A workstation experiencing severely degraded storage performance features a motherboard-based UEFI firmware RAID 1 array configured with two internal M.2 NVMe SSDs. Diagnostics confirm that Drive 1 has failed due to unrecoverable S.M.A.R.T. read errors. Because internal M.2 PCIe slots on this motherboard do not support hot-swapping, place the recovery and rebuild steps in the correct chronological order from first to last.
- 1Perform a graceful shutdown of the operating system and disconnect the AC power cord from the power supply.
- 2Attach an ESD wrist strap, open the workstation chassis, and replace the failed M.2 NVMe drive with a functional drive of equal or greater capacity.
- 3Power on the system and press the key combination during POST to enter the UEFI RAID controller setup interface.
- 4Select the degraded RAID 1 volume, designate the replacement M.2 SSD as the member drive, and initiate the volume rebuild.
- 5Boot into the host operating system and monitor disk management utilities until the array status returns to healthy.
Answer
The correct troubleshooting sequence begins with shutting down and disconnecting system power, followed by ESD-safe physical replacement of the failed M.2 NVMe drive, entering the UEFI RAID utility at system startup, assigning the replacement drive to rebuild the degraded RAID 1 array, and finally validating array health inside the operating system.
The process follows CompTIA troubleshooting methodology for non-hot-swappable storage arrays: isolate electrical power, replace hardware using ESD protection, configure array assignment in UEFI RAID firmware, initiate rebuild, and verify healthy volume status in the host OS.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
RAID 1 Firmware Array Rebuild for Non-Hot-Swappable Storage