sick of raid

[smiffy]

Never had a raid array fail since using motherboards with locked pci speeds.Plenty before that although they always seem more robust running from add on cards than from motherboard based raid setups.

Smiffy

[Wetchaser]

For what its worth, passed memtest and prime x2 with flying colors. Even took away spare fan i had blowing on memory to make sure it wasnt a heat thing. I havent loaded anything except eve, so i guess tonight i try BF2 and see what happens.

 

When and if it decides to kill the array, it will go down like this. If im in BF2, i will slowly see frames drop, and general increase in lag. CTD or complete lock will follow. I swear it feels like a memory leak in the game, but what would i the end user know.

 

After the first time it fudges. I can restart, go play again untill the next time it dies i get the blue windows screen giving the "Windows has shut down to keep your computer from complelty hosing itself" or similar error message.

 

Getting it restarted after that error message will be a task. Ive seen it lock at inital detections showing only my memory timings. Ive seen it detect drives, and lock there. One time all it said was "nothing found". Usually a few alt + ctrl + deleates wil get it past initial boot problems.

 

Then scan disk will take over, scan everything and say its all good. Boot into windows, and maybe it will work, or maybe it will lock as soon as i hit start button. Very shaky rig after first take over by scan disc. Ususally next restart will kill array, and ill be down to 3 drives.

 

The first time i went thru this, i just re-did it with 3 drives. 2 weeks or so later it died in same manner. This time i tried getting all 4 drives going as a test, and they all fired right up. one week later BF2 killed it again. Thats when i decided that raid was more then likely at fault since the drives really didnt die, but rather the signals going to it got hosed while in a game. The first time i set drives as sata1 transfer rate, after that they have been at sata2.

 

I need to take a complete set of bios pictures, and post them. I keep telling myself that some were im efing this computer up, but i really cant figure out what im doing to it.

 

Last run had following installed only:

 

BF2

BF2 CCA (server manager)

EA downloader

IGA/Fileplanet downloader

Americas Army

Eve online

TeamSpeak

Paintshop Pro 8 (Psp 10 has compatiblilty problems with newer nvidia drivers)

 

No i didnt even have anitvirus in, as i was trying to eliminate that from the equation. Whats is there to protect on a system that gets reformatted so often, lol.

 

I was considering the thought that maybe i have a bad sata connector, and should invest in 4 really good cables with those positive locks on the ends. Any thoughts there?

[cal50]

I am having a problem with my raid 0 set up. Everything is running fine except one problem. I have a IDE back up drive and use acronis true image to back up my array weekly. I have an error that acronis can not read an area on my C partition (array). I tested the array drive with Seagate sea-tools. It reports a bad sector on one of the drives. The other raid drives tests OK. I am trying to figure out if it is really a drive problem or corrupted data on the drive that is un readable. I did nuke a bunch of symantec software from my system and the error appeared after that removal. I am considering breaking the array and reformatting the array then running sea-tools again checking for errors. Chkdsk and scan disk had zero effect. They report no problems. System runs fine. Unless someone can recommend a good hard disc tool for raid diagnostics I do not know of any other way to troubleshoot it. I would like to think it's a file problem instead of a hard drive problem but I am guessing at this point.

[Kellrz]

Here's a question for everyone with RAID-0 arrays.

 

Has anyone had a failure since their rig was built?

 

I've got two RAID-0 arrays running and haven't had a blip in over a year.

 

 

Not yet...this system (not the sig system that's still waiting on RMA'd stuff), has had RAID 0 , 2 40gig Maxtors running for 3+ years w/o a hiccup.

 

I can't say the same for the Soyo Dragon+'s Bios or Crucial 2100 memory, though.

[Wetchaser]

Unless someone can recommend a good hard disc tool for raid diagnostics I do not know of any other way to troubleshoot it.

 

If i had one of those it sure would make my sluething easier, hehe.

 

UPDATE: No problems thus far, ive really become to busy playing eve to take the time to try differant programs, and quite honestly, im afraid too. My frames in eve with everything cranked at 1600x1200 bottom out at around 87, and hit highs of 127. Im not fudging these numbers with readings at or near warp, lol. Computer is kicking arse just like it does evertime i go thru this. The future is a scary place right now.......

[Angry_Games]

so you've left RAID working? Or you did destroy it and go back to single disks?

[Wetchaser]

Mirrored. If i can keep it running, ill be happy enough.

[Angry_Games]

well, honestly, I think the problems you were having with RAID-0 had zero to do with anything but system stability. This is no knock on you or your abilities, so don't take it that way. I've just had enough experience to see that the only time RAID arrays die is either hdd failure, or system instability.

 

I've got a 4400+, 2GB of RAM, and 3x hitachi 80GB SATA II drives in RAID-0 and have had them set up this way for...almost 18 months now (however I've only had the dual-core cpu in for about 3 or 4 months).

 

 

so again, not knocking you or your abilities, but even the slightest instability (and usually it has to do with RAM timings) can fudge a whole system up...plus RAID-0 has no fault tolerance at all so the slightest error will hose up an entire system, unlike RAID-1 or just standard single hdd's which can tolerate a little bit of error

 

 

anyway...keep your fingers crossed and keep training those Eve skills!

[Angry_Games]

ps: have you stopped smoking in front of your machine yet like I advised???

[Wetchaser]

Im sorry that last post got scrambled, could not make out transmision, appears to have been scrambled..........

 

Back on topic, the memory timings are a real possibility, as i havent really touched them beyond what was shown in build guides.

[Wetchaser]

Its starting to go bad :sad:

 

Last night eve kept ctd'ing, but i figured it was just eve. I just started computer and it hung at the last screen with the slider going left right at bottom. Just kept going back and forth. Restarted, asked me what mode i wanted to start in since windows failed to start last session. I chose "last known good/working configuration"

 

And here i am. I have tried defragging at this point in the past, but it really makes no differance. She's on a one way course to doom now.

 

Nforce 6.70

geforce 81.98

AMD 64 processor driver

eve

Yahoo anti vir/spy

Teamspeak

Smart guardian

 

No im. programs have been installed or activated. Windows explorer looks real empty, im positive this is not a software problem.

 

Ram settings are great white hope now.

[Strahd]

I lost my raid 0 when one of my hard drives started making a clicking noise and it wasn't being recognized as being installed. I got another drive, RMA'd the old one, since I use Ghost 10, reconfigured a new raid 0 and 45 minutes later I was back up and running. I backup every Saturday night :nod:

 

Ghost 10 is my redundancy