RAID1 got degraded?

I got a dilemma and I hope someone who's experienced in this could help.

Just yesterday I updated my Vista via Windows Update (pretty much just maleware update and outlook express "junk filter"). Anyways I didn't reboot my PC afterwards since it didn't say so.

Later on, I decided to record some gameplay videos with my WinFast PvR.. this caused my program to freeze/crash but I was still able to do stuff (aside from that WinFast PvR which was frozen.. which I forced "end process" via Task Manager).

Anyways, I decided to reboot since the winfast.exe is still in the Task Manager which I couldn't end process... during the reboot when Vista was shutting down, it said "Wait while Windows configure the update". I assume it is from the "Windows Update" from the previous hours before.

During the reboot.. DFI LP UT NF680I LT SLI-T2 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i LT SLI stated my 2nd RAID1 got "Degraded". It looked something like this:

Drive 1 RAID1 OK
Drive 3 RAID1 "DEGRADED"
Drive 4 RAID1 "DEGRADED"


Anyone can explain what happened and how to solve this dilemma?

This is what my system is like:

[SATA] Drive 1 + Drive 2 (Vista OS) = 1st RAID1
[SATA] Drive 3 + Drive 4 (Games/Videos/Music) = 2nd RAID1
[IDE] Drive 5 (recording of gameplay vids with WinFast PvR)

I got a few theories though:

#01) The Windows Update caused a screwup and caused the 2nd RAID1 to degrade.

#02) WinFast PvR crash somehow caused it..

#03) Hard drive failed... (kind of hard to believe since it is less than a few months since I bought it)

#04) 2nd RAID1 only had 10gig of free space out of 290gig (320gig Seagate Hdrive), maybe there's a required minimum about of space needed to use RAID1?


Basically:

01) Is degraded a bad thing?

02) How do I solve this problem?

03) How do I see if either Drive 3 or Drive 4 have a problem? I did a scandisk with Vista and no problems was found.

04) Is it possible to RAID1 again WITHOUT losing data from my Drive 3/4? It's strange though, my 4th Hard Drive says it has 25gig left free while my 3rd HardDrive says it has 35gig left free.


Thanks to anyone who can help out. I wiki checked and google checked but nothing detailed that can help me solve this problem.

- LL

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID1#RAID_1
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-021015.htm