Z77X- D3H RAID gone?

[jaseem.abdu]

Hi,

PC Specs

Gigabyte Z77X-D3H intel i5 with 16GB RAM

Hard drives = 4 SSD (OS) =1 DVD DRIVE= 1

HDD 1  = 00254837
HDD 2  = 00253340
HDD 3  = 00252946 GSATA3
HDD 4  = 00262558 GSATA3

I had removed these HDD one by one to check which one was working fine and put one another spare HDD drive in the location of HDD 3 to check if spare one was working. Later only I realised it was a RAID configured system. I dont know whether the 3rd and 4 th is RAID configured. But one and 2 was raid configured as when i removed any one of the 1 and 2 it shows degraded message. But i was unaware of 3rd and 4th. This in now I start receive a message to Initialize the 3rd disk when i log into Windows/ Disk Management.

1.What will happen if I Initialize the DISK 3?
2.Can I plug in to another desktop to check if any data is there in that disk? (probably there wont be as its showing unallocated space)


3. My Bios only shows SATA PORT 0 to 5 and not GSATA3 port 6 and 7 . Why?

4. CTRL + I shows VOLUME 0 in RAID volumes and 3 physical devices ( 2 HDD, SSD)
    The 2 HDD is 0 = 254837 and 1 = 253340.

Why other 2 physical drives are not showing?

[shadowsports]

I would suggest reviewing your manual and familiarize yourself with the possible RAID configurations that are supported on this board.   

Your board has 2 controllers, one is intel based Z77, one Marvell 88SE9172 (GSATA).  Note the location of the connectors, and review correct configurations on pages (intel) 81 and (Marvell) 89.  Note* only SATA3 0~1 are 6Gbs (on the intel controller)   

Reference:
Chipset: 1.2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (SATA3 0/SATA3 1) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
2.4 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2 2~SATA2 5) supporting up to 4 SATA 3Gb/s devices
3.1 x mSATA connector
 * The SATA2 5 connector will become unavailable when the mSATA connector is installed with a solid state drive.
4.Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10
 * When a RAID set is built across the SATA 6Gb/s and SATA 3Gb/s channels, the system performance of the RAID set may vary depending on the devices being connected.

Marvell 88SE9172 chip: 1.2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (GSATA3 6/GSATA3 7) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
2.Support for RAID 0 and RAID 1

This is were things become unclear.  Do you have 4 disks + 1 SSD or just 4 disks total?  If the Z77 RAID BIOS shows 3 disks, then I assume you have 5 total drives and 1 is a SSD?  You don't have to include all disks connected to a controller in a RAID.  One could be a boot drive (example SSD) with the two others being RAID.   

I'm not clear about this from your description. 

If disks 3 and 4 were connected to the Marvell controller.  This controller has its own RAID BIOS.  Try CTRL+M during POST.  See page 90 in order to see where disks connected to the Marvell controller will appear in BIOS. 

**Important, your drives must be reconnected to the same controllers/ports if ANY recovery is possible.  If drives 3 and 4 were connected to the Marvell controller, then they were in a RAID 0 or 1 Config as you cannot build arrays across the different controllers on this board.

If the RAID level was 1 on both arrays and you reconnect them to the same controller/ports and set the operate mode to "RAID" both will likely recover in a degraded mode and can be rebuilt without data loss.

If the disks on the secondary controller were RAID 0 and you started the machine with one of the disk members missing or removed, that array will be broken.  It will have to be rebuilt and recovered from back up.

My advice is based off the information you provided.  You are welcome to clarify anything that appears obvious to you, but is unclear to us simply by reading your post.