I have a computer with 4 hard drives built in a RAID 5 array. Powering on the computer to get a disk boot error message.
The raid controller is only recognizing 3 of the 4 hard drives.
I loaded an optimized bios and enabled raid options. Still getting Disk boot failure, insert disk, enter.
Checked cables and all are connected to HD’s and motherboard appropriately.
Motherboard has a 6 SATA device capacity; so I moved the cables around in the 6 slots; then used the BIOS SATA enabled/disabled function to adjust for all 4. Disk boot failure message still persists.
Went through BIOS in onboard device configuration and disabled one of the 4 SATA drives, then rebooted. Used this process on each HD separately. 3 of 4 HD’s reported a “degraded array” warning when I did this. Disabling the BIOS for the 1 HD, produced no warning — Array reads as healthy. Same Disk boot failure message.
My thought is that HD #1 has either: suffered some unfortunate loss of boot files, or has failed and needs to be replaced and the array rebuilt.
Since a RAID 5 can run on 3 HD’s, is there a way to configure just these drives to work together and boot without compromising data?
Is the only solution to rebuild from a new, identical HD?
System specs:
AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Windsor 2.8GHz Socket AM2 125W Dual-Core Processor Model ADAFX62CSBOX
(4) Seagate Barracuda ES ST3750640NS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Hard Drive
ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 675 (PC2 5400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X2048-5400c4
EVGA 768-P2-N831-AR GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB 384-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
COOLMAX CTG-750 750W ATX12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply
