The dreaded HDD clunk de-clunk

You may have heard the dreaded HDD clunk before followed by the solid red HDD led! Its really not a sound you want to hear.

For me its not so bad as I'm running a RAID-1 mirror which means I can disconnect the failed drive (order a new one if needed) and still keep working.

I'm running XP on a ASUS P5B Deluxe MB with the Intel Matrix Storage RAID chip enabled. Which is essentially a version of software RAID which is not as quick as hardware RAID but still does the job.

At any rate this is a hardware note for myself as this HDD clunk happens a few times a year, most of the time I can just reset the effected drive and get them to resynch with only one full HDD failure so far. I suspect that this problem is either a power supply issue with my computer or the more likely offender in my mind a software issue (probably XP no doubt).

Anyway here's the procedure I use to reset the HDD and get the Intel Matrix Storage driver to resynch (try it at your own risk) :-

• Identify which drive has failed with the Intel Matrix Storage Console in Windows XP, or sometimes you may need to reboot to the bios to figure this out, or you can disconnect a drive and try to boot up. The failed drive will obviously not boot. Note down the port and serial number of the failed drive. I also note down the good drive and make sure its being used as the main drive when the raid gets rebuilt.
• Disconnect the good drive and boot up to the Intel Matrix BIOS settings i.e. press <ctrl>I, delete the raid volume from the bad drive and then exit.
• Connect the good drive again and boot up to the Intel Matrix BIOS settings again. The BIOS should detect the failed drive (the one with which has been removed from the raid volume) and report the failed drivers port and serial number. A message similar to "Select the correct drive to be rebuilt...Volume with rebuild status will be rebuilt within the OS", check that the port and serial number are correct for the failed drive. Select the drive and exit.
• Once rebooted into XP you will see a popup note in the tray area indicating that the volumes are being rebuilt.

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