Newbie -Status: Array Offline
Hi, this is my first post.
I have 2 Western Digital Caviars on a GA-7VAXP Ultra motherboard on raid 01 (i think). In Windows XP when i scan for virus the array goes offline, otherwise the hard disk seem to work fine (mostly i use the for apps and video edit). I have no idea why this is happening as the disks function perfectly in all other respects. Perhaps i should add that the disk are partitioned in 2x120 GB and that they are relatively clutter in my computer case. Any help will be appreciated greatly.
Tzorge
I have 2 Western Digital Caviars on a GA-7VAXP Ultra motherboard on raid 01 (i think). In Windows XP when i scan for virus the array goes offline, otherwise the hard disk seem to work fine (mostly i use the for apps and video edit). I have no idea why this is happening as the disks function perfectly in all other respects. Perhaps i should add that the disk are partitioned in 2x120 GB and that they are relatively clutter in my computer case. Any help will be appreciated greatly.
Tzorge
0
Comments
IF you run as Admin, and run program as admin user, while NOT on web, AV will have a better chance of working on anything that is mirrored for both sides of mirror array. Technically, it does not HAVE to access both sides, though, one will do if the arrasy is working-- what happens is thta if you get a virus detect and have a mirror in place, the delete should be delted on both sides or copies of array with a mirror running. IF you run something as user, especially with XP Pro, and you try to delete something that the user does not have full acces to, XP can protect the data integrity of BOTH sides of the mirror. IF you run as admin, the mirror should be working in a normal boot, and then the program can run with admin privileges and have access to all files on ojne side of a mirror. The RAID will automirror the delete also if it is set up right, the AV does not have to directly even try to.
Try a normal run as admin instead of safe mode or normal mode as user, let the AV only work on the source side of the mirror, issues should vaporize, and your box will be reasonably safe when the AV program deletes ONLY the source side of the mirror's copy of a file-- if RAID is working right, RAID will delete the file on other side of mirror (other copy) shortly after AV kills it on source side.
I logged in as admin and used avast and the same thing happened. When it started scanning it went through 500 files and then the array went offline, and i had a 'Windows Dealayed write error'. i have used in the past antivir, as well as norton antivirus, both have come up with the same windows delayed write error, although i must add that i probably run these scanss as user and not admin. Any ideas?
So initially it seems like the array is being read and that all is fiine, in fact it doesn't makle a difference which of the two drives in the array i scan. In all cases the antivirus software goes through a couple of hundred files and then the array goes offline. Might best gues is some hardware problem??
You also mentioned you run it on both disks in the array. Did you mean both partitons? Because if you have two drives in an array thats either raid-0 or raid-1 then you will only see one drive in XP. You may of cut it up and formnated the array into multiple disks your self but if your seeing both physical drives in Disk management then you don't have an array or Win XP isnt see the drives as an array. And if you set one up inside the raid bios but didn't get the right raid driver loaded then Winxp see's the seperate drives but the bios has them in a raid array and that would jack you all up also.
So is the raid controller HPT or Promise or SiI for example and is is it Sata or regular ide? Do the drivers match the bios version correctly or did Win XP load drivers automatically.
I was sorta worried that you "thought" it was raid-1 but wasnt sure. That part is making me sorta cringe. We need to know what controller your using and what you did in the raid bios to create the array as well as the driver being used for the array.
Cheers
Tex
First of all thanks a lot for your replies, i checked the bios which indicates the mode is Stripe so i guess its raid 0 the configuration is of 2 IDE Drives, Promise Fasttrak controller the driver i use is by Microsoft version 5.1.2535.0, Phusically the disks are fine as all checkdisk have come up with no errors as did diskdefragments, problems only arrise by using antivir software.
Striped could still mean either raid-1 or raid-0. Go into disk management and see how large the disk is. When you ran the chkdsk did you have all the extra options selected to do a full surface scan and recover bad sectors?
Boy we sure had a lot of pissed off posters at our old site that had probs with the onboard promise on gigabytes being unstable in raid-1 and slow in raid-0.
Tex
cheers
tzorge
You need to either add another ide drive to backup on or make your self a comprehensive backup strategy based on burning cd's or dvd's. A ton of my stuff does not change very much day to day. The MP3's and directory of ISO's and downloads etc... But my email and documents and pics all do change daily and those directorys are what I make sure I backup. I now finally have the whole family trained to store anything they expect to be backed up in their own "my document" directory or there is no promise it will be backed up either.
If I could get more home users to just repeat that raid-0 rule ten times to themselves so they grasp the importance. "never store anything on raid-0 you can't afford to lose" because if any one disk fails you flush the whole thing. No recovery software can get to it either as half your data is on the failed drive. And yes I know someone will post how they have gone 4 years now and no probs.. And for every one one of those I can find someone crying because it just threw up in his pocket after 60 days and all the family pcis of the last seven years and 6gb of carefully saved porno is now gone forever...
They all have drivers to be loaded and avast's might not be comnpatible with the promise arrays. You might try just doing a google search to see what turns up. And one more clue for ya. Your sharing like four IRQ's fo all the usb, agp, and pci devices and that includes the promise array. So at least one pci slot is sharing an irq with that promise. Find out which one. Its chipset specific usually. On the older abits with via chips we shared slot 5 with onboard raid and we were never supposed to put something ion slot 5 if we used the hpt raid as an example. You might also try adjusting the pci latency of the promise and give it more bandwidth on the pci bus by raising just its own pci latency. Use powerstrip.
Tex
BACK IT UP!!!!
Never run a raid array without a backup of your data somewhere off of the array.
Consider yourself warned! Especially on a Promise lite controller on a Gigabyte board.
Flint
Tex got me again!!!!
Mode can be this:
0+1. IE a mirrored striped array. Set up a dyn volume first, then mirror it, XP and the RAID might end up stripping it if space open on one drive (target) is less than space open on source. THEN, you can have a volume that actually has parts of source and target mixed on a physical drive also if drive or drives are real full. I think this is basically what is happening here in this case, mode is multmodal. To get a non-striped mirror, you need no dyn volumes present unless you know how to limit dyn volumes to physical space on smallest space available on HD at time of create. doing non-dyn volumes mirrors does this. Then you get a plain type 0 with default setup.