Disaster Recovery to a Gigabyte\Silicon RAID

onclejean

Since I upgraded my PC to include a SATA Raid in July 2003 I have been plagued by the difficulty of recovering from a disaster crash. System includes:
GA-8PENXP Motherboard
Pentium 4 Dual 3.06 Ghz processor
2 X Seagate Barracuda 120 Gb SATA hard disks (type ST312002)
Nvidia Geforce FX5950 (Asus AGP-V998 ultra)
1 x Western Digital Caviar 200 Gb (JB 7200 IDE) backup disk.

I have had many crashes of the RAID without error messages. After a couple of months I tracked the error to a faulty Silicon Raid Controler and swapped the mother board for a new one.

I still get crashes less frequently: I have noticed that occasionally when restarting the RAID is NOT present and that powering off and on again after a minute will bring it back.

So I conclude that inherently the hardware is not stable. This would be less of a problem if it was easy to restore from backup. I have found no way of disaster recovery other than reinstalling Windows [XP Pro + SP1], installing BUMP 4.85 and then doing a restore from file on my backup disk which is one of the previous Westinghouse 200 Gb Caviars [I can restore from HP 4mm dat tape but that is much slower]. Disaster recovery from tape, either BUMP or NTbackup will start, but fails when the RAID is accessed.

Perfect Disk 7 and Ghost 2003 will not restore images of the RAID [though they are supposed to] because they cannot SEE
the RAID.

Has anyone found a good way to recover quickly from disaster. My work involves testing client software so I expect a few crashes. Before the RAID this was no problem I used CASPAR XP to copy within Windows the whole of Disk 0 Western Digital Caviar 200 Gb to Disk1 Western Digital Caviar 200 Gb . If I had a crash I would switch the boot order of the HD's in the bios and boot from the backup and copy it back disk 1 to Disk 0. Just a few minutes.

Now it takse a couple of hours to recover. I am thinking of abandoning the RAID and going back to the old slower but safer system. May be GOBACK on the RAID would help?

I would be glad to learn how other members handle similar problems.

Onclejean

MediaMan

This "may" help.


First this. http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa_raid/sb/CS-008947.htm

There seems to be some problems with Silicon Image SATA controllers on motherboards (Just not Gigabyte) Lots of users are having difficulties with the ICH5R chip for the SATA drives even if they are trying to use the Silicon Image chip. Some have found success by flashing to the latest BIOS so make sure you are up to date.

A few snippets I found which may lead to a clue of a solution

I had two SATA drives, including my boot drive, on the Intel controller. I couldn't enable RAID in the BIOS as long as my drives were on the Intel controller. Intel tech support said I couldn't install the Intel RAID drivers without reinstalling the OS. Fortunately, the 8KNXP uses the Silicon Image 3112 as a second SATA controller, which allowed me to move the two SATA drives to the 3112, then enable RAID in the BIOS, then install the Intel RAID drivers.

I have not yet set up a RAID 1 array because I am trying to find out which has better performance, the Intel ICH5R or the Silicon Image 3112. Anybody know where I can find this out? Will I be able to set up RAID 1 without reinstalling the OS?

One of the problems with the 8KNXP BIOS is that there are three RAID controllers and two SATA controllers, but in the BIOS, settings for SATA and RAID don't specify WHICH controller you are changing the settings for.

Something I have learned after experimenting. The Intel SATA raid bios screen only comes up if you have raid enabled and 2 SATA drives attached. If you only have 1 drive attached, then the bios screen does not come up on bootup.


What I have gleamed is that SATA RAID with the Intel and Silicon Image combination on a LOT of motherboards can be a pain in the arse.

onclejean

Thanks this is very helpful. I think problem is instability of onboard controllers as such and my way out would be to get separate controller card, probably Adaptec.

John

Tex

onclejean wrote:

Thanks this is very helpful. I think problem is instability of onboard controllers as such and my way out would be to get separate controller card, probably Adaptec.

John

Adaptec? Yuck. They don't do good ide or scsi raid regarding performance in general and their non-raid cards rarely perform as well as other brands. If you will instead list exactly your intended goal regarding raid we would be glad to recomend other raid cards if you would like though.

Tex

onclejean

If you will instead list exactly your intended goal regarding raid we would be glad to recomend other raid cards if you would like though.

Thank you for your help. I would welcome your suggestions. I have a striped Raid ) 0+1 240 GB controlled by Gigabyte\Silicon Image on board Raid controller.
My goal is to have a reliable RAID storage. WnX + ntfs is fiarly reliable but it does crash occasionally - sometimes due to Microsoft Updates. I need to be able do recover quickly from such problems. I do not want to have that vulnerability increased by a dodgy setup which looses the RAID in such circumstances, forcing me to re-create the Raid, reinstall Windows and restore the system from archived backup. In my case such a recovery takes about four hours hard work.

In the nine months since I installed my GA-8PENXP with onboard silicon Raid controller I have had the first controller fail completely and the second one is eratic i.e sometime after a restart the Raid is NOT recognised but after a power off/on it is back. I believe that to have reliable controller to get away from this problem.
John

Leonardo

I think you should just get a RAID card.

Tex

Thats his intent Leo. We now dircted him to search for a non adaptec solution. Thats step one.

Step two is helping him select the best solution for his needs. I'm in the middle of the mav's game and heavy beer coinsumption so please help him pick a raid or better yet a raided and non raided solution for now till I get back.

Leonardo

Thanks for bringing me up to speed on thread, Tex.

RAID guys out there, let's find a solution for onclejean. Sorry, I quit RAIDing last summer, and haven't kept up with the changing hardware options.

Spinner

Hi mate, glad you found your way into the forums. After reading about your situation in more detail, I tend to agree with everyone else that getting yourself a standalone PCI card would be best. It looks like we're not dealing with your everyday setup problem here, as I had originally presumed.

I do however suggest before you start buying anything, to update your SATA controller BIOS to the latest version (As MediaMan mentioned). If you let me know which version of your motherboard it is you have, I'll make you one up. As I can guarentee Gigabyte won't have the latest SATA bios from Silicon Image included in their most recent BIOS release for your board. I just want to know whether it is version 1.x or version 2. If after you've tried that new BIOS out, you continue to have problems, then below I have listed a couple of cards for your consideration. Well one really.;)

The first is obviously just a bog standard PCI version of what is probably your current onboard SATA controller type. The second is a little bit more of an upmarket offering from Promise and much more recommendable than the bog standard £20 card. (Which I only really posted to point out how cheap they do come.)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Controller_Cards_49.html - A basic Silicon Image 3112 SATA RAID Controller Card (£20) :thumbsdow
http://www.secure-server-centre.com/eurotech/datasheet.php?partno=E1184 - Promise FastTrak S150 TX4 (£180) :thumbup

Like I said though, let us know your board revision, and I'll whip you up a modded one with the latest SATA controller BIOS.

Also, some related reading: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/dual-sata-roundup.html