I had to fix a stripped array this morning, and that got me thinking (yes, and reading) about the correct way to fix software RAID volumes.So, I thought I would quickly put down here the steps to restore RAID-0, RAID-1, and RAID-5 software arrays if you loose a disk and have to replace it for some reason, like I did this morning. I will spend the next three posts explaining how to do this for each one. Today, RAID-0 or a striped array.
RAID-0 (striped)
While stripped volumes do provide the best performance and storage option, they are not fault-tolerrant, so I sure hope you have a good backup of the lost drive or have the software handy to recreate the data on this drive.
Once you have determined that your drive is bad, or you have had to fix an error on the drive more than once, you can go ahead and delete the volume by right clicking on it in the bottom pain of the Disk Management screen (right click on My Computer, Manage, under Storage choose Disk Management).
If your new drive isn't installled go ahead and do so now. Once it is installed, Rescan Disks (on the View menu in Disk Management) if you don't see it as unallocated space in the drive view window.
Before you can create the new volume, you will have to make this a Dynamic Disk by right clicking on the disk name. Once this is done, you can right click on the drive and choose the option New Volume. From there, follow the promts to add the new drive to the Selected disks.
This is by no means a step-by-step or complete guide, there are other sites that do this much better than I can here, and I highly recommend the first one, as it has pictures and all:
Beginners Guide at PCStats
Disk Management from the Microsoft TechNet
