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At Wit's End - Not sure what to do next with this image

Thread needs solution

Very long story but will try to condense.

First  - using ATI 2021. Making backups on a full 1 week with incremental daily for SSD (Win10 OS) and Data drive.

My machine - ASUS z87 deluxe; Win10 Pro (this was a free in-place upgrade from Win7 Pro by MSFT). Running 512MB Crucial SSD (OS), Raid Array in Raid1 x2 WD 8TB Sata (main windows data drive), another 2x other drives with various data Sata; Tib files located on NAS (Synology) backups done weekly/daily incremental

Issue: This last weekend we had a substation Power Outage in our town (major power interruption) that took down my computer while I was gone. Came home and screen was sitting at F1 run BIOS Setup.

Fast forward: 

  • Did not realize at the moment that "F1 run BIOS setup" meant the CMOS battery was not healthy and that's why BIOS didn't reboot
  • Raid1 Array in BIOS was displaying degraded
  • Win10 OS (on SSD wouldn't boot)

Diagnosis:

  • couldn't see SSD on initial debugging so figured power outage took it out. Ordered new one and figured the ATI 2021 images would restore this quickly and be back in business (was that a miscalculation)

Since Then To Get to Bootable OS (sometimes):

  • Created bootable ATI2021 USB drive - UEFI and Legacy
  • Installed SSD, Formatted and DISKPART Clean
  • Wasn't entirely sure what version of SSD configuration I had (i.e. MBR/Legacy or UEFI/GPT)
  • Tried many combinations of UEFI/GPT and MBR/Legacy using ATI 2021 Bootable USB stick with many failures along the way.
  • Found 2 combinations for bootable OS using ATI recov ery Image of the SSD to the new Crucial 512MB (with exceptions ro booting and not sure why)
  • UEFI/GPT (SSD)-
    • Initially thought this was the configuration I was running. So I ran ATI Bootable USB (UEFI)- With add disk in GPT mode from my latest "Full restore disk image" - kept all drives connected including "Degraded Raid". This failed even after trying bcdboot changes to the image.
    • Removed all drives except the new Crucial 512MB SSD, Recovered image, and ran bcdboot for the \Windows drive
    • a UEFI Windows Boot Manager was added to my BIOS sequence
    • This image booted to Win10 - Hurray
    • Now added back the "Degraded Raid1" and couldn't get any form of OS boot to work. UEFI Bios kept displaying the Raid1 Data Array as the boot drive and wouldn't even recognize the Crucial 512MB as a bootable disk
    • Reran bcdboot serveral times - still not bootable
    • In BIOS broke the Raid1 array into two separate drives. Still not able to boot.
    • Pulled the 2x 8TB Raid1  array drives and put 2x brand new 8tb Drives - Create same Raid1 Array Volume Name in Bios (empty) and tried to Boot many times - with no success.- COMPLETELY STUMPED
  • Researched my history on the upgrade from Win7 Pro to Win10 Pro and discovered at  the time of the upgrade the original SSD was MBR and saw motherboard screen captures with no UEFI logo's on the SSD in boot sequence.
  • MBR (SSD) -
    • Ran Diskpart Clean on SSD and booted ATI 2021 Bootable (LEGACY) - to load image in MBR format
    • Loaded image as complete disk (i.e. MBR and Track 0 selected with all partitions).
    • Restarted computer with newly empty RAID1 Created only at BIOS level. With repeated Win10 stop screens. - Again STUMPED
    • Reran bcdboot after checking volumes that held the \windows partition. Still no boot.
    • Pulled the newly created Raid1 Array and viola the Computer booted again - just like above with UEFI/GPT.

I am stumped as to what is peculiar about having the Raid1 array present - it's a data array to hold Win10 OS (documents, downloads, etc). Is causing the Win10 image from ATI 2021 to keep generating various Stop Codes.

Note: I've also used a Win10 ISO (from Original Win7 to Win10 upgrade) to conduct a Windows Repair operation with No success getting a repaired ATI Image for boot OS - keep getting Stop Codes.

Any ideas - why the ATI 2021 image recovery is not booting while Raid1 array is present or in the "creation state from Bios"?

Right now I'm typing this on the machine without any supporting drives loaded. MSinfo says now - 

    • OS Name    Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
      Version    10.0.19045 Build 19045
      Other OS Description     Not Available
      OS Manufacturer    Microsoft Corporation
      System Name    HMORGAN-VIDEO
      System Manufacturer    ASUS
      System Model    All Series
      System Type    x64-based PC
      System SKU    All
      Processor    Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770K CPU @ 3.50GHz, 3501 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
      BIOS Version/Date    American Megatrends Inc. 0303, 8/19/2013
      SMBIOS Version    2.7
      Embedded Controller Version    255.255
      BIOS Mode    Legacy
      BaseBoard Manufacturer    ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
      BaseBoard Product    Z87-DELUXE/QUAD
      BaseBoard Version    Rev 1.xx
      Platform Role    Desktop
      Secure Boot State    Unsupported
      PCR7 Configuration    Binding Not Possible
      Windows Directory    C:\windows
      System Directory    C:\windows\system32
      Boot Device    \Device\HarddiskVolume2
      Locale    United States
      Hardware Abstraction Layer    Version = "10.0.19041.3570"
      User Name    hmorgan-video\hmorgan
      Time Zone    Eastern Daylight Time
      Installed Physical Memory (RAM)    16.0 GB
      Total Physical Memory    16.0 GB
      Available Physical Memory    7.39 GB
      Total Virtual Memory    32.0 GB
      Available Virtual Memory    23.5 GB
      Page File Space    16.0 GB
      Page File    C:\pagefile.sys
      Kernel DMA Protection    Off
      Virtualization-based security    Not enabled
      Device Encryption Support    Reasons for failed automatic device encryption: TPM is not usable, PCR7 binding is not supported, Hardware Security Test Interface failed and device is not Modern Standby, Un-allowed DMA capable bus/device(s) detected, Disabled by policy, TPM is not usable
      Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions    Yes
      Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions    Yes
      Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware    No
      Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection    Yes
       

 

 

 

0 Users found this helpful

If I recall correctly, the ASUS z87 has an Intel chipset, so I assume you are using the onboard Intel Raid controller.

If the system is using MBR/Legacy then the boot device is BIOS/UEFI should be set to the boot drive, in this case the Crucial SSD; if it is UEFI the boot device should be set to Windows Boot manager.

Booting with the riad array installed probably is not happening because the array is badly damaged. My recollection is that with older Intel on board raid controllers, when this happens when booting you need to pare cntrl+s to enter the raid management utility and then set the raid to repair which with disks of this size may take some time. Once the recovery has completed the PC may boot properly. I have only used RAID 5 with older Intel chipsets, and owing to the parity it is possible to boot the array while it is rebuilding; it is a possibility that this will not happen with RAID 1. 

I would await further comments from users more knowledgeable of crash of a RAID 1 array.

When booting with only one of the RAID 1 disks installed things could go badly wrong as the disk signature tells the raid controller that the disk is used for RAID, and one of the disks is missing.

 

Ian