

slow to a crawl, and that slow performance is your clue to check Device

Manager or the RAID controller firmware. Some drive failures will cause the

computer to crash. Others will show no effects until you get the error

messages at reboot.

Regardless of the reason a RAID stops working or the effects, the fix is

simple. Replace the failed drive and let the RAID rebuild itself. Life is good.

If you need to know the reason for the failure, trying running S.M.A.R.T.

reader software on the failed drive. If the drive electronics have some

functionality, you may get results.

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