Gigabyte GA890GPA-UD3H - "Raid Degraded" error
This is a mirrored RAID or RAID1 configuration on the Gigabyte GA890GPA-UD3H motherboard using the GSATA (as its a Dual). Bootup the machine, BIOS reports "Raid degraded" error. Rebuild the raid using the BIOS or win util. Reboots with the same problem or after a few cold restarts... CMOS error!
A RAID 1 hard drive configuration is at least to identical drive which are configured to run in parallel, or mirrored. The files are saved identically on both drive. The idea is in the event of a hard drive failure the machine can run on the good drive until the faulty drive is replaced, thus no loss of data. When the faulty drive is replaced the BIOS is instructed to rebuild the mirror by cloning the good drive to the new drive. However this process can take many hours to achieve.
The Gigabyte GA890GPA-UD3H motherboard using the GSATA chip set as its a Dual BIOS machine. Bootup the machine, BIOS reports "Raid degraded" error. Rebuild the raid using the BIOS or win util. On reboot the same problem or after a few cold restarts.
Disconnecting the master hard drive there appears to be no fault. Checking the destination drive and its corrupted. Both drives pass full diagnostics test with no faults found. So I swapped out the cables and connectors, same problem. After a week of rebuilds and testing I purchased a replacement drive as one was showing higher than normal reallocation counts in the SMART. I put the new drive in as destination and rebuilt the raid... same error, and the drive contents was gibberish. Erased all the drives and tried again.... it appeared my motherboard was faulty.
Thinking the GSATA is broken on the motherboard I switched from the GSATA to the AMD RAID and tried again with erased drives. This time weird stuff started happening. Like two raid arrays with the same name ??? Which a clue to the real fault. Then I got to think, how does the BIOS know which drives to pair as a RAID, the drive table must be keep in the CMOS memory. This is usual a small area of battery backed memory containing all the BIOS settings.
If your ever driven nuts with what appears to be a broken raid on the motherboard or duff hard drives and yet everything else seems to check out 
... Just try this...
Even using the BIOS upgrade tools and hitting the "Default settings" button doesn't clear all the CMOS memory back to defaults. Simply unplug the machine from the mains, and short the CLR_CMOS jumper for one minute or flip the battery out. Reinsert the battery, set up the BIOS with time, date, and stuff. And like magic the RAID is sane once again.
This motherboard has a new chipset for AM3 motherboard, it called AMD 890 GX which has been embedded to Gigabyte GA-890 GPA-UD3H. DDR3, USB 3 and SATA 3, furthermore this Gigabyte motherboard is also equipped with AMD hybrid crossfire and AMD crossfireX features. It means, multi-discrete graphics exercise can be also integrated to the computer system. For security of motherboard, Gigabyte provides heatsink which has been equipped with heatpipe, it uses paralel to freeze the northbridge chipset and MOSFET,
In addition equipped with overall solid capacitor, GA-890 GPA-UD3H also has onboard GPU which has sideport DDR 3 memory. So it will automatically increase the onboard graphic performance.
Other features of Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H :
- AM3 socket.
- FSB / BIOS : 5200 MT/s
- DIMM Slots : 4x DDR3 1866
- Max memory : 16GB
- Integrated Audio : Realtec ALCC892
- Integrated Graphic : ATI radeon 4290
- Bundle : DVD driver, user manual, SATA cables, IDE cables.