Intel RST accidentally selected wrong drive as system drive -- how to fix?

Posted by Sean Killeen on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Sean Killeen
Published on 2013-11-09T02:07:34Z Indexed on 2013/11/09 4:01 UTC
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Question / TL;DR

  • If Intel RST has marked a drive other than my RAID set as the system drive, how can I get it so that the RAID set is now seen as the system drive, and catch it up to my drive now?

What Happened

NOTE: Some perhaps unwise decisions are ahead. This is as best as I can recall the order of things.

  • I had a 2x1TB RAID1 config.
  • I bought the drives around the same time, and they started to die around the same time.
  • I replaced 1st drive with a 2 TB drive before the other one's SMART errors got more serious.
  • I waited for the RAID to replicate, then replaced the 2nd drive with a manufacturer's replacement.
  • I got a second manufacturer's drive replacement and used it as a spare. so I now I had a 1TB/2TB drive in a RAID1 and another 1TB as a spare.
  • The 1TB drive in the replacement set was bad from the manufacturer. Rather than mess with their refurbished stuff, I bought another 2 TB drive an upped the config to a 2x2TB RAID1 with the other, functioning manufacturer's drive as a spare.
  • I made the mistake of trying to bring the other drive online to clean it out and the signatue clash killed my machine.
  • When the machine rebooted, that drive was marked as the system drive.

So, I have a 2x2TB RAID1 that is apparently offline, and 1 spare 1 TB refurbished drive that everything is being run from. Not a great idea.

Options I'm considering

  1. Bring the 2x2TB drive back online, and then unplug the spare until I can format it in another system. This would involve some data loss, but the more I think about it, I actually think I haven't modified any data that isn't backed up or synced somewhere (go me!) Anything that isn't is likely trivial, enough that I'm willing to take the risk.
    • One downside here is that if the 2 TB doesn't have data on it for some reason, I could be screwed trying to put the other drive back in, no?
  2. Try to somehow get the RAID1 updated with the data from the current system drive.
  3. Option 3?

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