Windows 10 software RAID mirrored boot volume: How to make second disk bootable when first isn't present?

Question

I'm searching and researching for answers for days now with little success. I've setup a Windows 10 software RAID-1 nurrir with 2 ADATA 240gb SSD disks.

I expected that when 1 drive fails, then the other one would take over. I also expected that if I remove 1 drive, then the other would take over. This is only true for the first drive. So what does the second do? If it's the only drive attached, Windows won't start.

I even tried installing Windows on the second drive as well so the 2 "EFI" and "Recovery" partitions are also added. Later in Windows I removed the main Windows partition and set up a mirror with the Windows partition of the first drive. This went fine, but also didn't make the second disk bootable.

How do I setup Windows RAID-1 so that either disk can take over running Windows, and I just have to replace the disk on failure?

Would fake (motherboard) RAID be a better solution? Or will that also prevent Windows from booting if one disk fails?

Thanks.

Solution

It may be because of how you set them up. I know it's a long read, but check out this monster article from Microsoft.... "How to establish and boot to GPT mirrors on 64-bit Windows"... https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/814070/how-to-establish-and-boot-to-gpt-mirrors-on-64-bit-windows

Comments

[Tom Yan]

I don't get it. What's the "software" raid are you referring to?

[Don't Root here plz...]

I don't think you understood the concept of Raid. In Raid, there is no disk 1 or disk 2, so if any one of the drives stop working, nothing will happen. Both disks can take over the Windows anyway.You'll have to setup raid from the bios for this to work properly though. From your side it seems that you haven't setup raid properly.

[Peps]

@TomYan, windows mirror, software raid, see prntscr.com/ars2om

[Peps]

@Private, in windows software raid, if physical drive 2 stops, indeed drive 1 will continue running windows. Other way around, if physical drive 1 stops, physical drive 2 won't run windows for some reason. It won't boot windows.

[Peps]

Lets break the question down to a simpler one: how to make disk 1 boatable independant from disk 0 but keep the mirror? prntscr.com/arsl9y

[ThorSummoner]

(unrelated) fwiw, i tried to use raid on an MSI motherboard: it did Intel Rapid Storage (RSTe), which part the raid member's storage in raid1 mode (this wiped my pre-flashed media, gee thanks for the non-waning and wasting my time MSI), this surprised me, I expected to plug two mirrors in and get block wise raid1 pass-through in raid1 mode -- is this not the "point" of a hardware raid controller, to do media-and-os-transparent raid? to me, hardware raid (or RSTe) looks like worse software raid (worse because I cant do any operations like flashing the drive members out-of-situ/in-advance)