Windows 7 has no notification of RAID failure?

Question

This is a repost of this thread: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/a77c6445-e504-4394-a945-7a6c096e0871 
Per Technet, being a subscriber guarantees me a response from a Microsoft Engineer within two business days, but the previous thread was not answered satisfactorily, and now Microsoft seems to be ignoring it.  Since my previous thread went unresolved
and this is of critical importance, I chose to repost this and get a real answer from Microsoft.
Having Software RAID as a built-in option seems like a great idea. Hard disks are notoriously unreliable, and they carry the most important part of our technological world: our data. Being able to easily build a software RAID from two cheap 1TB drives gives
me so much piece of mind ... or does it?
I've noticed my software RAID seems to be periodically losing sync.* This is worrisome (maybe a drive is failing?) but not nearly as worrisome as HOW I noticed it. For some reason, after cruising along smoothly for several months with my RAID 1, I decided
to check on its status in Computer Management -> Disk Management. And, oh nos! there was my software RAID with a Failed Redundancy Error. I had to "Reactivate Disk" and it started resynching. I decided to check again every so often and everything was fine
again for a while until I lost synch again.
Again, my losing synch is not the point of this post. My point is why was there NO NOTIFICATION of my synchronization loss? I have NO IDEA how long my drives had lost synchronization before I stumbled upon that fact the first time. What is the point of software
RAID if Windows does not inform you that it has failed? I could lose one drive, go cruising along for months thinking I'm fine, then lose the other drive and POW! I'm left with nothing due to a false sense of security (please no lectures on RAID being for
reducing downtime and not for use as a backup solution - I KNOW).
I just had another loss of synchronization, and I checked around to see if I had been notified anywhere else (the Action Center seems like it could be a good candidate for this). Finding nothing, I've come here to post my concerns.
But in order to maintain my required level of uptime, I need to KNOW when a drive has failed redundancy so I can correct the situation (by replacing the drive or other). Where is the notification that I am running on only one drive?
Update: In the previous thread, it was suggested I use the Windows Task Scheduler to make my own custom notification based on RAID failure events in the Event Viewer.  After investigating this unnecessarily obtuse (but usable) solution, it was found
that Windows 7 does not generate any events for RAID synchronization failures.  This is astounding.  What I really want is graphical, e-mail, and event notification of a drive failure.  I will take just an event.  I find it amazing that
the new "Action Center" thinks it is important enough to tell me that my Flash player has a problem, but can't let me know that a drive is failing.  This seems like the perfect job for an OS notification system: to warn you when the feces is about to
impact the ventilator.
*Update: the disk in question ended up dying completely and was replaced under warranty with no problems and the machine is now happily cruising along with 2 working and synchronized hard drives once again.  I would have never noticed I had a failed
hard drive if I didn't check on my own.

Answer 1

This is another Kludge that works on Windows 7
Microsoft Sysinternals has the BGInfo tool, which you can add vbscripts to generate additional data that gets included in the display.
For example:
Fields
- Custom - New - 'MyRAID'
* VB Script file
Path: C:\raidchk.vbs
The contents of raidchk.vbs are below and belong to three websites, put together.
Site A. provided the idea for a vbscript to parse the diskpart.exe info
Site B. provided a better script that produced wscript messages
Site C. explained the wscript object was not available in VB script and to use Createobject instead
Once the script is generating output, adding it to the BGInfo configuration display is as easy as adding the line:
MyRAID:   <MyRAID>
The output of the script gets substituted into the display field.
An improvement would be to WinTask schedule it to periodically update it. The length of the message output will dynamically "shift" the display front an center when a major event happens. The Vbscript could also include a. email, b. eventlogger,
c. whistles and bells audio.. ect..
The reason the information is so hard to get at appears to be because VDS is a COM object based service, which brokers a user tool connection to vendor raid COM interface. There is no native wmi provider that will subscribe to the Microsoft RAID notifications
and provide status information, let alone bind to a notification service like email or eventx. diskpart or dmadmin are the limits provided.
But it almost looks like something Powershell could handle.
VDS Under PowerShell - a hint that it could be done
Some references that the information is readily available:
Volume Object- Mirror is a type of volume to VDS
VDS_VOLUME_PROP structure - a VDS volume has a status structure
status - A
VDS_VOLUME_STATUS enumeration value that specifies the status of the volume.
health - A
VDS_HEALTH enumeration value that specifies the health state of the volume.
TransitionState - A
VDS_TRANSITION_STATE enumeration value that specifies the transition state of the volume.
VDS_VOLUME_NOTIFICATION structure - a VDS volume
An application can receive volume events by implementing the
IVdsAdviseSink interface and passing the interface pointer as an argument to the
IVdsService::Advise method.
To get the volume object, use the
IVdsService::GetObject method. You can then use the
IVdsVolume::GetProperties method or the
IVdsVolume2::GetProperties2 method to get the volume properties.
VDS Notifications
I say that without looking around very much. The recommended language for implementing a provider are C/C++ ect.. although I've never heard of a VB script wmi provider.. I think there would be data type language problems. Thus we are left with polling
as with most scripting, or some sort of event trigger like a eventx alert that will run a script as needed. The Advanced XMLconfig for Windows Task Scheduler in Win 7/2008 is quite advanced and has a fine degree of control for matching events if there are
events being logged by the VDS service with actual source data.
VDS is on the way out, the COM interface is deprecated and will not support storage spaces, likewise the API and tools for Storage Spaces will not support VDS. This is a "take a leap of faith" moment.
I tend to prefer to wait a year or two before trusting my data to the effort.
As for Software vs Intel ICH vs dedicated HBA ?
I'm interested at a low level for personal use, something easy and reliable beyond Tape backup or any system that requires me to perform an action, or allocate huge amounts of reduced performance time to feed the Tapes, feed the Backup service.. ect.
I have tried every variation possible and come to the conclusion that at one time Hardware raid made sense on an enterprise level. But never the consumer. The RAID built into the motherboard tends to stay with the motherboard if that dies. Ditto with the
HBA and its impossible trying to source a compatible HBA a season or two after the latest greatest hardware release. A long term available HBA is going to cost lots of money, because they have no other way to make back the money they could have made by releasing
more new product, or to pay for the space to store the inventory. Ebay is not a great hardware vendor HBA sourcing plan. Tape backup and any major network backup system are too slow.
At the same time, BIOS/UEFI being what it is, trusting a bootable volume to RAID between versions from the same manufacturer or differerent manufacturers is fool hardy. There is no incentive for cross vendor bootable RAID support. So plan to burn the bootable
operating system drive, its expendable. Deliberately move the profile and data regions to either junction points or off to the mirror array. When a drive dies, replace it, when a motherboard dies replace it and reinstall the operating system. When all else
fails, import the foreign "soft" raid mirror into another operating system.. and with 2003/XP being over 13 years old and still kicking.. that trumps any hardware vendor for longevity. If W7 lasts that long.. or longer.. it will be a good run. W8/2012
are in their infancy and have a lot of testing to go through in the real world.
And for offsite replication, static archiving. There is always eSATA and an external drive that could be added to the mirror and subsequently broken. Being natively driven by the operating system I would suspect it would be reliable.. but testing is always
the best way to shore up belief.
' Lists all logical drives on the local computer which are configured for
' software RAID. Returns an %ERRORLEVEL% of 1 if any redundant drive is
' not in a "Healthy" state. Returns 0 otherwise.
' Supports Windows Vista/7, Windows 2008/R2
Option Explicit
Dim WshShell, oExec
Dim RegexParse
Dim hasError : hasError = 0
Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set RegexParse = New RegExp
' Execute diskpart
Set oExec = WshShell.Exec("%comspec% /c echo list volume | diskpart.exe")
RegexParse.Pattern = "\s\s(Volume\s\d)\s+([A-Z])\s+(.*)\s\s(NTFS|FAT)\s+(Mirror|RAID-5)\s+(\d+)\s+(..)\s\s([A-Za-z]*\s?[A-Za-z]*)(\s\s)*.*"
While Not oExec.StdOut.AtEndOfStream
Dim regexMatches
Dim Volume, Drive, Description, Redundancy, RaidStatus
Dim CurrentLine : CurrentLine = oExec.StdOut.ReadLine
Set regexMatches = RegexParse.Execute(CurrentLine)
If (regexMatches.Count > 0) Then
Dim match
Set match = regexMatches(0)
If match.SubMatches.Count >= 8 Then
Volume = match.SubMatches(0)
Drive = match.SubMatches(1)
Description = Trim(match.SubMatches(2))
Redundancy = match.SubMatches(4)
RaidStatus = Trim(match.SubMatches(7))
End If
If RaidStatus <> "Healthy" Then
hasError = 1
Echo "**WARNING** "
End If
Echo "Status of " & Redundancy & " " & Drive & ": (" & Description & ") is """ & RaidStatus & """"
End If
Wend
If (hasError) Then
Echo ""
Echo "WARNING: One or more redundant drives are not in a ""Healthy"" state!"
End If
'WScript.Quit(hasError)
-- John Willis