I just destroyed my RAID array. Help.
 

On my desktop, I have 4, 160gb Western Digital 7200RPM drives.

Two are configured into a Stripe array (Raid 0), and this is where my windows is loaded as well as all my games.

The remaining two drives are configured into a Mirrored array (Raid 1), and this has all my important stuff (obviously). My brother also somehow set it so all the "my documents" and user related stuff is saved on this drive.

However, while trying to eject a USB flash drive, I accidentally clicked one of my hard drives (damn SATA and it's hot-swap-ability). I always wondered what would happen and managed to go 2 and a half years without figuring it out. Go figure. Anyway, I force shut-off my computer right away hoping nothing would take and it would reboot like normal, but now my mirrored array is listed as degraded in my raid status monitor and during the self-test in the Bios on boot. I'm damn lucky it wasn't the striped array...

So, I have two questions:

First, is there anyway to restore the array without having to wipe BOTH drives clean? Like just have the computer erase one drive and copy everything to it to restore the array?

Second, if there is no way to achieve the above, will having my "documents and settings" folder gone for a brief period cause any major issues? I'm backing my stuff up onto an external hard drive as we speak.

This is the last time I "safely" eject my USB drives. They are getting yanked out for now on... :whip:

you have to go to the RAID manager where you can resync your raid. read your mainboard/RAID adapter manual. it is quite easy to do. you can redirect your documents wherever you wan to t. right click on my documents and Location tab :)

Yes go into your BIOS *if its an onboard RAID* and set to "rebuild" the array and take this as an important lesson.

I figured it out. Right after I posted I found the raid menu in the bios and told it to rebuild. Didn't work the first couple times since I had to delete the information off one drive first (which was fine since it was a mirrored set). But I ended up getting it so it's just rebuilding now in the background and everything works fine.

Thanks

RAID ugh... I got a server off my neighbor. SCSI drives. if RAID stands for redundant array of inexpensive drives, why do scsi drives cost so much?!?

Because SCSI are high performance and built server drives that are designed to run for long periods of time with lots of usage, not to mention SCSI interfaces are much more expensive then SATA or PATA interface as it allows for more data throughput and different RAID configurations

SCSI drives are awesome, but the cost is through the roof. But as with most computer technology, you really do get what you pay for. There's a reason those drives are $500+.