widespread file corruption?
first off, here's my hardware setup:
160gb hitachi - Windows, ISOs
200gb wd - anime, music
250gb maxtor - page file, download folder, movies
all running on a promise ata-100 card that came with the WD drive
recently i discovered that the majority of my movies had become corrupted, as well as some of my anime. what seems wierd to me about the whole thing is that the corruption seems to be on a folder by folder basis. for example, on my anime drive, one of my series has gone bad, another has not. and i cant think of any reason why this would be happening, and why i haven't seen some indication of it from anything else. as far as i can tell, all my music is fine - this is ONLY happening to video files.
i've been using BSPlayer for watching videos, and diskeeper to keep the drives in top condition.
any thoughts?
160gb hitachi - Windows, ISOs
200gb wd - anime, music
250gb maxtor - page file, download folder, movies
all running on a promise ata-100 card that came with the WD drive
recently i discovered that the majority of my movies had become corrupted, as well as some of my anime. what seems wierd to me about the whole thing is that the corruption seems to be on a folder by folder basis. for example, on my anime drive, one of my series has gone bad, another has not. and i cant think of any reason why this would be happening, and why i haven't seen some indication of it from anything else. as far as i can tell, all my music is fine - this is ONLY happening to video files.
i've been using BSPlayer for watching videos, and diskeeper to keep the drives in top condition.
any thoughts?
0
Comments
Thrax - no Viri or Spyware, I scan regularly
I'm not at home, so I can't do any of this right now, but its enirely possible the IDE cables are bad, since both of my affected drives are running off the same cable. I'll also check spacemonger again and run a virus scan when i get there
however, any more suggestions or how to further isolate the problem would be appreciated
tex
because i only noticed the problem when i transferred some stuff to a friend and he said "what the hell, why is all this corrupt." everything i've been using seems to be in tiptop shape.
i have run memtest extensively on this memory, but its still possible it could be the culprit
download the drive fitness test for all three drives, all of them make one. Run it on the drives. you will not be able to use it while its on the controller. Also back up your data as its possible the tests can cause issues. This way however you can rule out the drives from the equation. Then run memtest, rule out the memory. Then you can isolate it to a faulty cable or the POS fast track controller.
BUT BACK YOUR DATA ASAP. if that controller is going, its only a matter of time before something really bad happens...
Gobbles
is it possible its only one channel on the controller thats going?
also, im thinking about ordering a highpoint rocket133 from newegg. I've never used a highpoint pci card, any feedback?
btw, thanks a bunch for all you guys' help and your quick responses. I wouldn't have expected this kind of assistance at anywhere other than the emergency help forum
I have the promise and hpt ide cards (non raided and raid versions) and all have worked great. When the via chipset was so mucked up years ago i was hanging promise ultra100's on most my boxs as I want all the cdrom/dvd drives to be masters on their own channels and my cdroms seemed to burn faster and more reliably on the promise cards then off the via's internal ide's.
But as long as the card has stable drivers even the SI cards would all be acceptable for just hanging regular drives off of.
I've had tons more probs with crappy round ide cables then all the cards put together.
Tex
it does appear to be confined to one channel, which is why the first thing im doing is switching the ide cable. i know how to check to see whether its working right too, the wierd bittorrent problem i was having ought to go away
We abandoned promise here in favor of 3ware as we found the performed better and we had half the failure rate.
Gobbles
I'm running an extended check just to be sure, but I swapped my drive onto the onboard controller (it was the only thing on the Promise controller) and everything appears to be running fine. Before I did that I duplicated the "delayed write fail" error by transferring large files from C: to E: (the drive thats giving me errors). Removed the promise card, and now chkdsk shows no errors (before it showed "2nd NTFS Boot sector is unwriteable"). I'll keep my fingers crossed that no more errors crop up but I think I've nabbed the culprit.
I hate this dell box but one thing I do like about is that the drive bay swivels out for easy access to the jumpers...had to play with those for a second to get em working cause the WD200SE is conveniently completely devoid of jumper labelling.
Promise cards are for small-medium businesses with smaller RAID data flow needs than heavier enterprise would need and are for consumers, TYPICALLY. 3Ware is for industry use. So, 3Ware accents reliability under heavy load, Promise less so on that particular thing (reliability under load). Promise puts more functions in software, 3Ware more in firmware and on-card buffering. A Promise array will want more RAM for controller and support due to drivers handling more than 3Ware cards need to have handled for them in drivers.
For RAID, I would say a graphics\media dev would want Industrial kinds of RAID support.
Tex
1. Promise buffers a lot in RAM.
2. Promise controllers are more sensitive to mismatched drives (more timing tight by default across whole array on one controller card) in an array than some other mfr's cards, even down to embedded controller on HD rev and firmware on embedded HD controller variants. NOTE, the bigger and newest HD models tend to get firmware revs more often, the mature models get less dev on this aspect, so mature HD models tend to be safer for RAID as far as pure reliability goes.
If I am gonna set up an array, I guess my usage, spec drives 4X larger, and buy whole array worth at once. Controllers that rely on RAM tend to buffer in common, and allocate same size buffer in RAM for each drive present. So, if you get a slower drive or one with multiple platters of same total capacity as one alos on array that is single platter, you will get one drive pausing while other moves faster, one drive will have more data dropouts or need more buffer in size to compensate than other.
One reason Longhorn is expected to want a GIG of RAM ideally is Dyn volume mgmnt. Software RAID takes up RAM for itself, guaged to speed and structure of drives versus CPU speed. high media files are very large.
One things your boxes might have in common, those of you with RAID issues, is RAM amount, another possible is drives of different models or firmware revs on Hds in array. With Promise this is critical.
ANOTHER thing that might ACTUALLY HELP is the XP update that keeps XP from shutting down so fast with large Hds present. If you reload and have large dyn volumes or large physical mechs present, suggest you get the large drive update from Microsoft. It lets XP give more slack-before-fail time to ALL HD writes without abandoning writes or pending them to swap if the system is low on free resources due to heavy use. Also, if you want RAID, in all windows, setting up the default machine type to server will give you more RAID stability, but doing this will require more RAM also.
While we are on swap file or Pagefile, let me note this: DO NOT swap to a RAID array, Use a HD not in RAID array for O\S core and swap. This will help make things more stable also.
Also note, RAID will be sensitive to OCing, especially with relatively slow or unstable RAM present. timing ratios need to be tighter.
Tex, part of Promise's problem is the mix of what is in drivers (functions that are in firmware on card on 3Ware cards are in drivers or included software with many Promise solutions) and what is in firmware versus some very high end Adaptec's and 3Ware cards. Also the amount of on-board buffering on card if not an embedded RAID "solution." Promise is more likely to buffer heavily in main system RAM, and have drivers and software handle things the 3Ware cards do on the card. I have had to couble RAM to get Promsie cards to have stable RAID, versus high end cards like those 3Ware uses. Yes, problem exists in drivers or BIOS (more functions are soft in sense of software run in main system resource pool with Promise), but problems are mostly due also to what the Promise cards also need in the way of main system resources JUST to BUFFER aggressive data flows.
swapped the Promise Ultra100TX2 for a Highpoint Rocket133
swapped the No-name rounded cables for Vantec
ran drive tests on all drives off the onboard ide controller
ran hijackthis, spybot, cwshredder, chkdsk, AV scan
nothing is any different. since this is a new problem, i've tried moving pci slots
i've had to destroy a lot of data though, this is getting fairly annoying