s7-392 hard disk failure (again)

matttrick

This happened once right before my warranty was up. Device would randomly blue screen and reboot to the no disk error, but if i power off and on it boots to windows, then i get the intel storage warning that one of the raid disks has failed. I know they are virtual disks. Acer fixed it last time, although I am unsure if they replaced the drive or just redid the raid and reinstalled.

So my question is what should I do? Do I try to rebuild the raid, install the OS again, OR take a disk image and load it to a new SSD? How can I tell if this is hardware or software? 

Some stuff from system info:

System Information report written at: 03/06/18 19:08:15

[System Summary]

Item Value

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Home

Version 10.0.16299 Build 16299

Other OS Description Not Available

OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Manufacturer Acer

System Model S7-392

System Type x64-based PC

System SKU S7-392_0817_2.12

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4500U CPU @ 1.80GHz, 2401 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

BIOS Version/Date Insyde Corp. V2.12, 5/20/2014

SMBIOS Version 2.7

Embedded Controller Version 1.09

BIOS Mode UEFI

BaseBoard Manufacturer Acer

BaseBoard Model Not Available

BaseBoard Name Base Board

Platform Role Mobile

Secure Boot State Off

PCR7 Configuration Elevation Required to View

Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS

System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32

Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2

Locale United States

Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.16299.248"

User Name MATTYFRESH\Acer

Time Zone Eastern Standard Time

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB

Total Physical Memory 7.90 GB

Available Physical Memory 4.26 GB

Total Virtual Memory 9.15 GB

Available Virtual Memory 5.30 GB

Page File Space 1.25 GB

Page File C:\pagefile.sys

Device Encryption Support Elevation Required to View

Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes

Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes

Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware Yes

Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes

[Drives]

Item Value

Drive C:

Description Local Fixed Disk

Compressed No

File System NTFS

Size 224.97 GB (241,560,449,024 bytes)

Free Space 44.91 GB (48,217,931,776 bytes)

Volume Name Windows

Volume Serial Number 90BC52A6

[Disks]

Item Value

Description Disk drive

Manufacturer (Standard disk drives)

Model Intel Raid 0 Volume

Bytes/Sector 512

Media Loaded Yes

Media Type Fixed hard disk

Partitions 4

SCSI Bus 0

SCSI Logical Unit 0

SCSI Port 0

SCSI Target ID 1

Sectors/Track 63

Size 238.48 GB (256,061,191,680 bytes)

Total Cylinders 31,131

Total Sectors 500,119,515

Total Tracks 7,938,405

Tracks/Cylinder 255

Partition Disk #0, Partition #0

Partition Size 600.00 MB (629,145,600 bytes)

Partition Starting Offset 1,048,576 bytes

Partition Disk #0, Partition #1

Partition Size 300.00 MB (314,572,800 bytes)

Partition Starting Offset 630,194,176 bytes

Partition Disk #0, Partition #2

Partition Size 224.97 GB (241,560,453,120 bytes)

Partition Starting Offset 1,078,984,704 bytes

Partition Disk #0, Partition #3

Partition Size 12.50 GB (13,425,967,104 bytes)

Partition Starting Offset 242,639,437,824 bytes

[SCSI]

Item Value

Name Microsoft Storage Spaces Controller

Manufacturer Microsoft

Status OK

PNP Device ID ROOT\SPACEPORT\0000

Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\spaceport.sys (10.0.16299.192, 557.90 KB (571,288 bytes), 1/5/2018 8:58 PM)

Name Intel(R) Mobile Express Chipset SATA RAID Controller

Manufacturer Intel Corporation

Status OK

PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_282A&SUBSYS_08171025&REV_04\3&11583659&0&FA

I/O Port 0x00003088-0x0000308F

I/O Port 0x00003094-0x00003097

I/O Port 0x00003080-0x00003087

I/O Port 0x00003090-0x00003093

I/O Port 0x00003060-0x0000307F

Memory Address 0xB051D000-0xB051D7FF

IRQ Channel IRQ 4294967293

Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\iastora.sys (12.8.0.1016, 629.85 KB (644,968 bytes), 8/7/2013 4:23 PM)

JackE

Simply F2 into the BIOS menu. Does the INFO tab fully describe the HDD? Jack E/NJ

matttrick

Yes, it shows the "two" kingston drives

JackE

>>>Device would randomly blue screen and reboot to the no disk error, but if i power off and on it boots to windows, then i get the intel storage warning that one of the raid disks has failed. >>>

Yes, this is troubling. To me it suggests an impending SSD failure. As a first order check, have you tried running SFC yet? And if you don't have a raid-specific checker, can you possibly remove each SSD and check them separately on another machine? Jack E/NJ

matttrick

It's actually one drive in a raid configuration. It's also msata so I can't plug it into another machine without an adapter. I will try running sfc tonight, but that has to do with Windows files. The fact that after it crashes there is no device detected before windows loads makes me suspect the raid configuration or the hardware, not so much the OS. I think tonight my goal is run sfc and take an acronis backup

JackE

Then simply try manually error-checking through the drive's properties box. Jack E/NJ

matttrick

Ok so I did the disk repair, it didn't seem to work. Went through and got to a reboot and had to startup repair, didn't seem to actually resolve the errors. I am taking a full backup now. My next steps I am thinking I would like to recreate the raid, install windows, and see if it comes back. Some questions on raids/backups:

I took a system image from within windows. If I delete the raid and recreate it, can i restore from the windows backup? I don't think I will do this but it's nice to know if I can go back.

Any other concerns before I go wiping the raid config? If it persists I will likely replace the drive.

JackE

Are you using a single drive raid mainly for its alleged cache/speed value? Jack E/NJ

matttrick

That's just how it was out of the box. I did consider just moving on without the raid. Think it's a better idea?

JackE

Well it seems to have two m.2 slots to support a usual raid configuration with 2 separate drives for redundancy. A single drive raid might be used for speed-increasing cache but obviously not redundancy. With a single m.2 SSD, might not be a noticeable difference. AHCI mode might be simpler. Jack E/NJ

matttrick

Interesting, I thought it was one drive in there partitioned into two for raid purposes. When I opened it I only saw one. I will double check that tonight when I go home. I really appreciate all of your assistance by the way

JackE

It may indeed have only one m.2 drive but seems to have two m.2 slots for two separate m.2 drives. Jack E/NJ

matttrick

There is only one slot and one drive. It appears, and some googling seems to confirm, that the drive is double sided. So it's one drive in one slot but sort of two drives in one, RAIDed. So I think as long as I keep this drive I need to keep the raid configuration. Does that make sense?

I am thinking wipe the raid, recreate it, install windows, see if the problem persists. If so replace the drive. Right approach?

JackE

OK. That RAID setup makes sense if it's for redundancy, not speed.  The SSDs are plenty fast enough. Good luck. Jack E/NJ