RAID 0 failure
Hi;
My Asus system just experienced a failure on it's RAID0 array.
The system was working fine until yesterday morning when it would not boot into either of the Windows XP Pro installations on the system.
There is a 3rd install however, which is on a standard SATA drive (not part of the RAID array) and it will boot fine.
The RAID array is installed on the Intel ICH6R controller.
When I configure the ICH6R as standard SATA, I can see the two RAID drives in Disk management when booted into the good OS.
Of course these drives are now configured as stand-alone, not RAID.
Now, what is interesting is that Disk0 shows one 10GB partition as Healthy and Active, and the remaining 139GB of that drive as Unallocated.
Disk 1 (identical to Disk 0) shows as completely Unallocated.
Disk 2 is where the good OS is installed, and this of course shows as Healthy System.
All 3 disks are Seagate ST3160827AS
At some point during my troubleshooting, I was able to get the prompt to press Ctl-I for access to the ICH6R RAID configuration, and this indicated that the RAID volumes had failed.
But most of the time, I don't even get the prompt for Ctl-I, so I cannot get into the ICH6R config.
Also note that just prior to gaining access to ICH6R config through BIOS, I got a popup in the good Windows install that there was a problem with the RAID volume on the ICH6R controller.
What that utility told me is that there was a disk missing from the RAID array.
All indications point towards a failed hard drive. I listened to both drives, and they are spinning up, and I can hear clicking, indicating that the heads are moving at startup. They both sounded the same to me. No strange noises.
I am fully backed up, so this is not a crisis, but I will of course have to re-install my OS and apps.
I am also concerned that there is a slight chance that the problem is the ICH6R controller, however, I would think that if this were the problem, the BIOS and Windows would not recognize the drives connected as standard SATA, as they do.
My plans now are to buy 2 new HDD's, and set up either stand-alone SATA, or go with RAID1. At least with RAID1, I get the fault protection I didn't have with RAID0. But at the time of setting up this system, I was going for performance, and understood the risk of using a RAID0 array. I suppose that if I want the best of both worlds, I would go with RAID 0+1, using 4 disks, but right now I am on a limited budget, so buying 4 new HDD's is doubtful.
I would appreciate any comments, suggestions.
Maybe there is a RAID utility that can be launched from the floppy which would provide more information than the ROM based versions do?
Thanks
FW
Hi;
My Asus system just experienced a failure on it's RAID0 array.
The system was working fine until yesterday morning when it would not boot into either of the Windows XP Pro installations on the system.
There is a 3rd install however, which is on a standard SATA drive (not part of the RAID array) and it will boot fine.
The RAID array is installed on the Intel ICH6R controller.
When I configure the ICH6R as standard SATA, I can see the two RAID drives in Disk management when booted into the good OS.
Of course these drives are now configured as stand-alone, not RAID.
Now, what is interesting is that Disk0 shows one 10GB partition as Healthy and Active, and the remaining 139GB of that drive as Unallocated.
Disk 1 (identical to Disk 0) shows as completely Unallocated.
Disk 2 is where the good OS is installed, and this of course shows as Healthy System.
All 3 disks are Seagate ST3160827AS
At some point during my troubleshooting, I was able to get the prompt to press Ctl-I for access to the ICH6R RAID configuration, and this indicated that the RAID volumes had failed.
But most of the time, I don't even get the prompt for Ctl-I, so I cannot get into the ICH6R config.
Also note that just prior to gaining access to ICH6R config through BIOS, I got a popup in the good Windows install that there was a problem with the RAID volume on the ICH6R controller.
What that utility told me is that there was a disk missing from the RAID array.
All indications point towards a failed hard drive. I listened to both drives, and they are spinning up, and I can hear clicking, indicating that the heads are moving at startup. They both sounded the same to me. No strange noises.
I am fully backed up, so this is not a crisis, but I will of course have to re-install my OS and apps.
I am also concerned that there is a slight chance that the problem is the ICH6R controller, however, I would think that if this were the problem, the BIOS and Windows would not recognize the drives connected as standard SATA, as they do.
My plans now are to buy 2 new HDD's, and set up either stand-alone SATA, or go with RAID1. At least with RAID1, I get the fault protection I didn't have with RAID0. But at the time of setting up this system, I was going for performance, and understood the risk of using a RAID0 array. I suppose that if I want the best of both worlds, I would go with RAID 0+1, using 4 disks, but right now I am on a limited budget, so buying 4 new HDD's is doubtful.
I would appreciate any comments, suggestions.
Maybe there is a RAID utility that can be launched from the floppy which would provide more information than the ROM based versions do?
Thanks
FW
