Jump to content

Is there really a problem with Raid 0 and NCQ Hard Drives?


Recommended Posts

I read somewhere on some forums that you shouldn't put NCQ drives in a raid because if you do, you'll have data corruption problems. Any truth to this, or is this another one of those "things" you hear on the internet that is nothing but bull?

 

Reason I ask is I'm having some Machine Check Exception (an error which normally indicates an "unrecoverable hardware error") problem after I re-installed WinXP x64 on my new pair of Seagate Barracuda 7200.8s. The first time I installed x64 this happened right after I plugged in a smart card reader into a USB header on the motherboard. I of course removed the smart card reader but the problem didn't go away. If I booted into safe mode, I was fine. If I booted into safe mode with network support, it crashed. So I reinstalled again and then everything was almost fine. I haven't put the smart card reader back yet, and figured that was the cause.

 

After I re-installed, I couldn't get the non-NForce network port to work. At first the computer would crash if I tried to use it, but now it simply doesn't recognise a cable plugged into it. I plug the same cable into the NForce network port and it works fine. I was ok with this situation until last night my computer BSODed a couple times in a row with Machine Check Exception, again. I finally got it to boot before heading off to work this morning.

 

The first thing I'd like to do is make sure I'm not fundamentally screwed up by raiding those 7200.8s.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

/bump

 

No one has heard of this and no one runs two NCQ hard drives in a raid successfully?

 

My computer when I got from work yesterday was totally screwed over, looks like I'll have to try re-installing again :( .

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

didn't read about problemas but I wouldn't use it, as NCQ is an internal drive's controller optimization that executes transfers out of order to optimize the transfer requests, and so I wouldn't trust that every disk in the RAID is doing exactly the same internal optimization pattern than the other one.

 

This supposedly shouldn't happen as both drives get the request in parallel (supposing 100% hardware RAID 0, if it's done by the driver then it's not parallel) and the blocks are equally, but I wouldn't count on that.

 

I'll look for more info just to be sure, though

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

didn't read about problemas but I wouldn't use it, as NCQ is an internal drive's controller optimization that executes transfers out of order to optimize the transfer requests, and so I wouldn't trust that every disk in the RAID is doing exactly the same internal optimization pattern than the other one.

 

This supposedly shouldn't happen as both drives get the request in parallel (supposing 100% hardware RAID 0, if it's done by the driver then it's not parallel) and the blocks are equally, but I wouldn't count on that.

 

I'll look for more info just to be sure, though

 

 

I'm using NCQ and Raid0 with 3 HDD's on DFI NF4 Ultra-D.

Works just fine - besides that the performance is a little to low (30MB/s?)... -> that's an issue with SATA 1/2 Settings...

 

cya

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Guest Dangermouse

Ditto, I've got three Hitachi 80GB SATA2 drives, all striped together, all with NCQ (part of SATA2 spec), and no issues.

 

Also, NCQ is something that came from the SCSI world (not sure about the name, but the technology for sure), and those have been RAIDed for decades, never heard about a problem there.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

Same here. I have two 250gb Seagates with NCQ in Raid0. No problems at all.

My machine is constantly downloading so there is always a large amount of data being written/read, and then deleted.

 

Average Transfer: 95MB/s

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...