WinDoZe Drive MiRRoRing HELL

[X-J]

Having a HELL-A-CIOUS time setting up a Windoze 10 Pro (RAID 1) Mirror with a pair of Brand-Spanking-New WD 4TB GOLD Hard Drives. 

 

HDD Models > WD4003FRYZ-01F0DB0

 

$64,000 Question(s) ?

 

- Shouldn't the RAID Array Re-Build if there is a Power Interrupt of any Kind?

 

- Why does it appear that you have to start from SCRATCH and Totally Rebuild your ARRAY if you get the INFAMOUS "Failed Redundancy,"
"Missing," and "Foreign" ERROR Messages. I thought the whole point of an ARRAY was that if one of the Drives Goes Down you can Re-Build 
the ARRAY. 

 

Would love to hear peoples thoughts on this one. I thought M$ builds its Bread-and-Butter on Enterprise Solutions. This solution seems
to LACK resiliency. Maybe I'm missing something.

 

SEE my Saga BELOW for the GORY details. 

 

[X-J]

Geez Louise! 

 

My ambitions for setting up a Windoze DRIVE MIRROR (RAID 1) has turned 
into a Brain-Grind Sandwich! 

 

Holy Enchiladas Batman. 

 

I thought this @#$%^& was supposed to make everyones life easier. 

 

Guess Snot. Guess MicroSnot wants to create more JoBs by creating more 
Problems. "Job Security." 

 

I bought (2) Western Digital 4TB Gold Drives to setup in RAID 1 to have 
copies of important files that Im too lazy to backup on a regular basis. 

I replaced a number of Hard Drives (HDDs) in my system because they were 
getting OLD. 

 

One of the SATA cables must have come loose and BROKE the mirror when 
the drives were ReSynching. 

 

9.5 Hours to create the original mirror for only 200GB of Data. 

 

Then I get a "Failed Redundancy" Error Message on both Mirrored Drives 
and a "Missing" RED Thingy on one of them. Then to Top-Off the Pine-Tar 
sandwich I get some Extra strange Partition or Volume Labeled "Foreign" 
out of nowhere. 

 

I right click and try "ReActivate Volume" and ……….. NOPE! …….. 
"The Plex is Missing" Error Message. 

 

By now I figure the MIRROR is Dead-In-The-Water and I need to Salvage 
what I can. 

 

I Troubleshot the Hardware by turning each Drive OFF one at a Time and 
messing with Power and SATA cables Until they register in HDTune and 
Hard Disk Sentinel. That way I new both Hard Drives were functional.

Then I "Remove Mirror" (Break Mirror) on the one Drive that says its 
"Missing." This makes the Good Mirrored Drive "Healthy" and assigns it 
to the original Drive Letter of the Mirror. 

 

On the 3rd Partition/Volume Labeled "Foreign" that was generated 
Out-Of-Nowhere I "Import Foreign Disk." This makes the Missing Disk 
Healthy and Assigns it a new Drive Letter. So now I have (2) identical 
drives with the SAME DATA. 

 

I must be a Masochist because I started the whole process over again to
see if I can Finally get this thing to work.

 

Im not sure what's worse. Trying to create a M$ Drive Mirror or Falling
Bare-A$$ed on a Cholla Cactus. 

 

 

******************
MY SYSTEM
******************

ASUS P6T Deluxe Motherboard
Core i7 920 CPU
NOCTUA NH-U12P CPU COOLER (Air)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER Graphics Card
CRUCIAL Ballistix 1600 Mhz RAM [6 x 4GB = 24GB] - (BLS4G3D1609DS1S00)
  * running @ 1333Mhz
CORSAIR RM750i - Power Supply 
SYBA IOCREST 4 Port SATA III PCI-e 2.0 x2 Card  (SI-PEX40062)
  * extra ports for HDD's and SSD's

 

*****
CASE
*****

 

LIAN LI PC A79 - (9x) 3.5" Bays - (8x) SSD Mounts

 

 

 

--------------------------------
AFTER THOUGHTS
--------------------------------

 

The only thing I can think of is that if there is some "Intermittent"
issue like a loose SATA cable where DATA is Sputtered and there is 
NO Clean Cutt-Off in the Data Stream that messes with Windoze's
Mirroring Software OR possibly both Drives Simultaneously having 
Intermittent problems. Maybe when the differences between the Drives
becomes TOO GREAT the Software Flags it as being unrecoverable when
it reaches some CRITICAL THRESHOLD.
 

[X-J]

[SOLUTION]

 

DISABLE > FAST STARTUP > ON WINDOWS 10 POWER OPTIONS

 

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Reference Articles on the Internet:

--------------------------------------------------

(Google Articles Below)

 

- Windows 10 SW RAID always breaks its mirror

 

- Why does Win10 fast startup causes software raid to resync after every reboot?

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

According to these articles "FAST STARTUP" creates some kind of incomplete shutdown and screws up the DRIVE MIRRORS. So every time your restart your computer your DRIVE MIRRORS go into RESYNCHING both Drives.

 

I only had 200GB of DATA on my 4TB DRIVE MIRROR. It took 10 Hrs every time to RESYNC my DRIVE MIRROR. Talk about a pain in the @#$%^&.

 

Im new to RAID setups.

 

I read some articles on the internet that said just stay away from DRIVE MIRRORING. After my experience I can see why.

 

I may buy a Hardware RAID CONTROLLER with Battery Backup and see if I get better mileage out of that. Supposedly it lessens the strain on the CPU. Of course now you have introduced another piece of hardware that is subject to failure.

 

I'll find out the hard-way as usual.

 

I hope this helps someone maintain more hair on their head.