Stupid
6 Apr 2004, 1:44am
First, the history:
I built this computer last year in May. My older machine had a Fujitsu drive which failed and I had been meaning to upgrade for soe time, so I built a new one. I based it on an Asus A7N8X-deluxe mainboard. Since SATA drives were pretty expensive at the time, I went with two Maxtor DiamondMax 9 80GB drives in a RAID 0 (striped) array using a Silicon Image 680RAID controller.
The first week in November, one drive had an "event" whichmade me think it had failed. After churning through ChkDsk for 12 hours, the error was clearwed, but not before I was frightened into buying two more drives and setting up a mirror. Unfortunately, the Silicon Image software did not allow me to reconfigure my existing array to acept a mirror, so I reformetted and reinstalled everything.
In January, the slave drive on the secondary channel started acting dodgy. It would drop from the array every few hours, then spend a long time rebuilding, only to drop again in an hour or two. After a few days, it disappeared from the system completely and the secondary master drive started acting dodgy. I pulled the secondary slave drive and everything seemed to be fine (except for only having three drives in a four-drive RAID 0+1 array).
The dodgy drive went into a second system in a non-RAID configuration, where it lives to this day. It has had no hard or soft errors in three months. It is powered up 24/7.
In March, I received a new drive to replace the secondary slave. I instaled it on the controller card, and found that the software would not allow me to add this new drive to the existing array. (This seemed kind of odd to me, since that is exactly why one would HAVE a mirrored set...).
After a few days of running with the fourth drive configured as an independant drive, I received a call from my girlfriend and was told that my computer was "making a clicking sound." I had her do a soft reboot, but it did not respond. So I told her to hit the reset button. When I came home, I was greeted by a notice
SYSTEM DISK NOT FOUND, PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT
I disconnected the (new) fourth drive, hoping that putting the system back into the original (working) state would allow the array to be found. Instead of finding a working RAID, the controller detected all three drives, but would not put them together correctly. I reconfigured the array hoping that it would "pick up" the old data, but it did not. I reinstalled the fourth drive and did a complete rebuild. That was three days ago.
Today, the array is not working again. The secondary channel is "gone" (no drives detected) and the two primary drives are an "invalid RAID set" (even though they -should- make up a complete striped set).
I'm guessing (guessing mind you) that the Silicon Image controller simply can't handle having four drives attached without exploding. I have only had problems when all four drives are in service, and always the secondary slave drive (even when it is a different -physcal- drive).
Now, the questions:
1. Is anyone aware of any "issues" with the Silicon Image 680 chipset similar to what I'm seeing?
2. Can anyone reccomend a good RAID 0+1 controller? I'm interested in a fast controller, but if I have to give up a little bit of speed to gain some reliability, I consider that a worthwhile exchange. Cost is not really a concern, within reason; i've already got $500-600 invested in drives, so as long as the controller is less than it would cost to repace the drives, I'm still ahead.
3. Is there such a thing as a slow-speed, external backup unit that could read the rADI array when I am not using the machine (for example, in the middle of the day) so that should the redundant array "go away" I will at the very least retain my data? If so, how costly are these?
4. Am I being silly for looking at double redundancy?
Thanks for any input from you all.
I built this computer last year in May. My older machine had a Fujitsu drive which failed and I had been meaning to upgrade for soe time, so I built a new one. I based it on an Asus A7N8X-deluxe mainboard. Since SATA drives were pretty expensive at the time, I went with two Maxtor DiamondMax 9 80GB drives in a RAID 0 (striped) array using a Silicon Image 680RAID controller.
The first week in November, one drive had an "event" whichmade me think it had failed. After churning through ChkDsk for 12 hours, the error was clearwed, but not before I was frightened into buying two more drives and setting up a mirror. Unfortunately, the Silicon Image software did not allow me to reconfigure my existing array to acept a mirror, so I reformetted and reinstalled everything.
In January, the slave drive on the secondary channel started acting dodgy. It would drop from the array every few hours, then spend a long time rebuilding, only to drop again in an hour or two. After a few days, it disappeared from the system completely and the secondary master drive started acting dodgy. I pulled the secondary slave drive and everything seemed to be fine (except for only having three drives in a four-drive RAID 0+1 array).
The dodgy drive went into a second system in a non-RAID configuration, where it lives to this day. It has had no hard or soft errors in three months. It is powered up 24/7.
In March, I received a new drive to replace the secondary slave. I instaled it on the controller card, and found that the software would not allow me to add this new drive to the existing array. (This seemed kind of odd to me, since that is exactly why one would HAVE a mirrored set...).
After a few days of running with the fourth drive configured as an independant drive, I received a call from my girlfriend and was told that my computer was "making a clicking sound." I had her do a soft reboot, but it did not respond. So I told her to hit the reset button. When I came home, I was greeted by a notice
SYSTEM DISK NOT FOUND, PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT
I disconnected the (new) fourth drive, hoping that putting the system back into the original (working) state would allow the array to be found. Instead of finding a working RAID, the controller detected all three drives, but would not put them together correctly. I reconfigured the array hoping that it would "pick up" the old data, but it did not. I reinstalled the fourth drive and did a complete rebuild. That was three days ago.
Today, the array is not working again. The secondary channel is "gone" (no drives detected) and the two primary drives are an "invalid RAID set" (even though they -should- make up a complete striped set).
I'm guessing (guessing mind you) that the Silicon Image controller simply can't handle having four drives attached without exploding. I have only had problems when all four drives are in service, and always the secondary slave drive (even when it is a different -physcal- drive).
Now, the questions:
1. Is anyone aware of any "issues" with the Silicon Image 680 chipset similar to what I'm seeing?
2. Can anyone reccomend a good RAID 0+1 controller? I'm interested in a fast controller, but if I have to give up a little bit of speed to gain some reliability, I consider that a worthwhile exchange. Cost is not really a concern, within reason; i've already got $500-600 invested in drives, so as long as the controller is less than it would cost to repace the drives, I'm still ahead.
3. Is there such a thing as a slow-speed, external backup unit that could read the rADI array when I am not using the machine (for example, in the middle of the day) so that should the redundant array "go away" I will at the very least retain my data? If so, how costly are these?
4. Am I being silly for looking at double redundancy?
Thanks for any input from you all.