Solved: Raid Controller Not Recognizing Drives

Theo Lucia

Jan 15, 2024 • Filed to: Answer Hard Drive Problems • Proven solutions

There are numerous cases where people have complained about the Raid controller not recognizing the drives, but there is nothing to be frowned upon. This issue is completely curable. Every problem comes with many solutions, the same goes for this issue. In this guide firstly, you will get to know the reasons behind the problem of the Raid controller not recognizing the drives, once you have known all the reasons, then you will have a list of solutions in line. You just need to stick to the guide and follow all the methods carefully to kick the issue out of your Mac.

Part 1: Why RAID controller has stopped detecting or recognizing drives?

Nothing happens without a back story. The same goes for this dilemma where the Raid controller has stopped detecting drives. The Raid controller may have many reasons for not working properly. Many people report different reasons for this trouble. This logical arrangement of physical drives in a RAID array is susceptible to errors often caused by hardware/software failure and human errors. After a study of multiple cases, these are some of the most common reasons behind the Raid controller not recognizing the drives:

• Smart disk errors can also be the reason behind this issue.
• The most ignored factor is overheating, which can also lead to such errors.
• There is this rare scenario where a Raid may stop detecting Raid drives after a soft reboot.
• Virus infections in the Mac or computer can also lead to this devastating situation.
• A power surge or abrupt shutdown is also sometimes the back story of this trouble faced by the users.
• In some cases, device driver issues, metadata conflicts, etc. This can lead to errors where the Raid controller may stop detecting or recognizing Raid drives.

The purpose of knowing the reasons behind the dilemma is that you make sure to avoid them in the future.

Part 2: How to fix the RAID controller not recognizing drives error?

Now that you have known the causes of the Raid controller not recognizing drives, it is time for you to know the actual methods to solve the issue. There is no solution to this problem, so you are free to try all the methods which suit your scenario the most. Most people don't tend to follow the steps properly and end up creating ten more problems for them. If you want to fix the issue immediately, just follow these troubleshooting methods carefully;

Method 1: Reconstruct a virtual Raid.

Starting from the first and the simplest method, you need to reconstruct a virtual raid. It is because if you are not able to fix the raid controller not recognizing drives error, it is better to construct a virtual raid with the help of raid recovery software. To do this you need to be sure that the software that you are using must be legit and trustable. There is a list of software available in the market but the one best for your task is mentioned below in the guide. Now carefully follow these steps to rebuild your RAID array and recover or back up your inaccessible data.

Recoverit data recovery is remarkable enough to recover more than 1000+ types and formats of data. Recoverit can recover data from almost any of the storage devices used in the 21^st century. Recoverit for external hard drives is widely known software all around the world. The software can recover data from crashed computers and can have advanced repair that can repair corrupted videos. There are very few steps to be followed. Use these steps to restore your data from the undetectable hard drive.

Step 1 Launch recover it on the computer

The first task is to download and install the recovery software on your computer or Mac. Once it is installed, you can just double-click the icon on the desktop to run the application or you can find it in the search bar and open it from there.

Step 2 Select the device

Once you've opened the application, the steps are easy and simple after that. You need to select the drive under the "Devices" option in front of you. Make sure you select the hard drive you want to make back up of, the hard drive which is not detected by the Raid controller. Once you have recognized your hard drive. Click on the "Start" tab to move forward.

Step 3: Scan the location

Recoverit is famous for its deep scanning process. Once you have pressed the tab "start" the software will start the deep scanning process for the hard drive you want to recover data from. You can even either pause or resume the scanning process. It will take a few minutes to finish the scanning. Sometimes, a few hours are required if many large-sized files are present. During the scanning process, you can also pinpoint the files you desire.

Step 4: Preview and recover files

The scanning process might take some time. After the process has been completed, you will be able to preview all the data you have on your undetectable hard drive and now found after the deep scanning process. You can preview multiple types of data, may it be videos, pictures, or audio. Moreover, when you click on the file, some information about the file will display, including the file name, file size, file path, and the modified date. Without thinking further, you need to select the button "recover" to enable the final and most important recovering process. The recovery time of the data will depend upon the size of the data on the hard drive you have connected. In the end, save your recovered data at the desired location.

Method 2: Inspect drivers

If the above method wasn't effective enough in your situation, then you need to put your eyes on this one. Before proceeding any further, let me tell you that in this task you need to have some technical know-how to easily perform this method. If you can't then get a person who has some know-how of inspecting drivers. In this method, you need to remove all drives from the Raid stack and then connect them to a Windows PC by using SATA or SATA to USB converter cable. Your drive must be compatible with the SATA to USB converter cable if you want to proceed further.

After connecting it to the windows pc use a smart disk monitoring utility such as crystal disk info. In some scenarios, you can also use the software mentioned above to get a better insight into the hard drive.

• If the driver monitor gives you a red alert by displaying poor health and smart warnings, you immediately need to clone the disk as the hard drive may become useless in the future. Not only this, try reconstructing the virtual Raid to avoid data loss.
• If things look perfectly fine with the drive, you can use any of the methods below to fix it.

Method 3: Check/reset BIOS configuration

This method is the shortest and simplest of them all. In this method, there are a few steps you need to follow and get rid of the problem. Firstly, you must make sure that the BIOS settings are defined as per the Raid setup. If you witness any changes in the BIOS due to any update or corruption, you need to revert those as soon as possible. If you see no change then you can also update or downgrade your BIOS to make the Raid detect your hard drive.

Note: The process of updating the BIOS is safe only if it completes successfully. The thing that you need to keep in mind is that downgrading your BIOS may not be a good idea. Downgrading the BIOS can be fatal for the system as it can brick your laptop or pc. If the downgrade process is failed in between due to any reason, then your system BIOS may be corrupted.

Furthermore, you need to check the SATA mode selection or any similar in your system BIOS to ensure that the Raid is selected instead of the SATA drive.

SATA-mode-selection

Method 4: Replace or try another Raid controller

This is the last method you can try to detect your hard drives. In this method, you finally need to replace or try another Raid controller. You can only proceed in this method if your Raid array is external or network connected. If yes, then try replacing the hardware controller. In other words, you can just try another controller to check if your hard drives are detectable or recognized.

This method might not be for everyone, as the hardware controllers are not too cheap for everyone to buy. So, if you can afford it, then only perform this method. The more expensive this method is, the more effective it is. If not, then just try the above methods again properly, they might give you relief by detecting your hard drive by trying again and again properly.

Conclusion

A Raid controller detection works efficiently only when there are defined parameters for it. Otherwise, if any of the predefined settings conflict or changes due to BIOS misconfiguration, damage, or corruption can lead to the poor working of the Raid controller, which finally results in an undetectable hard drive by the Raid controller. Apart from this logical and physical error can also interrupt the working of the Raid controller. The purpose of mentioning the causes is to make you vigilant in the future for any casualty. Furthermore, this guide has mentioned all the possible solutions to the problem of the Raid controller not detecting the hard drives. All you need to do is to focus on the method which is most adjustable in your case. Keep in mind that the data is the most important thing on the hard drive, you must keep a backup to avoid stress in situations where issues like "Raid controller not recognizing drive might occur.