RAID 5 array problem

Hi,
I've a problem arising from the replacement of a drive in a Proliant ML370 G3 RAID 5 array.
What happened is one disc in the array failed. I replaced it and selected the "F1" rebuild option. The system then appeared to start the rebuild, both the green arrow and the green HD icon on the replaced disc flashing. However, when I returned to the server, over a week later, I found that the HD light had gone out but the green arrow continued to flash on occasion. I had expected the HD icon to remain illuminated and the arrow to flash every so often. When I checked in Disc Manager (Windows 2003 Server) this reported that although both partitions allocated to the array were healthy, there was no fault tolerance. I have since rebooted the server which then responded that the same disc had failed and presented me with a rebuild option.
I've now tried to rebuild this array three times without success, the result being the same each time I try. What am I missing?
I'd appreciate any suggestions
Phil

You gave a very nicely detailed list of datum ... thanks, that's rare!
Now ... one other bit ... you mention media being on the Thunderbolt RAID5 ... is everything there, including cache/database/previews/project-file, or just the media? I know that if say everything else was on the system drive, this would probably happen ... the media is the 'easiest' part of the disc-in/out chain as it's mostly "simple" reading of files, those other things are heavy read/write items. I'm assuming you've probably put most of it on that RAID, as the folks on the Tweaker's Page would oft posit.
Neil

Similar Messages

[VIA] K7T266 PRO- RU motherboard: Windows XP on a RAID ARRAY (fasttrak100 LITE)

Hi All!
I have a
MSI K7T266 PRO- RU motherboard, BIOS is the latest, official from MSI website,
Problem short description: Windows XP (sp1 or sp2 english, I tried both)
will not install when I set 2 x 40 Gig = ~80 Gig Stripe Array.
detailed description:
motherboard K7T266 PRO- RU BIOS 1.9 AMI BIOS.
AMD ATHLON XP 1700 + "Palomino" microprocessor, at default speeds.
one piece of 512 PC 3200 RAM, can tell details later.
Power supply: 400 W CODEGEN model : 300X.
HDD-s : one IBM deskstar, fully functional, and a SEAGATE barracuda. seagate SEATOOLS, IBM DFT 32 no errors both.
I set in the FASTTRAK 100 LITE "PDC20276R" (written on the chip) bios a STRIPE array. Powerquest drive magic , or the Windows XP CD handles it fine , as a 80 gig disk.
I downloaded ALL available versions of the FASTTAK 100 LITE driver from the MSI website.
(only tried: MSI driver FASTTRAK 100 lite, the only available driver on the MSI website, and various drivers from www.promise.com) ( http://www.promise.com/support/download/download2_eng.asp?productId=15&category=driver&os=0&go=GO ) (but I guess they WONT support my raid controller on the motherboard)
Windows XP CD , booting, Press F6 for additional RAID /SCSI drivers, I put in the floppy, choose WinXP fasttrak lite driver, windows continues, even formatting the 80 GIG disk, copy files- access the FASTTRAK.SYS driver, EITHER it says: no fixed disk present, press F3 to exit windows setup, or windows setup continues, copies files, reboots, and then STOP ERROR
http://www.martin555.dyndns.org/stop.jpg
please, help me with the following:
how to install XP on a raid array.
is it worth, will it be little bit faster disk load times etc?
is it secure if I trust the HDD-s?
any clue, how to overclock the AMD 1700+ athlon XP palomino to its maximum, but still stability?
AND : I read a lot about some MOD-ded BIOS called " KUNIBERT" , which makes the LITE raid to a FULL RAID and some other extras? where to get it and what to do?
email me if you can martin5 "at" freemail.hu
THANKS !

pardon me, dump? my english is not very perfect.. you mean to trow away, replace to something better, more stable power supply, more powerful?
you must see... first I would like to resolve the "installing XP on a raid array" problem,( how is it possible, is it worth, will it speed up hard disk access and load times... etc... ) and after that maybe I will OC the machine...
it is now , with a 8 cm ventillator and a large aluminium cooler 39 Celsius IDLE and goes to 45 Celsius during EVEREST benchmarking test. (temperatures on 1700+ default setting and OC-'d to 1900+. just experiencing with it. ) (I saw the toms hardware guide movie , smoking processors..)
cheers, Marton.

Problem Installing 817 on Windows 2000 with RAID Array

I am having a problem installing Oracle under windows 2000 which has 2 x 60 GB discs configured in RAID array. When I run the setup program the cursor goes busy for about 10 seconds and returns back to normal and nothing happens !. No errors nothing.
However when I run the Object Manager in the ods_preinstall directory it starts but in the log file I get the following error message:-
02/14/02 09:46:18 : (892) : Error in IO Control call for disk PhysicalDrive0 (Error 21)
02/14/02 09:46:19 : (892) : The count = 28
02/14/02 09:46:19 : (892) : The signature is 0x443aa035
02/14/02 09:46:19 : (892) : Error: First Partition of the disk must be an extended disk
02/14/02 09:46:19 : (892) : Found the partition: 7
Any idea whats happening....? Has anyone seen this before. Do I need to do something special in teh RAID..?
TIA
Martin

Here are some possible solutions:
1. The installation notes state that you must be logged on as Administrator to be able to install 9i. Are you logged on as the Administrator? Being logged on as user01 with Administrator priviledges isn't the same as Administrator.
2. Is the disk full? If I remember my installation correctly, I needed 3 times the size of the files. The documentation will tell you how much space you need.
Hope these two questions help
Regards,
Michael

KT4 Ultra: problem config. raid array IDE3

I owe the MSI 6590 KT4 Ultra BSR mainboard and I have difficulties configurring the RAID array in striping mode, on the IDE3 controller.
The manual describes on page 2-18 it's possible to connect up to 2 hard drives, cdrom, 120mb fd and other devices to the IDE3 controller.
Unfortunately only one of my two MAXTOR D740X-6L (6L080J4) 80gig drives is recognized by the array.
One Maxtor hard drive is jumpered as MASTER and the other is set up as SLAVE.
When I hook up the cable to an ordinary IDE port (eg IDE1) the two drives are properly recognized.
Both drives can be formatted using the regular IDE ports, this means without any cluster errors or other errors so the drives are physically OK.
Before I wrote this post I checked the support section again to make sure I am using the latest BIOS which is 1.1. I also downgraded to 1.0, but that didn't solve my problem either.
Since I work in a computer shop now and then I had the opportunity to check two Maxtor Fireball3 30gig drives on a different MS-6590 RAID board (BIOS 1.1.) and exactly the same problem occurs: the 2nd drive won't be recognized in the ARRAY on IDE3.
Please tell me what to do to make the striping option fully work on my two IDENTICAL Maxtor hard drives since MSI support came up with a standard email, which didn't cheer me up at all. Hopefully this time they will investigate this matter since no doubt more people will experience this.

Thanks for the quick response, though it's not satisfactory for me (of course).
Actually before installing the new KT4 Ultra I owed the KT266 Pro RAID motherboard. It's true this board has two controllers for the RAID option. Nevertheless because after reading the manual of this new board I was convinced I could connect two hard drives on the IDE3-channel. This is the reason I decided to go ahead and to upgrade to this new mainboard.
I guess I have to go back to my employer and fall back again to my KT266 (MS6380).

Boot problems from RAID Array

I have recently reinstalled my system (K7N2G-ILSR).
It was working fine with a RAID array to boot (set to boot from SCSI in Bios).
The RAID array is 1 SATA drive with 1 IDE on IDE3.
I have 2 additional IDE HDDs and 2 Optical Drives (On IDE1&2).
I also have a SCSI controller with one external drive.
While reinstalling I had problems in the windows installer - after partitioning and copying files it would try to reboot, and would then come up NTLDR missing.
I initially thought it must be some confusion with my external SCSI drive trying to boot, but removing made no odds.
I ultimately had to unplug all my non raid HDDs, and it would then boot no problem at all. Unfortunately having got it working, every time I try to plug any IDE HDD back in, it goes back to NTLDR Missing on boot (this is despite boot being set to SCSI in bios, IDE isnt even later in the boot sequence!)
I need to be able to reconnect my drives, but cant find anything comparable in the forum.
Why does it matter if I connect an IDE drive at all when it is set to boot from SCSI (RAID)? Is my bios corrupt or something?
Thanks for any help!
Martyn

Thanks Noby and Richard for the advice, and sorry I have been slow to read it - I've been away.
I'm not sure I didn't do my last installation in exactly the way you describe anyway. Still, it's probably worth another go.
I was hoping for an easy solution without reinstalling yet again, since the system is working albeit with only the RAID array connected.
Assuming the other drives do now have an MBR written to them, even if I reinstall windows without them connected, will they not still cause problems when reconnected?
Am I looking at having to wipe the drives and start again with them too?
Even if I do this, does formatting a drive wipe any MBR on it?
Is there not some way to directly edit the boot record on each drive when windows installer doesn't figure it out right?
Sorry for the multitude of questions but I have had this problem time and time again and never found a reliable solution - last time it seemed simple chance that I ever got the board working!
Thanks again
Martyn

WinXP-64 bit corrupts existing RAID array

I've got an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard running Win XP Pro SP2 on two 36 gig SATA Raptors. Everything was working fine, but I wanted to try the 64 bit version of XP. Grabbed an old 80 gig PATA drive and threw that in the case. Unplugged the SATA drives so as not to risk messing with the existing working OS. Installed the latest 1218 x64 beta and it worked well.
The problem was that when I shut down and reconnected my old RAID array, windows wouldn't boot from it. I lost everything and had to rebuild Windows from scratch. So now I know to never unplug the SATA drives
Rebuilt WinXP on the RAID array and then tried rebooting with the PATA drive with the 64 bit OS. Came up with the "drive needs checking" screen, and proceeds to "fix" the RAID array while ignoring my frantic pounding on the Logitech USB keyboard to stop. Rebooted and yes, the new install was nuked. Okay, since it's gone anyway, reboot to the 64 bit OS and make sure it's got the 64 bit RAID drivers installed.
Reinstall WinXP on the RAID array, reboot to the 64 bit OS on the other drive and the same old scandisk comes and nukes it AGAIN!
So now the PATA drive is sitting on the shelf again, unless someone here can suggest what is causing this problem.
System Specs
Athlon64 3500
gig of PQI 3200 at 2-2-2-5 2.6
2x36 gig Raptors on ports 3-4
Plextor PX-716a DVD+_RW
Visiontek X800 Pro.

The first time you re-installed Win 32 on the raid that was a bit drastic. A repair ought to have done the job.
The problem was probably that you disconnected the array but that's where the boot.ini was and that file needed to be modified to add the path to the Win64 install.
Since you took out the array the Win64 install created a new boot.ini on the PATA drive. Even when you tell BIOS to boot off the array, Windows has a bad habit of looking at the IDE channels & using the boot.ini if it finds one there - but the file it found didn't point to the array of course.
So basically if you already have Win32 on the array I would leave that array connected normally when installing Win64 on the PATA drive and all should be well.
I've installed Win64 on the same array as my Win32 install and they co-exist happily. I reckon that's the most efficient way to do it. The main thing is to make separate partitions for Win32, Win64 and data files when you install Win32 in the first place. The two OSs can share the same data files, incuding stuff like email.

Raid array being seen as 2 individual drives

Hi. Here is the issue as posted in other places. Still searching for the answer to this one.
Specs:
K7n2 delta2 platinum with b50 bios
2x1gb crucial pc3200 2.5cas ram
AMD Barton 2500
2 x 160gb 7200rpm 8mb cache SATA Samsung Hdd's
Thermaltake 430w psu
Gainward fx5700 ultra graphics
OS's: original xp corp, slipstreamed xp corp sp2
raid drivers: nvraid.sys v4.27, 5.10, 5.11 (also the needed nvatabus.sys with those)
I am NOT overclocked.
fsb 166
1:1 ram/cpu
no spread spectrum or other garbage
ddr400 patch disabled
PSU gives presumably stable reading (according to what I see), with amperage ratings above the required.
checked and rechecked cables for bad ones
ran mulitple scans on drives, all come up drives OK
I HAVE installed into Raid 0 already, this is not an issue of hardware failure as far as I am concerned.
So here is the scenario
I have properly set up the array, using correct bios settings and the raid setup utility, for a raid 0 array of those 2 hdd's listed. When booting into xp, either version, I have used all 3 of the driver sets listed. I have been reinstalling to do some performance tests on different configurations.
Anyway, for the last few nights I have been trying to get the windows setup to see the raid 0 array as one 300gb drive. It does not, no matter what I try. It sees them as 2 drives, each being 160gb (or thereabouts). These drives are matched, same firmware, same lot, so that should not be an issue.
I have used numberous tools to delete the mbr on the drives, both in an array and as single drives. I have done the same as well as tried an install and formatted each drive individually, still the same effect when the raid array is recreated.
Basically, I can find no good reason why the array is seen as individuals and not as an array. It is interesting to note, that even though xp setup sees the the array as 2 drives, I can complete the text based portion of setup. However, rebooting to start the GUI portion of setup, it will not boot. Obviously becuase the bios has the controller as the nvraid controller and it is supposed to be a raid 0 array, so I expected that.
Short of rewriting the mbr, either by deleting it or by changing each drive by formatting/partitioning/installing an OS on them, I cannot think of how to fix this. I know the drives and xp cd's work because I have already installed with them.
I understand what to do in the bios portion, and in the raid setup utility portion. I know that I can boot into windows as a single drive and use the nvraid tool to set it up, but that is not the way it should be, and that is not the way I am going to learn WHY this is happening.
Roger that. First set in bios enable raid (in this bios I have to enable IDE array, then choose which controller to actually enable raid on, which happens to have been SATA 1 & 2).
Second, upon reboot, I use the F10 key to enter raid utility. Then, set to striping, set stripe size (which was one of the things I am testing), and add the drives to the array. Next step is to create it. It asks to clear disc data, and it is done.
Have deleted that array as well as just cleared it. Have deleted it and reboot and rebuild it. Have deleted it, reboot, change bios back to non-raid, reboot. Reboot. Change bios back to raid enabled. Reboot. Rebuild array in raid utility, reboot. Run setup, only see 2 hdd's, not one array.
Umm, yep, that is about it.
More to the story now.
From some other posts I tried this.
1. destroy array. reboot. disable raid in bios. reboot. verify sata's visible as singles in bios.
2. power down. pull plugs on sata's. reboot. no drives visible.
3. pull power. jumper clear cmos. wait 60 seconds. re-pin jumper. power up.
4. verify no drives. verify default bios settings. all is good
5. plug drives in. reboot. seen as singles. erase mbr on both drives. reboot
6. enable raid in bios, and choose sata 1 & 2 as "enabled". reboot.
7. use F10 key to setup raid. Here is the interesting part. Even though I deleted the array prior to all of this, and removed the drives to force an ESCD update, and cleard the cmos with the board jumper, and then before raid was enabled, cleared the mbr on the drives, when I started the raid utility, the array was already set up. That is the problem, whatever that is. I have read snippets where it is claimed that this chip or bios or whatever stores some kind of a table on this stuff, but this is a bit out of hand.
That combination, IMO, should have cleared anything out. But, the saga continues.
Thanks for you help BWM
[Edit] BTW, I have finally found a utility that will see a raid array and allow me to clear the arrays mbr. It is called SuperFdisk and is at ptdd.com. So far the only one that see's the 2 drives as 1.
Yeppers.
Started with v5.10 which came on a floppy with the mobo. Told setup to use both, nvatabus.sys and nvraid.sys. Even switched which one of the 2 I picked first, just to see.
Same thing with v4.27 and v5.11. Also tried it with just the nvraid.sys and just the nvatabus.sys (which obviously does squat for raid, lol)
Trying some new things now. Post in a little bit.
I am officially at 'Wit's End'.
Here is what I have tried now.
1.pull drive cables. pull power. jumper clear cmos. wait. power up. no drives
2.plug sata 1 in. boot. drive detected.
3.boot to command.com, run MHDD, which is a nice russian utility similar to Spinrite. Used this to clear the mbr at hardware level, and do a complete erase.
4. reboot to command.com. run superfdisk. erase mbr.
5. pull plug on sata 1, and plug in sata 2 with sata 1 cable. repeat the erasure steps listed above.
6. pull plug on sata 2, no sata plugged in. reboot
7. change bios to raid enable on sata 1 & 2. power down
8. plug in sata 1 & 2. power up.
9. inspect raid utility. no listing of any arrays. reboot
10. in raid utility, build array. did NOT clear discs. reboot
11. attempt install. single drives found again (used both drivers).reboot
12. in raid utility, optioned to CLEAR discs (funny, rebuild option is never valid).reboot
13. attempt install, both drivers, still seen as 2 individuals.
Things to note. When creating an array when presumably there are none, it assigns the raid array an ID of 2. Upon reboot, the ID is now 1. Don't know what difference that makes.
Also, tried the install listed above with APIC functionality both off and on. Also, when on, set MPS to both 1.1 and 1.4. In addition to this, each variant I tried manual HAL layers of, in this order, ACPI (the one that actually spells ACPI out), ACPI Uniprocessor, MPS Uniprocessor, and let it choose it for me.
So, here I sit in a barca-lounger at 'Wit's End', with a warm cup of java and a dinner mint.

Here is the final product on the floppy disk that I used to successfully install a stable raid 0 on the MSI K7N2 Delta 2 Ultra 400 Platinum ms-6570e motherboard.
On root of floppy, from driverset 6.70. (after much testing, I used driver pack 5.10 for my nic and smbus. I used the realtek sound drivers off the cd for audio. I have used every driver pack I could find, and while some did offer better I/O or read/write latency, this set in general provided the most stable environment. The only drivers I used were these floppy drivers for SATA, the nic and smbus just mentioned, the sound just mentioned, and updating the nvide drivers to mside drivers)
<from sataraid directory>
disk1
idecoi.dll
nvatabus.sys
nvraid.cat
nvraid.inf
nvraid.sys
nvraidco.dll
<from legacy directory>
nvata.cat
nvatabus.inf
I used the txtsetup.oem from the sataraid directory, but edited this:
[Files.scsi.RAIDCLASS]
driver = d1,nvraid.sys,RAIDCLASS
inf = d1,nvraid.inf
dll = d1,nvraidco.dll
catalog = d1,nvraid.cat
[Files.scsi.BUSDRV]
driver = d1,nvatabus.sys,BUSDRV
inf = d1, nvraid.inf
dll = d1,idecoi.dll
catalog = d1, nvraid.cat
To this:
[Files.scsi.RAIDCLASS]
driver = d1,nvraid.sys,RAIDCLASS
inf = d1,nvraid.inf
dll = d1,nvraidco.dll
catalog = d1,nvata.cat
[Files.scsi.BUSDRV]
driver = d1,nvatabus.sys,BUSDRV
inf = d1, nvatabus.inf
dll = d1,idecoi.dll
catalog = d1, nvata.cat
Now, it is important to note that I installed or attempted to install at least 50 times. Bare minimum. I noticed when I use this custom driver disc that in the GUI portion of setup, XP asks me for files from the disc. I tried lot's of different things to alleviate this, and denied some of them.
One thing that really bugged me was that the bios would see my #2 optical, slave on secondary IDE channel. A dvd/rw drive. And I could even start the setup from it. But, once I got about 3/4 through copy file stage on text setup portion, I would hang. Becuase the drive was no longer accessible. Booting from the master would get me to the desktop, but the slave optical was nowhere to be found. Updating the ATA/IDE controller to the ms ide drivers would get it visible, but I kept having issues with stability after I did that.
The most stable method I found was to use my above listing of driver files for the floppy, and when in GUI mode setup asks about NVCOI.DLL, I skipped it, ignored it, and did not let setup install it. That actually got me to the desktop, with access to the slave optical as a "removable drive". It even knew what the hardware was. It just could not access it. On a reboot however, back to not seeing it. This method however did allow me to update the nvide driver with the mside driver with no stability issues. So, for me it was a raving success.
Here are some links regarding the SATA RAID driver workaround:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:jHbX5bNfGx4J:www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t51140.html+nforce2+nvraid.sys+ms+ide&hl=en&client=opera
http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=292&Itemid
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:J9UhG2Kd8W4J:www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php%3Ft%3D32751+xp+2+sata+raid+0+seen+as+individual&hl=en&client=opera
Early on one problem I noticed was that in text setup mode of xp installation, there were long pauses that I have never seen before. I noticed that with both ide and sata installs. Also I noticed that when booting there was a really long pause when the xp logo is first seen in a sort of dim state till when it became bright and vivid.
Come to find out that this is a more or less typical scenario. Most instances that I read about were all pointing to the nvide driver. So, I found if I just updated the PATA controller to the standard ms ide driver, that went away and the whole system ran better.
It took awhile to figure out that if you install a driver with the nForce2 chip, you had to uninstall it or you will have issues. Herein was the main problem I encountered with the SATA RAID installs. The nvatabus.sys driver was required for an SATA RAID install. Omitting the ata driver was impossible. And for awhile I had no success updating the ms ide driver once I was to the desktop without major instability. Here are some links regarding the drivers for this chipset:
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/latest-drivers-for-nforce-3-vt60240.html
In my browsing I came across some pretty interesting articles regarding ACPI. One thing I started playing with was the different HAL layers that xp installs on it's own, vs. me picking one manually (F5 key). I must have started the setup at least 50 times to figure out this: that this particular board does not give me the bios settings to install xp with anything but the ACPI Uniprocessor Hal. For instance, the MPS Uniprocessor HAL is much more responsive, but it lacks the IRQ's needed for setup to see the raid array. I booted to each one, some locking the system up, some booting OK. The one I found the best performance with early on was the one that spells out ACPI, not just initialized. (sorry, I don't want to look it up).
I seemed to be getting closer, but I could not find the needed bios settings to properly manage my ACPI, and since I was trying for RAID, I could not use the one that did work. Here is a link for that kind of stuff.
http://www.fceduc.umu.se/~jesruv98/info/acpi/acpi.html
Another thing that I did not like was being forced to use the dynamic overclocking feature of this board. I have a 333mhz barton core, and I have ddr400 ram. In optimized (fool proof) mode in bios, I was running asynchronous. I did not want that. So I set it down to run at 166mhz, with very slow and conservative settings on everything. Unfortunately, if I did this "manual" method, I was forced to use the dynamic overclocking. I thought I had that figured out. So I set everything to "optimized". But, as it turns out, the system had terrible stability without the dynamic overclocking set to at least Private. What this meant is that I could not rule out that my stability issues (corruptions and hangs and bsod) were from being overclocked even a tiny bit or not. And as if that were not enough, this bios has a special set of settings you must unlock to see. And one of those is paramount in achieving a stable system. It is called the DDR400 patch, and it is enabled by default. So, by pressing SHIFT+f2 AND CTRL+F3, these settings are now available. Like I said, I had to disable that DDR400 patch setting.
I also found out from the first day that my board shipped with the latest bios. I flashed the 2 prior versions with no success in more stability. After about 6 weeks of getting whipped on by this board, I found mention of some modded bios's for this board. I have used modded bios's in the past, some worked wonders, others required some serious effort to recover from. What I found out about this board is that there are 2 players who make the modded bios's. Here is the first index I found from a german website. This one actually is for the older B4 version only for the Platinum.
http://storage-raid-forum.de/viewtopic.php?t=2824
And here is an english forum for pretty much the same thing
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/bios-mods-for-k7n-and-k8-boards-vt55014.html
These links have a bit more information, and I decided to go with these. I tried versions b61,b62 and b71. I found b71 to work the best for me. Mind you I am not into overclocking or what-have-you. Just a rig that performs as well as it was advertised to do. Try these out for the bios information:
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=385480
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=84715.0B62
Here is a page that had a bunch of misc stuff I found interesting:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:QkvLeKcbwjQJ:www.amdzone.com/modules.php%3Fop%3Dmodload%26name%3DPNphpBB2%26file%3Dviewtopic%26p%3D75383+nforce2+ultra+nvraid+driver+freeze&hl=en&client=opera
In the end, I have, I think, conquered this board. My findings can be summed up as follows, all in my opion only I guess.
1. There are some ACPI/APIC issues with this board or this chipset. I believe it also included drivers and some can be attributed to XP.
2. There are some major bios issues with this board.
3. There are some major driver issues concerning SATA/RAID. I am not sure who get's the boob prize, nVidia or MSI.
The only way I have found to get RAID 0 installed and stable is to modify my bios (which is a modded beta version), modify my driver disk for SATA/RAID, modify my install sequence for those drivers, modify my drivers within windows after setup, use different drivers from different driver packs for different pieces of hardware, and modify my HAL layer after everything else is done, to achieve peak performance.
If I had not spent soooo much time trying to get a stable install, I would have built up an Unattended CD, which has some possibilities for forcing non WHQL drivers. But, hey man, I am totally burn out on this board. And all it was for is a spare LAN box for when I go to a lanparty. Sheesh. Murphy's law.
Oh, and I also found out, with my own eyes, that the Soyo KT600 Dragon+ that I dumped for this wonderful board, is way faster. Faster read/writes, faster throughput on the nic, faster booting, much faster installs of xp. As a matter of fact, I could get my KT600 to get a consistent thruput on the network to my older KT266a board at 99%. That is pretty fast. 2 of these Platinum boards, on a sweet switch that is tweaked, will only go up to 91%, no matter how much I tweak them. The gigabit connects via a crossover cable at about 38% of full bore. This is tweaked stuff, but still. I listened to the hype. Dual channel memory, giglan, etc etc.
I hope this may help anyone else out there who is still fighting with these issues.
Out.
sul

Raid 0 problem 890gxm-G65

Hello, I've been trying things with my pc for hours but I still don't know what is going wrong.
-I've 2 identical hdd's in sata slots
-I didn't get any option to ctrl + f, so i downloaded: (32 bit) ATI SB7xx/SB8xx RAID Driver from msi
-I put the drivers on my USB stick, booted from it and it installed?? (to where?) a program: raid option rom version 3.2.1540.6 (i downloaded the 32 bit version... my guess now that my usb flashed the bios for raid drivers? but I flashed the wrong bit version, I want to use 64 bit. though it seems strange to me that drivers in Bios are 32 / 64 bit related? since bios flash downloads aren't.)
-I put the 64 bit ATI SB7xx/SB8xx RAID Driver on my USB stick to see if it installed automatically, to bad... it didn't it says (find another boot device or something like that)
-I made an LD works all fine, it says Functional 1.999 TB or something.
-Booting windows installation, can't find the logical drive array, I think: ''no problem I have the drivers.''
-Installed the driver (load driver option) that came with ATI SB7xx/SB8xx RAID Driver [AMD AHCI Compatible RAID Controller (D:\ahcix64s.inf) (x64), but still no recognition.
Is all this going wrong due to a wrong bios update? Or whatever I did with the 32 bit?? Driver software that made the raid array?
My option in the bios AHCI/RAID/IDE = Raid
Raid chip = enabled
While losing my mind hehe, I thought the software should be stored in the bios, with formatted harddisks where else could they be? So I
-flashed the bios to version 1.9 with a fat32 flash function in the bios (n-flash i think)
but I still have that stupid ''raid option rom version 3.2.1540.6'' (32 bit download) Which I expect is the problem here, but I'm raid noob lol.
-Windows does recognize my harddrives when I do IDE instead of RAID in bios.
Questions: Why doesn't Windows 7 recognize my raid array after installing 64 bit raid drivers? Is it due to wrong bios software [raid option rom version 3.2.1540.6]? How can I fix this?
I'm totally lost please help me...
Greetings,
Sten

Quote from: Sabbath on 20-July-11, 23:41:24
Ok,
So if the 64bit driver I linked is seen during your windows install and at that time correctly accepted, as w7 continues its install till its complete, I don't understand why there is a 32 bit pop up.
That is why I suggested starting over being you did install at some point a 32 bit driver.
Does your msi resource CD have a raid driver on it?
When I did my msi raid, I installed my raid driver from msi's site during install and after I was in windows I needed to complete it by installing a raid driver off the CD.
This removed all yellow flags in device manager concerning my raid.
It is accepted, i suppose it's complete. But the 64 bit driver installs 4 times quicker than the 32 bit version. So maybe W7 doesn't install the 64 bit driver good enough? I can't install w7 at all since it can't find any harddrives to install on. I would like to start over, but I don't know how to delete the 32 bit driver... Formatting harddrives doesn't delete the driver, and bringing bios settings to default neither. I flashed the bios to 1.9 which didn't help aswell. If I mark the button ''shows only hardware compatible drivers'' my original msi cd doesn't give any drivers. Though there are drivers on it, but they aren't compatible... Should I flash my bios back to 1.0? Hopefully it will delete all its extra features like raid array. And then I install it with the correct 64 bit driver. But it seems weird that the problem is there... Since it seems logical to me that the bios doesn't work on 32bit / 64 bit programms.
Are there risks concerning flashing the bios back to version 1.0? Would it help? I would like to know where the driver is located... where does it get installed? Did I accidently indeed flashed my bios by booting with the driver usb, how can it be deleteD? And is that the problem? Meh! Thanks for your help Sabbath, appreciated ^^ Isn't there a moderator or technician from MSI on these forums that can help me?

Does "AirPort Disk" work with RAID arrays?

I currently have a RAID 10 array consisting of four USB hard drives all attached to a USB hub. I use it with three different macs (two leopard, one tiger) and have never had any problems. I know that you can attach multiple USB hard drives to an AirPort Extreme Base Station via a hub, but will it recognize a RAID array and make it available as a single volume over the network?

...but will it recognize a RAID array and make it available as a single volume over the network?
Why did you ask that question if the device has never appeared as multiple drives?
I understand that the AEBS is NOT a Mac.
(a) Some RAID devices are hardware RAID devices. These devices use several hard drives but appear to the outside world as a single hard drive.
(b) Some devices allow you to install several hard drives and then these must be pieced together into a software RAID and then appear as a single hard drive. OS X has the ability to do this.
If this device operates like the description in (a) it should have no problem connected to the AEBS.

RAID arrays and Windows

Not sure where to post this one. You have been very helpful before so I’ll try again.
The machine is the Media Centre in my signature.
Installed two new Maxtor SATA drives, set up as RAID 0, clean install of XP MCE. Boots on the RAID array. Not a single problem. Installed MSI drivers, XFS video card drivers and KCorp PCI network adaptor for wireless link. Download and install all Windows updates. All OK.
On a later start up it spends long time trying to detect RAID array, then RAID error. Automatically reboots and detects a healthy raid array. Tries to open Windows but screen goes almost black but faint Windows loading page with the short activity bar showing no activity. If left it eventually springs to life. Tried starting in safe mode, no problem. Restore to an earlier restore point, no better.
The RAID problem is intermittent. The Windows problem looks as if it stalls for a variable length of time before it gets going.
Don’t know where to go next. Any suggestions?

fafner: I wanted a large disk to hold recorded TV progs, videos, CDs etc and 160GB is the max for this mainboard. I went for 2x160GB Maxtor drives. As I was using two drives I reasoned I might as well use RAID 0 to get a single volume and a faster machine. In particular I read somewhere that RAID 0 halved, or nearly so, the start up time. Who wants to wait a couple of minutes for the TV to fire up?
Fredrik: The XFX video card drivers are in fact nVidia drivers which are the latest.
Doctor Stu: I have subsequently installed XP on both drives individually. On one it worked well, on the other same old problem: either the drive not found in the BIOS after the heading ‘Detect IDE drives’ or the screen fades as Windows starts up. Checked both drives with Maxtor’s Powermax disk checking utility. Provided the drive was connected to the SATA1 socket and the other drive not connected both passed the Full Test. I could not get Powermax to recognise SATA2 even though both were detected correctly in the BIOS. My conclusion is that the problem was a dodgy connection which I hope has been rectified with all the swapping around.
Is there disk testing utility that puts the disc under load similar to Mem86 for memory?
Will I try RAID again? I doubt it even though it did start up in far less time.
My thanks to all.

K8N DIAMOND: New Raid array and old HD... I'm going crazy!!! Please

Hi guys
First, sorry for my poor english...
My problem is:
I bought two Raptor 36 Gb for my new raid array.
I have my old HD Hitachi 250 Gb connected on sata 1.
I connected my two raptor, on sata 3 and 4, I enabled all sata port and raid config for ports 3 and 4.
I restart PC, typed F10 and set a stripe array with two raptor. All run ok...
Restarted and boot with my copy of WinXP with SP2 and NF4 raid drivers.
Installation found my array and my Hitachi;
Hitachi with 4 partitions; C (os), D (driver), E (films), F (music)
I create one partitions on my raid array, and it takes I: letter... So I formatted and start to copy os...
Errors occurs when, restarting pc and resetting the boot to Hard disk (the order of booting is 1 - nvidia array, 2 - hitachi 250 gb), just before loading installation, It shows a black screen with an error: "there is an error in your hard disk bla bla bla.. try to control your connection or connect to windows help....bla bla..."
The Raid array works properly, infact I try to disconnect my Hitachi from sata port 1 and all installation works (I'm writing from Win xp on the raid array).
I tried to connect the hitachi on port 1 of silicon image controller.... same error..!!
I'm desperate... I have all my life on my hitachi...
I think that there's a sort of conflict in drive letter assignement... I cant find a solution ..
PLEASE HELP ME!!!

Glad it worked, I had a feeling it would.
Quote
One question for you.. on G: partition, there's a directory called "Windows", do you suggest me to format this partition??
You can format it if you want to free up space, but unless you moved things around the My documents folder and everything in it is on that partition, along with anything you might of had on the old desktop during that Windows install. You might have something you want there, I usually leave mine for a few month, and figure out if I have everything I need.
Quote
What I have to do, if I need to reinstall WIn XP on first partition of raptor array??
Things should be fine now as Windows marked the Hitachi drive as G. You should be able to reinstall without issue. But if you have a lot of sensitive info on the Hitachi, I would always disconnect the Hitachi if doing a fresh install. Once windows is done installing, hook it back up. But next time you shouldn't have to reconfigure NVRAID after disconnecting and reconnecting.

Updating a Hardware RAID array

I'm running a recent Mac Pro model with Hardware RAID and four 1TB SATA drives.
Seagate 1.5TB drives are now available, and they're cheaper than the 1TB drives were just a few months ago.
My Infrant/Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ implements a proprietary form of RAID that they called X-RAID, similar to RAID-5 but with the feature that you can swap larger drives into the array one at a time, and when you're done, the RAID will be re-synced to make use of the additional storage without requiring that you dump and restore the contents of the array. The final re-sync is an admittedly long process (it took three days for mine to update from 4x750GB to 4x1TB) but it's still a very convenient feature.
Does Hardware RAID on Mac OS X have anything like this, i.e. can I replace 1TB drives one at a time with 1.5TB drives and preserve my data? And when I'm done, will the system recognize and use the new storage?
If not, could someone please describe the procedure that I would need to go through in order to achieve this? I presume that I would need to recreate the RAID array entirely, re-install the OS, and then restore the system from my Time Machine backup. But I'm not sure of the details.
I'd appreciate any help with this. Thanks.
An aside: I was more than a little upset a few months ago when I called Apple Support for help with initial setup of my RAID array (I have Apple Care) and was told "Sorry, we don't support Hardware RAID." So Apple was quite happy to sell me an $800 piece of hardware for my lavish new system but didn't bother to tell me at time of purchase that my configuration was "unsupported." It seems a little outrageous to me.
Given Apple's refusal to help me I need to ask the community for help with problems like this.

Hi rrgomes;
Never having heard of X-RAID but going by your comment that is similar to RAID5 I would have to say that you will not be able to upgrade by replacing one disk at a time.
As to no support for the RAID card, I personally would not have taken his word for that. Instead I would have escalated it up through Customer Service just to be sure before I gave up on that point. To me the response you got there sounds bogus.
Allan

Sudden read-only on RAID array.

I don't know if this was caused by an update but suddently my /raid is mounted read-only. It doesn't happen right after the mount but suddently after 1 day of uptime or a few hours and the /raid partition is locked again.
[dezza@dezza ~]$ cd /raid/
[dezza@dezza raid]$ touch me
touch: cannot touch `me': Read-only file system
[dezza@dezza raid]$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 34G 13G 22G 38% /
none 1013M 0 1013M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda3 46M 12M 32M 27% /boot
/dev/md0 466G 364G 103G 79% /raid
[dezza@dezza raid]$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options
> <dump> <pass>
none /dev/pts devpts defaults
0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults
0 0
# Optical drive, CD/DVD
/dev/sr0 /media iso9660,udf ro,user,
noauto,unhide 0 0
# Root, swap, boot
/dev/disk/by-label/root / reiserfs defaults
0 1
/dev/disk/by-label/swap swap swap defaults
0 0
/dev/disk/by-label/boot /boot ext2 defaults
0 1
# RAiD BACKUP (2x 500GB Western Digital 7200RPM)
/dev/md0 /raid reiserfs defaults
,sync,user 0 0
# External 1TB
/dev/disk/by-label/external /mnt/1tb ntfs-3g u
ser,sync,exec,uid=1000,gid=1000,locale=en_DK.utf8,force,noauto 0 0
# VirtualBox
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto,busgid=108,busmode=0775,devgid=108,devmode=0664,lo
cale=en_DK.utf8 0 0
[dezza@dezza raid]$
Last edited by dezza (2009-08-24 14:42:13)

I had the same problem with a hardware RAID array... I was installing Arch in an previously Redhat server.
The error I got just just before the read-only thing was related to the filesystem... (Arch was in reiserfs and /home in Redhat is ext3)
That read-only thing only happened when I was performing heavy load on the raid by rsyncing almost 300GB from RH to the new arch (No error while installing and configure a very complete system).
I though maybe it was that reiserfs wasn't good enough and I tried with no luck using jfs (the same I succesfully use in LVM in my laptop).
At the end I decided to get rid of the filesystem difference and It worked using ext3.
It worked perfectly for almost a month until last week that we had a crash copying 180GB from an USB external drive. We tried again and it worked with no problems. So in conclusion:
I used ext3 successfully but I have one crashed (after the read-only thing the system becomes useless) documented.
I know this is not an answer but I hope this help you or maybe help someone to give us a point.
P.S: The raid arrays are in the same computer (PERC6 I think) using the aacraid driver. One is raid 5 (RH) and the other one is RAID 0 (Arch),

Completely messed up Raid-Array and Partition! How to delete and create new Raid-Array?

Hello,
I am using Ideapad U310 and tried to clean install Windows 8 and use my SSD as CACHE and Hibernate-Partition.
So, I was able to get to the Intel CTRL+I-RAID Config Menu and there I was able to create and delete my RAIDS.
Unfortunately I did not setup the Partition Size correctly, thus I only have a 50 GB Partition combined with my SSD and my HDD. This is what it looks like in the Intel Storage Manager:
As you can see both, my SSD and HDD appears, but only have small partitions on the right. And Windows 8 only recognizes this small partitions, as you can see here:
And now I am NOT able to get to the Intel RAID CTRL+I-menu before Windows starts, where I could delete this array.
My Partitions are "empty", so I dont care if anything is delete. I just want to use raid with FULL CAPACITY of my harddrives. But how can I delete the RAID Arrays and reconfigure them correctly?
When I change in the BIOS from RAID to AHCI I am able to install Windows 8 again with the whol CAPACITY of my SSD and HDD. But then I will not be able to use the RAID via Intel Storage Manager...
Hopefully someone could help me.
Thank you in advance.

Hi
Please see this thread
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/IdeaPad-Y-U-V-Z-and-P-series/The-Guide-on-How-To-Reformat-Repartition-AN...
Hope this helps
Ishaan Ideapad Y560(i3 330m), Hp Elitebook 8460p!(i5-2520M) Hp Pavilion n208tx(i5-4200u)
If you think a post helped you, then you can give Kudos to the post by pressing the Star on the left of the post. If you think a post solved your problem, then mark it as a solution so that others having the same problem can refer to it.

Windows Vista + nVidia i680 MB + RAID5 + iTunes 7.3.2 = RAID array trouble

Dunno if any of you can help out with this but I'm at witt's end over this issue.
I have a Windows Vista box running an Abit In9-32MAX motherboard (nVidia i680 chipset), four drives in a RAID 5 array and using iTunes 7.3.2
Drivers for the motherboard are the most recent ones from the nVidia site. BIOS for motherboard is also current.
Practically ANY time I import any audio or video file over 50 MB into iTunes the entire RAID array will degrade. I'm also having issues transcoding video into Quicktime using Videora which seems to be related to this issue. The video simply refuses to play.
For what it's worth the video/audio content is legit. I own the DVD's that I'm transcoding so I can watch them when I travel.
Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, etc appreciated. I'd love to go a whole week without iTunes/Quicktime forcing me to rebuild the RAID array.

Well, whatever Itunes/quicktime does, it's definitely causing some sort of RAID compatibility. I've had this problem since I got my new rig a month ago. Nvidia 680i SLI board with a RAID 1, and I have it working fine (I've done 3 system restores now) and then I install itunes, and kablooie, there goes the RAID. I can also tell you that even if you disable the mediashield program (NVRAID.exe), it will still happen (this was my last experiment in trying to make it work) and the raid will show up degraded in the BIOS.
Basically, Apple and Nvidia need to exchange a freaking phone call and try and figure out what is causing it to go bad. from reading around, it's not just apple (though they are the biggest culprit). I've seen people mention bittorrent and some other program whose name escapes me at the moment cause this as well (digital imaging program I think).

How do i monitor the health of my Raid array?

First, I want to thank Harm, Bill, and all the countless others who continue to give great advice on this forum. My question is how to I monitor the health of my raid array and how to determine which disk is acting up. I am using a 3-disk soft raid 0 off my motherboard (gigabyte ud3p). Seems to work pretty well but occasionally has a hiccup in certain programs. I wonder if it is a sign of an impending problem or if it is just because it is a soft raid. I've tried several HD diagnostics (Crystal Disk Info, Active@, HD Tune, etc.) but aside from temperature, they don't give any info about the impending death of my raid 0. I have the SMART feature turned on in bios.
To premtively address the critics about the raid 0. I only do about one video a week and do a backup every night. So i figured it (and when) it crashes, i'll just lose a days work. The motherboard is suppose to do a raid 5 but it performed really poorly. My system is configured with additional drives (SSD boot, Raid 0 scratch, and final video) as recommended. Any advice would be appreciated.
michael

The problem with almost all raid controllers is that they do not support SMART. So that is out. With software raids you are even more limited.
With hardware raid controllers you have web based interfaces that show some basic information, like this:
but software raids do not. There are two ways to determine possible problems, at least that I know of:
1. Use drive cages with LED's for the individual drives to show activity and inspect them visually.
2. Use old-fashioned manual labour to feel vibrations, temperatures and hear clicks on individual drives.
With only 3 drives in the raid, the chances of guessing correctly are 33.3% to start with and they only increase with manual inspection. A far easier job than in the case of 6 or more disks.
Sorry I can not offer better suggestions.

RAID 5 array problem

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for