What happened to my array??

scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
edited January 2004 in Hardware
I had a raid event the other day http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7699 I got it to boot normaly again. And I am not sure that had anything to do with this but...I ran some attos yesterday and the results were nasty. I did a couple of defrags and ran the attos several times with no improvement. ran chkdsk no problems.The c drive is 15 gigs with 10 free. It also has my OS on it. The atto on the right is from yesterday and the one on the left is from a month or so ago. Any ideas? :scratch::confused:

Intel D875PBZ mobo with onboard 82801ER sata raid controler
2X WD1200JD drives

XP pro sp1

Scott

Comments

  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited December 2003
    Well I've read your previous thread, and Ageek made some good points, which you should follow up on, i.e Cmos battery etc etc. However for now though I'm just gonna forget about your previous problem and try and troubleshoot it as I would as normal so...

    1) run ATTO again in safe mode

    2) before you run ATTO again do a full disk check, make sure it checks the free space as well.

    3) run defrag

    4) disconnect all IDE/SATA devices that you don't need, regardless of the controller used.

    After you've done all of the above and got another ATTO, post it, and well see where we're at.

    Cheers
  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    OK here is the latest
    I ran chkdsk on all three partitions, bad sectors on all. I had the fix errors check box ticked. and after the reboot I have errors on all screens ( see screen shots ) Everything seems to work but it does seem a bit sluggish. I have not re run atto. I did try to boot into safe mode once but it hung while loading drivers .

    What now ?
  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    Well I messed with this for most of the day and I am not making any progress. I installed an 80 gig IDE drive and got all my data off the array. I also did a fresh install of XP pro on the new drive so I wiped and reformated the array and set it up fresh. and running atto from the new drive and checking the array ...no improvment. looks just like the one on the right above. There are no more error flags or messages anywhere. It reports as "Healthy" .
    Should I delete the array and test each drive individualy?

    I need help guys !!!

    Scott
  • madmatmadmat
    edited December 2003
    Kinda reminds me of what happened to my WD 120gig x2 SATA drive array before drive number 2 died, I'd say try running WD's drive diagnostic in DOS but I know from experience that it won't see the drives on the raid controller although it might see them if you switch the IDE/SATA controller to enhanced mode.
    I tried that but my system wouldn't boot off a CD (for some reason when mine's set to enhanced instead of having the SATA controller as raid it won't read the rom's at boot up) and my WD diagnostic is on CD.
  • t1rhinot1rhino Toronto
    edited December 2003
    One of the drives is probably starting to flake.
    Test each drive separatley. You should be able to identify which drive is giving you problems.
  • PreacherPreacher Potomac, MD Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    t1rhino had this to say
    One of the drives is probably starting to flake.
    Test each drive separatley. You should be able to identify which drive is giving you problems.

    I had a similar thing happen on my WD Raptors and it was exactly what t1rhino suggested. I ran both the Quick and Full WD Diagnostics on both my SATA drives. One passed both; the other failed both. Replaced it with an RMA from Western Digital and my problem was fixed.
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited December 2003
    Sadly, I think the bad disk theory is gaining more weight. Test them seperately and use the WD diag tool, i.e take the drives off the RAID controller and test them.
  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    It was one of the drives . It failed all the WD diagnostic test. The are goimg to ship a replacement hopefully before Christmas. Should have it early next week. They were very nice about the whole deal. It is only 4 months old. Anyway this really sucks. So my main rig will be apart for the next week or so. My folding is really going to take a hit. I get my first cog and my machine blows up.

    I will let you know when I get it back up

    Scott
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    Well, you could fold on the IDE. Storage time, as a percentage of WU throughput, is minor on even IDE drives-- say 2 sec per % of WU, average, on ordinary WD BBs, plus another ten to store a WU result, most of which is archiving and compression time (AFAIK, they are zipped, at least results are). SO, you can in fact lose about 2-3 min per WU that way versus RAID. AND, you can boot to IDE, set a logical for large volumes of data if needed AFTER the new HD gets here. A logical raid ARRAY can be a pure data and all-on-RAID volume, for mostly critical data and not the core boot stuff.

    Sorry about the drive, but it is other things than folding that will take a perfomrance hit bad.

    John.
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited December 2003
    scott had this to say
    It was one of the drives . It failed all the WD diagnostic test. The are goimg to ship a replacement hopefully before Christmas. Should have it early next week. They were very nice about the whole deal. It is only 4 months old. Anyway this really sucks. So my main rig will be apart for the next week or so. My folding is really going to take a hit. I get my first cog and my machine blows up.

    I will let you know when I get it back up

    Scott

    That sucks dude, sorry to hear it was actually a dead drive. At least you now know what was going on.

    Let us know when you get the new drive.

    Cheers
  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited January 2004
    Well It has been 2 weeks(23rd) since I advanced rma'd my bad drive .... They still have not shipped it. On the 29th they said it was the holidays and the dept was closed for inventory,but should go out soon. On the 2nd they said (after some in depth investigation ) That they do not have any in stock at this time.And they have no idea when they may be back in stock. I am starting to feel that I am getting the run-around. They have been very nice and appoligetic about the whole thing ....but ... I still have no drive. I asked "Isn't your policy to ship in 3-5 days?" they said "Yes, if we have them ." By chance does any body have any "Buttons" to push at Western Digital ? Like an Email address for somebody who can do something !

    bummed and frustrated

    I want my array back !!

    Scott
  • gtghmgtghm New
    edited January 2004
    scott wrote:
    Well It has been 2 weeks(23rd) since I advanced rma'd my bad drive .... They still have not shipped it. On the 29th they said it was the holidays and the dept was closed for inventory,but should go out soon. On the 2nd they said (after some in depth investigation ) That they do not have any in stock at this time.And they have no idea when they may be back in stock. I am starting to feel that I am getting the run-around. They have been very nice and appoligetic about the whole thing ....but ... I still have no drive. I asked "Isn't your policy to ship in 3-5 days?" they said "Yes, if we have them ." By chance does any body have any "Buttons" to push at Western Digital ? Like an Email address for somebody who can do something !

    bummed and frustrated

    I want my array back !!

    Scott
    I can certianly sympithize with you as I had a very simular thing happen to me.
    I was running raid 0 and one of my 100gb JB drives crapped out on me. I heard a click and then the drive write errors started. The drive started a few times but then just crapped out totaly. I went the advance RMA like you but I had better luck, I got mine on the 29th, about 7-10 days from the time I placed my order. I know its frustrating but keep your chin up, in my experience WD is one of the better companies when it comes to this sorta thing.
    Also by the way, the drive failure taught me a lesson, I won't be running raid 0 again...
    I went to raid 1 (mirror) and I can honestly say that for what I use my rig for I can't tell the difference. Sure there is a bench difference but not enough that I can see or feel it in my progams that I use, and I use AutoCad, Photoshop, dreamweaver, Illistrator and several others. Becides in my case, I got one of those 250gb JB drives add that to my 80gb drive and the 2-100gb drives I think at 530gb total I can afford to drop a 100gb on security. If I ever need more I can always reconfigure the mirror and get back the used space... :)

    GL,
    "g"
  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited January 2004
    I received my replacement drive yesterday..a little over 3 weeks..so much for 3-5 days.
    Installed it last night set up the array and cloned my os and data over to it. And low and behold it seems to be running just fine. see atto below. I am happy again.
    Next question ?
    After that little episode I now "see the light" on the dangers of a raid 0 setup and the possibility for complete data loss. I have a wd80 on an ide channel that I can use for back up and the only thing that needs backed up are my c and d partitions which total 40gigs the remainder of my array is for video editing and archive (I am ripping my VHS collection to DVD ) So ... is there a good way to backup on the fly ( I think power quest "Drive Image" will do it ) or am I better off doing regular ghosts. My time critical data like my accounting program is backed up every time I use it. So the only thing I would be in fear of losing is a few emails if I did not back up on the fly.
    Your thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated.

    Thanks

    Scott
  • gtghmgtghm New
    edited January 2004
    Drive Image is very good for what you want to do. That was my plan, I have/had 2 WD 100gb jb drives in Raid 0 and a wd 250gb jb that was going to serve as a drive that I could back my whole array on to. XP has a built in back up utility but I'm not sure that its as good as drive image. If you are going to do Raid 0, I would suggest getting a copy of Drive Image 7 which allows you to backup from within windows and use the 80gb drive to hold the raid 0 information. You will probably be able to get by with a slightly smaller hard drive than your array at first until your back ups get to be bigger than the 80gb drive, then you'll have to do something different.
    Now that I my self have seen the light, and that raid 0 is only for servers, heavy rendering, and showing off bench marks I have gone away from raid 0. I still back my stuff up though. I don't know, some day I might restore to a raid 0 array but for now I don't need the extra space and I feel more secure. Once you start using your machine as a production rig especially if you run a server on it, complete system redo's become quite a burden. Thus the raid 1 on my rig instead of raid 0....

    Cheers,
    "g"
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