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TI or MVP builder cannot see drives or TI USB external disk -- Win7 Intel RAID

Thread needs solution

 

Enchantech:
So to clear up a couple of things for you. First is that your RAID levels for both arrays is in fact RAID 1, not RAID 0. 

Your guys patience with me his unbelievable. Everything you said makes perfect sense. RAID 0 being stripping where data is split across volumes (members) and gives faster access (parallel data transfers)  and RAID 1 being multiple mirrored volumes (members) and duplicity is for safety. I had read about this long ago in my mainframe developer days.

It makes logical sense that if I replace a volume (>= capacity) that the system should mirror it again without the OS being reinstalled. The help file section I looked at for a failed volume didn't show RAID 1 so I thought at that moment in time it was just a synonymous term (dumb I know now) [sort of like how some start counting bits in a bit at 0 vs 1 (0-7 vs 1-8). OK, I realize that is a stretch as an excuse. 

 

Enchantech:
I suspect that the system tray icon for the iRST app has become broken and is why it no longer works.  You can remove that link from the tray then locate the iRST executable file, right click on it and add it back to the tray to get it working again.

It may be some combination of things. It appears the system tray application is working (comb part 1) as it changes visual status after booting in about 20ish seconds. (system tray may be an old term and it may be called the status bar now). It goes to a green checkmark (lower right icon in picture below). Double clicking or clicking on 'Open Application' gives me the unknown error (comb part 2) so the internal (from tray app to its own UI app) is broke (would seem odd) or there is an incompatibility with Win 10 and that UI app (seems more likely).

I did searching for iRST drivers on the intel site and found them but their release dates/versions are double digites (v18) vs what I have installed (v3). Since my underlying services to rebuild/verify (back to normal status) my RAID 1 members is working I am pretty hesitant/paranoid to uninstall/reinstall with a new version. I may have to live with the lack of UI which for the most part just gave me a % complete when it was rebuilding back when I looked at it on Win 7.

 

 

Mustang:
Setting the CSM to boot both UEFI and Legacy is correct. You should be able to find another section for USB. Under that you should find something about enabling Legacy USB support. This needs to be enabled to boot from USB devices.

Thanks again. I'm still searching and will try some thing. I suppose it is possible that I wiggled some cable that connects the front USBs when I had to remove the graphics card to get access to the button battery. Hard to rule things out with what I've done and said!  To be fair bios seems like a complicated thing as there are so many options and then on enthusiast version of bios it is even crazier plus I'm getting the indication they upgrade the bios interface and don't hesitate to make UI changes (ala how they renamed CSM to Windows 8 in mine above).

My son sent me to a GigaByte related page he found on USB booting. In that version of the bios being used they 

Scott,

I still think you can fix the tray or status bar issue (called taskbar in Win 10).  The tray area is actually a notification area on the far right side of the Taskbar.  Looking in that area you should see an ^ symbol which when clicked will shows all icons in the tray.  Is this where the iRST icon is located.  If yes then the app will probably not launch from this area.  If you hover your mouse pointer over the icon any options available for you will appear.  If Open or Launch appears then selecting that should run the app.

Again, using Explorer you can locate the iRST application folder, then look for the iRST .exe file. Right click on it and you should see an option to Pin to taskbar.  Selecting that will create an icon for the app on the Taskbar and when clicked will launch the app.

Enchantech wrote:

Scott, I still think you can fix the tray or status bar issue (called taskbar in Win 10).  The tray area is actually a notification area on the far right side of the Taskbar.  Looking in that area you should see an ^ symbol which when clicked will shows all icons in the tray.  Is this where the iRST icon is located.  If yes then the app will probably not launch from this area.  If you hover your mouse pointer over the icon any options available for you will appear.  If Open or Launch appears then selecting that should run the app.

Again, using Explorer you can locate the iRST application folder, then look for the iRST .exe file. Right click on it and you should see an option to Pin to taskbar.  Selecting that will create an icon for the app on the Taskbar and when clicked will launch the app.

I do follow what you are saying. Right clicking on the icon gives me an 'open application' option. The below security dialog pops up and it tells me exactly where the pgm is located and the name of it. I can find it in Explorer and executing it directly gives me the same error. BTW, I do answer YES to that dialog question. It does not matter if in Explorer I use "Run as administrator" or not as I get the same 'unknown error occurred. 

Thanks for your patients on this aspect too. I'll do some google search related to Win 10 and that pgm specifically. I thought it may be a Win 10 compatibility thing but when given a trouble shooting option I let it run in compatibility mode of 'Win 7' and it still gave the same error. I reverted back the compatibility setting (ie. turned if off so it'd run in normal Win 10).

Getting that UI app to work is fairly low on my priority list although it'd be nice. I don't want to uninstall/reinstall iRST related pgms (services and UI) because the service appear to be working OK. I'll still do some searches.

My current priority is the front of the PC USBs working which is ATI WinPE recoverability related so a higher risk of my ability to recover. I'll continue looking at that. Thanks again!

[update] I forgot the picture:

[update2] P.S. I have a wide screen so I dont' have a ^ showing my 'system tray' icons grouped/compressed together.

Enchantech wrote:

Scott,  In the Boot tab of your BIOS setup you should see and entry for Secure Boot.  If this is enabled it may prevent the booting of a USB flash drive.  Temporarily disabling that option if it is enabled could fix the issue.

Those SATA data cables look like cheap OEM cables by the way.

I missed this post. Sorry. I will look for at the secure boot option and try to read the (outdated) manual I found.

Thank for the opinion/confirmation on the SATA cables.  I try to provide you guys pictures throughout all this to get us all on the same page and I get that helping someone is easier if they give you a reasonable amount of details and sometimes pictures say a 1000 words as the old cliche goes.

Great, keep us posted on your progress.

Enchantech wrote:

Great, keep us posted on your progress.

Setup to story: I have a cube PC with LEDs in it which meant they carefully ran the cables and bound them tightly together with black zip ties.

So I was looking at replacing the SATA cables to my SSDs [other RAID drives have perfect S.M.A.R.T. stats from all tools I've used to look at them].

I print off the motherboard layout from the manual was tracing cables writing down what they are connected to and then saw/matched them to what port #s I see in the bios and a digital picture I took.  All makes sense. SATA3 (6Gb/s) on the SSD and SATA2 (3Gb/s) on the other hard drives. SATA2 on the DVD.  Where are the Front USBs connected to? WTH.

I plug a USB LED light that I use to light up my keyboard at night to my front USBs. No power. Wait ... not bootable (premise was a bios setup issue) but no simple power.

More looking ... (with my 1 eye as I lost the other in a car accident a couple of years back so I have depth issues and worse at less than arms length) ....

I look at the motherboard printed layout and next to the ATX power connection I see F_USB. Front?

I look straight down at the cables which go there and they 'line' up with the connection. Recall from my setup that every near cable to each other are bundled ... well the graphics card cables are bunded with the F_USB cables so when the graphics card is in place the F_USB cable also looked in place!!

So I feel completely foolish and it appears the cable was sitting on top of the cable connection but not pushed in!  Guess what happened when I pushed the cable in? For crying out loud.

Scott, it seems to always be the simplest things that bring the biggest pains! :)   Glad you have that issue sorted.

I did end up ordering some new SATA III cables that received great reviews on a few sites. I'll put those in when they come in.

In my next PC I'll probably just use the latest NVMe SSDs that plug into your motherboard without SATA cables! My son's recent build has a 1 TB. And they are *fast*. Example picture below!.

 

Well one of my Win7 to Win10 upgrade reasons was so I could use TurboTax [deluxe] on my desktop as I have for year. I was able to do that last weekend and our taxes are done. Yeah! (Online Turbotax required premier for the same tax forms and some extra charges. Trying to rip people off.)

Win 10 really makes my hardware feel like a new machine. It was pretty good when I got it (6 core/12 log; 65GB mem, etc).

I put my new 6G cables in today without breaking anything. It was a tight fit and I had to use needle nose pliers to wiggle them in the slots. All worked tho as I didn't leave anything unplugged this time! 

So I just wanted to thank everyone for their help. It was a big deal and I appreciated it very very much!!