Repair Windows software RAID 1

Question

I have a Windows software RAID 1 array that has apparently broken without my knowledge (thanks, Windows!). How can I regain control of it?

The way I see it, I have two options:

1. Break the Array - If I could use "Break Mirror", I could look at which drive has the most up to date data on it, and rebuild a new array based on it. Unfortunately I only have the option "Remove Mirror" (which wipes the drive).
2. Repair the Array - But I can't see any option to do this in Disk Management.

Haylp!

Answer 1

Your G: is online (which means you can get to it) and you have failed redundancy (which means the mirroring is no longer in place). Therefore, you cannot "Break" what is already broken -- which is why that option is disabled.

You have to rebuild. In my (limited) experience, with two 500 MB SSD's, I would back up the drive that I could, delete all volumes on both drives, make them Dynamic disks again, re-establish the mirroring, and then restore the files. This was the quickest way for me, as I did not have too many files.

I believe there is a way to "Add a mirror", but there was something keeping that from being an available option for me. And I did get the "synchronizing" message during one of my tests, but it was taking forever, for just a few files, and I didn't want to endure the wear on my SSD's, so I rebuilt them instead. HTH.