Disk Mirror fails on reboot

I installed 8 x 2Tb drives. 4 of them are internal and 4 are in an external enclosure that connects to the motherboard with a single Sata cable (I know that is not optimum for performance, but performance is not so much of an issue here. It's more of a frequently accessed achieve that a busy transactional system). For each drive I selected it and did Add Mirror. So I have 4 pairs of drives. Each with its own drive letter.

It was working well until I rebooted and then it all fell to pieces (see the screenshot below). I Googled this and it said I had to right click on the Dynamic Foreign disks and tell it to import. I did this and sure enough the mirrors resynced (it took about 24 hours) and drives remounted and I could see the files in them just fine.

So just for fun, I did another reboot it did exactly the same thing again.

Any ideas how I stop this?

Before you ask why dont you just use Storage Spaces? I was tempted, but did not do it because I was worried if something went wrong I would not be able to recover the data. If I keep it to a simple NTFS setup I can always plug the drive into another machine and read them (even if it means using recovery software, they all know how to read NTFS, Storage Spaces less so).

OK, plan B. I did put a nice screenshot in here, but this software said I cannot include images until my account has been verified, but then did not give me a way to verify. So until I figure that out, here is a rough description. Looking at disk management I see lots of disks that say Dynamic Foreign and Dynamic Missing

March 11th, 2015 9:51am

Hello Neil Hutton,

Please share us the screenshot.

Please try to connect the external enclosure to other computers and then check if the issue still exists.
If other computer dont have the same issue, please update the driver.
If they still have is, please contact the manufacturer to check the hardware.

Best regards,
Fangzhou CHEN

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
March 12th, 2015 12:26am

>Please share us the screenshot.<o:p></o:p>

I would like to be able to do that, but when I try to the software that runs this forum says:

Body Text cannot contain images or links until we are able to verify your account"

but it does not tell me how to validate. I signed in with my Microsoft ID and that is validated. However, I am not a TechNet subscriber. Maybe that is the problem? Let me know if you know the answer.

>Please try to connect the external enclosure to other computers and then check if the issue still exists.

will (just as soon as it is finished the current resync, it takes a while). However, I think the enclosure might be a red herring. Remember that half of the drives are not in the enclosure. They are connected directly to the Sata connectors on the motherboard. They show the same problem.


March 12th, 2015 2:56am

>Please share us the screenshot.

I would like to be able to do that, but when I try to the software that runs this forum says:

Body Text cannot contain images or links until we are able to verify your account"

but it does not tell me how to validate. I signed in with my Microsoft ID and that is validated. However, I am not a TechNet subscriber. Maybe that is the problem? Let me know if you know the answer.

>Please try to connect the external enclosure to other computers and then check if the issue still exists.

will (just as soon as it is finished the current resync, it takes a while). However, I think the enclosure might be a red herring. Remember that half of the drives are not in the enclosure. They are connected directly to the Sata connectors on the motherboard. They show the same problem.



Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
March 12th, 2015 6:54am

>Please share us the screenshot.

I would like to be able to do that, but when I try to the software that runs this forum says:

Body Text cannot contain images or links until we are able to verify your account"

but it does not tell me how to validate. I signed in with my Microsoft ID and that is validated. However, I am not a TechNet subscriber. Maybe that is the problem? Let me know if you know the answer.

>Please try to connect the external enclosure to other computers and then check if the issue still exists.

will (just as soon as it is finished the current resync, it takes a while). However, I think the enclosure might be a red herring. Remember that half of the drives are not in the enclosure. They are connected directly to the Sata connectors on the motherboard. They show the same problem.



  • Edited by Neil Hutton Thursday, March 12, 2015 8:18 AM
March 12th, 2015 6:54am

>Please share us the screenshot.

I would like to be able to do that, but when I try to the software that runs this forum says:

Body Text cannot contain images or links until we are able to verify your account"

but it does not tell me how to validate. I signed in with my Microsoft ID and that is validated. However, I am not a TechNet subscriber. Maybe that is the problem? Let me know if you know the answer.

>Please try to connect the external enclosure to other computers and then check if the issue still exists.

will (just as soon as it is finished the current resync, it takes a while). However, I think the enclosure might be a red herring. Remember that half of the drives are not in the enclosure. They are connected directly to the Sata connectors on the motherboard. They show the same problem.



  • Edited by Neil Hutton Thursday, March 12, 2015 8:18 AM
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
March 12th, 2015 6:54am

You can upload your picture to an image hosting site, then put the link to it in your post.

Are you using Disk Management to create your mirrors or are you using a RAID controller?

March 12th, 2015 11:44am

>You can upload your picture to an image hosting site, then put the link to it in your post.

The protective keepers of this forum say I cannot post images OR links, see this message:

Body Text cannot contain images or links until we are able to verify your account"

Maybe I can sneak a slightly obfuscated URL passed them. Try this:

s4.postimg.org/ya191714d/mirror.jpg with an http at the front

>Are you using Disk Management to create your mirrors or are you using a RAID controller?

Its Disk Manager, nothing fancy.



Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
March 12th, 2015 12:08pm

>You can upload your picture to an image hosting site, then put the link to it in your post.

The protective keepers of this forum say I cannot post images OR links, see this message:

Body Text cannot contain images or links until we are able to verify your account"

Maybe I can sneak a slightly obfuscated URL passed them. Try this:

s4.postimg.org/ya191714d/mirror.jpg with an http at the front

>Are you using Disk Management to create your mirrors or are you using a RAID controller?

Its Disk Manager, nothing fancy.



  • Edited by Neil Hutton Thursday, March 12, 2015 4:55 PM
March 12th, 2015 4:07pm

>You can upload your picture to an image hosting site, then put the link to it in your post.

The protective keepers of this forum say I cannot post images OR links, see this message:

Body Text cannot contain images or links until we are able to verify your account"

Maybe I can sneak a slightly obfuscated URL passed them. Try this:

s4.postimg.org/ya191714d/mirror.jpg with an http at the front

>Are you using Disk Management to create your mirrors or are you using a RAID controller?

Its Disk Manager, nothing fancy.



  • Edited by Neil Hutton Thursday, March 12, 2015 4:55 PM
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
March 12th, 2015 4:07pm

This is not an ideal configuration!

Go through Event Viewer looking at logs at the time of the shutdown/restart and see if anything can be found there.

March 13th, 2015 10:46am

It really sounds as though the expander based 4 disk external enclosure is not detected at time of boot and therefore when the dynamic disks are detected during the boot sequence, it determines that the mirrors have failed. When the expander is detected and the disks enumerated, they are seen once again and can be re-imported.

To test this scenario, you can directly attach one or more of the disks (without the expander) to a chipset that is seen at boot (motherboard SATA ports or an add-on card). If these directly attached disks are seen, but those in the expander are not, you will have your answer.

Brandon
Windows Outreach Team- IT Pro
Windows for IT Pros on TechNet

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
March 17th, 2015 8:27pm

This topic is archived. No further replies will be accepted.

Other recent topics Other recent topics