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Difficulty: HardStorage Drives and RAID Array Issues

A desktop technician is troubleshooting a workstation used for high-resolution video editing. The system features a motherboard-managed RAID 0 array consisting of two 2 TB NVMe SSDs configured strictly as a high-speed scratch volume. The user reports that file exports have suddenly become sluggish and occasionally fail with input/output device write errors. OS diagnostics report the volume status as 'Healthy', but a hardware S.M.A.R.T. utility reveals a high count of media errors and an available spare percentage below the critical threshold on one of the NVMe drives. Which of the following is the most appropriate immediate action for the technician to take?

  1. Immediately back up any critical data from the volume, replace the failing drive, recreate the RAID 0 array, and restore the data.Answer
  2. B
    Initiate an automated RAID rebuild operation through the controller utility to sync data from the healthy drive to a hot spare.
  3. C
    Format the scratch volume using Disk Management and run a disk defragmentation pass on both NVMe drives to repair corrupt sectors.
  4. D
    Enter UEFI setup, change the NVMe storage controller mode from AHCI to SATA, and break the array to isolate the faulty drive.

Answer

Immediately back up any critical data from the volume, replace the failing drive, recreate the RAID 0 array, and restore the data.
RAID 0 stripes data across multiple disks to optimize performance but offers no redundancy or fault tolerance. When S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics report critical media errors and low spare blocks on an NVMe SSD in a RAID 0 array, total drive failure is imminent. The technician must immediately salvage any un-backed-up data from the readable volume, replace the defective SSD, define a new RAID 0 array in the controller setup, and restore the data onto the fresh volume.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the RAID configuration and diagnostic metrics.
Identified that the volume uses RAID 0 (striping without redundancy) and one NVMe drive has S.M.A.R.T. flags indicating imminent physical hardware failure.
RAID 0 has zero fault tolerance; if one drive fails completely, all data across the array is lost.
2
Perform an immediate data backup while the drive is still partially operational.
Existing scratch files are secured onto an external or separate storage volume.
Since RAID 0 cannot be degraded or rebuilt, recovering accessible files immediately before total drive collapse is the highest priority.
3
Replace the failing NVMe drive, recreate the RAID 0 array in the storage controller, and restore the backup.
The scratch storage array is restored to full health and performance capacity.
A replacement drive must be initialized into a new RAID 0 volume because striping must be re-established across healthy media.

Key Concept

RAID 0 Fault Tolerance and S.M.A.R.T. Diagnostic Troubleshooting
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Topics

Storage Drives and RAID Array Issues

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