Windows 7 Disk Management: spanned volume won't re-integrate missingdisk

A friend of mine has a desktop running Windows 7 Ultimate x64. In it,
there is a 1TB spanned volume consisting of 3 disks: (1) 200GB, (2)
300GB, & (3) 500GB. The middle disk, disk #2, suffered a temporary
communications failure, and disappeared from the volume all of a sudden.
After the reboot, the missing disk came back, SMART status shows it as
healthy (according to Hard Disk Sentinel, though it does mention that
there was a large number of communications errors on it, i.e. 64227
times). I went into Disk Management, but the volume still shows failed.
I attempted to reactivate the disks in the volume, but it didn't work. I
then attempted to go into the command-line utility, diskpart, and ran
the following command:

DISKPART list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 186 GB 0 B *
Disk 1 Online 279 GB 279 GB
Disk 2 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 3 Online 931 GB 0 B
Disk 4 Online 111 GB 0 B
Disk M0 Missing 0 B 0 B *

As you can see, it shows one disk missing in the Dynamic volume, M0, but
that is supposed to be the same disk as Disk 1. Disk 0, 1, and 2
together made up the dynamic volume, but it's not recognizing Disk 1 as
part of the volume, and so it lists M0 as a missing disk in the volume.

While in diskpart, I attempted to "select disk M0" and "online disk",
and that didn't work. Then I tried to do the same with operation on Disk
1, it said that it was already online. How do I get it to recognize Disk
1 as the previously missing disk?

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan wrote:
A friend of mine has a desktop running Windows 7 Ultimate x64. In it,
there is a 1TB spanned volume consisting of 3 disks: (1) 200GB, (2)
300GB, & (3) 500GB. The middle disk, disk #2, suffered a temporary
communications failure, and disappeared from the volume all of a sudden.
After the reboot, the missing disk came back, SMART status shows it as
healthy (according to Hard Disk Sentinel, though it does mention that
there was a large number of communications errors on it, i.e. 64227
times). I went into Disk Management, but the volume still shows failed.
I attempted to reactivate the disks in the volume, but it didn't work. I
then attempted to go into the command-line utility, diskpart, and ran
the following command:

DISKPART list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 186 GB 0 B *
Disk 1 Online 279 GB 279 GB
Disk 2 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 3 Online 931 GB 0 B
Disk 4 Online 111 GB 0 B
Disk M0 Missing 0 B 0 B *

As you can see, it shows one disk missing in the Dynamic volume, M0, but
that is supposed to be the same disk as Disk 1. Disk 0, 1, and 2
together made up the dynamic volume, but it's not recognizing Disk 1 as
part of the volume, and so it lists M0 as a missing disk in the volume.

While in diskpart, I attempted to "select disk M0" and "online disk",
and that didn't work. Then I tried to do the same with operation on Disk
1, it said that it was already online. How do I get it to recognize Disk
1 as the previously missing disk?

That is one reason not to trust Microsoft: Their engineering is still
3rd rated. What any sane RAID controller would have done here is
fail the whole array, but keep it assembled and allow you to
start it again when all drives are visible. What MS seems to have done
is kick the failed disk from the array, which does not make any sense
at all on non-redundant RAID arrays.

Your best bet is to find some tool that can assemble the spanned array
and works past MS stupidity.

That said: Any type of non-redundant RAID is only suitable as
temporary storage of non-critical data. In that case it can just
be re-created when something like this happens.

Arno

On Fri, 04 Jan 2013 22:12:46 -0500, Yousuf Khan
put finger to keyboard and composed:

DISKPART list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 186 GB 0 B *
Disk 1 Online 279 GB 279 GB
Disk 2 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 3 Online 931 GB 0 B
Disk 4 Online 111 GB 0 B
Disk M0 Missing 0 B 0 B *

Disk 1 appears to have no partitions. That's why its free space
matches its size.

Try the following commands:

select disk=1
detail disk
list volume
select volume=x
detail volume

A Description of the Diskpart Command-Line Utility:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

Use a disc editor to examine Disk 1.

Here are several freeware editors:

DMDE (DM Disk Editor and Data Recovery):
http://softdm.com/download.html

HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor:
http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd

Roadkil's Sector Editor:
http://www.roadkil.net/program.php/P24/Sector%20Editor

I'd examine sector 0 on Disk 0 and Disk 2, plus the next few sectors,
and then compare them against Disk 1. I don't know anything about
dynamic volumes, but AFAIK each drive must store metadata that
identify all the other drives in the set.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Yousuf Khan wrote:
A friend of mine has a desktop running Windows 7 Ultimate x64. In it,
there is a 1TB spanned volume consisting of 3 disks: (1) 200GB, (2)
300GB, & (3) 500GB. The middle disk, disk #2, suffered a temporary
communications failure, and disappeared from the volume all of a sudden.
After the reboot, the missing disk came back, SMART status shows it as
healthy (according to Hard Disk Sentinel, though it does mention that
there was a large number of communications errors on it, i.e. 64227
times). I went into Disk Management, but the volume still shows failed.
I attempted to reactivate the disks in the volume, but it didn't work. I
then attempted to go into the command-line utility, diskpart, and ran
the following command:

DISKPART list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 186 GB 0 B *
Disk 1 Online 279 GB 279 GB
Disk 2 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 3 Online 931 GB 0 B
Disk 4 Online 111 GB 0 B
Disk M0 Missing 0 B 0 B *

As you can see, it shows one disk missing in the Dynamic volume, M0, but
that is supposed to be the same disk as Disk 1. Disk 0, 1, and 2
together made up the dynamic volume, but it's not recognizing Disk 1 as
part of the volume, and so it lists M0 as a missing disk in the volume.

While in diskpart, I attempted to "select disk M0" and "online disk",
and that didn't work. Then I tried to do the same with operation on Disk
1, it said that it was already online. How do I get it to recognize Disk
1 as the previously missing disk?

The dynamic disk database is duplicated across all (dynamic) disks. The question
would be, what happened to the dynamic disk database on the orphan disk ?

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...48(WS.10).aspx

"Windows Server 2003 can repair a corrupted database on
one dynamic disk by using the database on another dynamic disk."

That's what I would have expected, based on the design intent of
having the database duplicated.

The orphan disk has two pieces of info. The MBR is specially marked,
to indicate the dynamic nature. Try a copy of PTEDIT32, and examine
what it shows on each drive. There should be something in the
MBR to indicate the disk is a dynamic disk. If the MBR was overwritten,
and the MBR on the orphan no longer indicates Dynamic, that's going
to "shoot you in the foot" right there. Not a leg to stand on.
A person could create that kind of damage, by using something like
TestDisk (which has an option to rewrite the MBR).

(Run as Administrator in Windows 7...)
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/englis...s/PTEDIT32.zip

(Partition type reference. To decode values seen in PTEDIT32)
http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partition...n_types-1.html

Once a disk MBR is marked dynamic, then that "1MB thing" near the
end of the disk, has to be intact.

It's possible the dynamic database, uses info like hardware serial numbers,
or something equally reliable, to allow re-importing something that
got damaged. There's bound to be a way to fix this.

I tried to find tools from this list, on my WinXP Pro, but
there's really nothing (except diskpart perhaps). And I'm not even
sure anything in diskpart is appropriate. There is a "repair"
command, but it's for something else.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc737610

*******

I built a Windows 7 VM, put a copy of Windows on the first virual
disk. Made two more virtual disks. Caused both of the empty virtual
disks to be Dynamic. Created a Spanned Volume across both of them.
(Two 16GB physical disks, become 32GB spanned E. Shut down,
removed one disk of the spanned set, from the VM. Started Windows 7
again. In Disk Management, it shows the disconnected disk, and
shows it as "Missing". Right-clicking, there is a menu which
includes "reactivate". And in the help, some mention of "offline"
and "online" status.

OK, so shut down Windows 7 again, connect up the second disk of the
spanned set. Reboot Windows. And, I didn't even need that "Reactivate"
item. The second disk was automatically detected as present, and
E: came back up.

This exercise doesn't prove much, expect to suggest the orphan disk
lost something in its travels. Either the MBR is busted.
Or the 1 megabyte database has gone missing. The database, is supposed
to be the same on all disks. If you had five disk, split into a two
disk span set, and a three disk RAID5, the database file on each
disk is supposed to contain all of the info for the five disks. So
not only is the span recorded, so is the RAID5, and the same database
is supposed to be present on all the disks.

If you move the Dynamic Disk set to another computer, there's some
deal about "Foreign" and "Import". But if you start that kind of
thing (moving Dynamic Disks to another computer), that just
complicates the outcomes. If, as an amateur, I was trying to
repair it, the last thing I'd do is move the disks to another
computer (for fear of losing something, or say, the foreign import
overwriting something). Maybe "Foreign" and "Import" only affects
the local registry, but I don't know that for sure.

Just a guess,
Paul

On 05/01/2013 4:28 PM, Franc Zabkar wrote:
Disk 1 appears to have no partitions. That's why its free space
matches its size.

Try the following commands:

select disk=1
detail disk
list volume
select volume=x
detail volume

A Description of the Diskpart Command-Line Utility:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

Thanks, I'll give that one a shot when I next get to his place.

Use a disc editor to examine Disk 1.

Here are several freeware editors:

DMDE (DM Disk Editor and Data Recovery):
http://softdm.com/download.html

HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor:
http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd

Roadkil's Sector Editor:
http://www.roadkil.net/program.php/P24/Sector%20Editor

I'd examine sector 0 on Disk 0 and Disk 2, plus the next few sectors,
and then compare them against Disk 1. I don't know anything about
dynamic volumes, but AFAIK each drive must store metadata that
identify all the other drives in the set.

Oh, I'm hoping I'm not going to have to go that route. I'm hoping that
there's just some simple combination of commands in diskpart that can do
it for me. I know enough about the basics of diskpart, but some of the
more esoteric commands might be outside of my knowledge. But I don't
want to start using diskpart commands thinking they mean one thing, and
end up meaning something else.

Yousuf Khan

On 05/01/2013 2:55 PM, Arno wrote:
That is one reason not to trust Microsoft: Their engineering is still
3rd rated. What any sane RAID controller would have done here is
fail the whole array, but keep it assembled and allow you to
start it again when all drives are visible. What MS seems to have done
is kick the failed disk from the array, which does not make any sense
at all on non-redundant RAID arrays.

Your best bet is to find some tool that can assemble the spanned array
and works past MS stupidity.

I've posted this same question on Microsoft Technet, and so far not a
single response yet. It may be a very difficult case.

That said: Any type of non-redundant RAID is only suitable as
temporary storage of non-critical data. In that case it can just
be re-created when something like this happens.

It's a home PC, we paid the extra price for the Win7 Ultimate for
features such as this. Symantec's Volume Manager is a bit too pricey for
this setting.

When I was running Solaris systems, I used to use the included Solaris
RAID software for quick and easy spanning and other functions when the
costs prohibited buying a Symantec license for such a small job. The
Solaris software was competent, if a bit less user-friendly or as fast
as Symantec's, but you could trust it to work right.

Yousuf Khan

On 05/01/2013 5:22 PM, Paul wrote:

I built a Windows 7 VM, put a copy of Windows on the first virual
disk. Made two more virtual disks. Caused both of the empty virtual
disks to be Dynamic. Created a Spanned Volume across both of them.
(Two 16GB physical disks, become 32GB spanned E. Shut down,
removed one disk of the spanned set, from the VM. Started Windows 7
again. In Disk Management, it shows the disconnected disk, and
shows it as "Missing". Right-clicking, there is a menu which
includes "reactivate". And in the help, some mention of "offline"
and "online" status.

OK, so shut down Windows 7 again, connect up the second disk of the
spanned set. Reboot Windows. And, I didn't even need that "Reactivate"
item. The second disk was automatically detected as present, and
E: came back up.

This exercise doesn't prove much, expect to suggest the orphan disk
lost something in its travels. Either the MBR is busted.
Or the 1 megabyte database has gone missing. The database, is supposed
to be the same on all disks. If you had five disk, split into a two
disk span set, and a three disk RAID5, the database file on each
disk is supposed to contain all of the info for the five disks. So
not only is the span recorded, so is the RAID5, and the same database
is supposed to be present on all the disks.

Well, this is interesting, then I guess I am going to have to go in with
a disk editor on this thing afterall. As Frank Z. noted, the disk is
showing empty right now, when it should show that it is part of a
dynamic volume.

If you move the Dynamic Disk set to another computer, there's some
deal about "Foreign" and "Import". But if you start that kind of
thing (moving Dynamic Disks to another computer), that just
complicates the outcomes. If, as an amateur, I was trying to
repair it, the last thing I'd do is move the disks to another
computer (for fear of losing something, or say, the foreign import
overwriting something). Maybe "Foreign" and "Import" only affects
the local registry, but I don't know that for sure.

Yeah, I had seen some mention of importing disks, but I could not find
the information to indicate how to do it.

Yousuf Khan

On Saturday, January 5, 2013 4:28:54 PM UTC-5, Franc Zabkar wrote:
Disk 1 appears to have no partitions. That's why its free space

matches its size.



Try the following commands:



select disk=1

detail disk

DISKPART detail disk

Maxtor 6L300R0 ATA Device
Disk ID: 49721FF3
Type : ATA
Status : Online
Path : 0
Target : 1
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1401)#ATA(C00T01L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No

There are no volumes.


list volume

DISKPART list volume

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 Spanned 931 GB Failed
Volume 1 G DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
Volume 2 E Seag 1TB Da NTFS Partition 736 GB Healthy
Volume 3 D Seag 1TB Bo NTFS Partition 195 GB Healthy System
Volume 4 H System Rese NTFS Partition 100 MB Healthy
Volume 5 C SanDisk SSD NTFS Partition 111 GB Healthy Boot

select volume=x

detail volume

DISKPART detail volume

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 2 Online 186 GB 0 B *
Disk M0 Missing 0 B 0 B *

Read-only : No
Hidden : No
No Default Drive Letter: No
Shadow Copy : No
Offline : No
BitLocker Encrypted : No
Installable : No

Virtual Disk Service error:
The object is in failed status.

Use a disc editor to examine Disk 1.

I`ll download those later and post the results later.

Yousuf Khan

Nothing I can say but ditto. These schemes should be as independent of
the OS as possible. In fact, make that as independent of the PC hardware
as possible. I was looking at a Datoptic port multipier
http://www.datoptic.com/esata-hardwa...er-spm394.html

I like the idea of it being driverless, so when my mobo fails, I'm not
screwed. In fact, if I use one, I'd probably buy a second eventually
just to have handy in the event the one I'm using croaks.

MS has been trying to abstract files as their OSs have progressed.
"Docuements" was bad enough, but "virtual store" is over the top. Stop
hiding the damn files!

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 05/01/2013 2:55 PM, Arno wrote:
That is one reason not to trust Microsoft: Their engineering is still
3rd rated. What any sane RAID controller would have done here is
fail the whole array, but keep it assembled and allow you to
start it again when all drives are visible. What MS seems to have done
is kick the failed disk from the array, which does not make any sense
at all on non-redundant RAID arrays.

Your best bet is to find some tool that can assemble the spanned array
and works past MS stupidity.

I've posted this same question on Microsoft Technet, and so far not a
single response yet. It may be a very difficult case.

Just my point: This should be easy. On Linux mdadm,
mdadm --assemble --force array name/uuid/component list/etc.
does the trick. Easy to find, easy to use. May cause
data-corruption, but that is unavoidable when a disk
drops out of a non-redundant array without warning.

The other thing I found out recently when I wanted some
Win7 redundancy is that you cannot boot from a dynamic disk.
What the hell is the use of software RAID if you cannot
use it for the most important drive???

That said: Any type of non-redundant RAID is only suitable as
temporary storage of non-critical data. In that case it can just
be re-created when something like this happens.

It's a home PC, we paid the extra price for the Win7 Ultimate for
features such as this. Symantec's Volume Manager is a bit too pricey for
this setting.

When I was running Solaris systems, I used to use the included Solaris
RAID software for quick and easy spanning and other functions when the
costs prohibited buying a Symantec license for such a small job. The
Solaris software was competent, if a bit less user-friendly or as fast
as Symantec's, but you could trust it to work right.

Well, yes. Same with Linux mdadm (except the "pricey").
But with a three disk spanned array, you have about three
times the chance of something like this happening compared
to one disk. But you are right, ordinarily this should
be easy to repair and any possible corruption should be
limited to files being written at the time. Apparently
MS "upgraded" this to a real problem.

Arno