raid 10 failure

[rhomanski]

Hi,

Just joined. Would like to ask a question. I have 4 drives in a raid 10. The bios lists them as drive0, drive1,... Windows gives me an error message saying failed to read from sector 36 of drive 2. Does this mean drive 1 as the bios lists it or drive 2 in the bios. It's an asus motherboard p5q-e, hitachi 1t drives about a year old now. I have the four drives connected to sata ports 1-4 and 5 is an optical drive. One told me it would be the third drive in the row of sata ports. Is this correct? I think I will only have one shot at this, when the raid rebuilds it will fail if I replace the wrong drive and I'll have to start from scratch. Your reply will be very appreciated. Thanks.

Regards. Ron.

[washu]

Re: raid 10 failure

Is the RAID controlled by the BIOS or is it a Windows software RAID?

If it's a BIOS RAID then Windows isn't telling you anything useful as it thinks it is one drive not 4. Its a failed read on the RAID, not a failed read on the individual disk. You might want to try the management software for your MB RAID controller and see if it shows which disk failed. It should show the serial# so you can identify the specific drive. I know the Intel Matrix RAID console does this.

If it's a Windows RAID then it might line up with the BIOS. Go to disk management and see if the first 4 drives (0-3) are the same as your raid drives. If so then it should be the same. It might also show which drive has a problem.

[rhomanski]

Re: raid 10 failure

I'm not sure which it is bios or windows controlled. I would guess bios. I had to make a floppy from the asus disk first and load it before loading windows xp. I have seen no way in windows to access individual drives it's just called drive c. The asus book also says to use identical drives. The ones installed are hitachi deskstars but I have seagate 1t drives I was going to use as spares. By identical I assume they mean size and not brands. Thanks for the help

Regards. Ron.

[washu]

Re: raid 10 failure

That certainly sounds like BIOS RAID. What MB do you have?

If you have an Intel chipset get the Matrix Storage Manager, it will tell you which drive has problems and the serial # so you can identify it.

[rhomanski]

Re: raid 10 failure

It's an asus p5q-e motherboard. I looked at the disk manager and it showed one volume not individual drives so I think it is bios driven. Will check matrix storage manager.

Regards. Ron.

[rhomanski]

Re: raid 10 failure

The motherboard comes with the ICH10r chip. I must confess I can't find the matrix storage manager. Do I have to get it somewhere or is it already in windows?

Regards. Ron.

[washu]

Re: raid 10 failure

You get it from Intel's site.

This should get you started:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Sear...torage+Manager

[rhomanski]

Re: raid 10 failure

Thanks I have it installed and it says all drives are normal. Yet I get that failed to read sector 36 everytime I call up a certain program. The program comes up when I click on okay. I assume it's reading from the mirror drive. I think I have a bad sector on disk 2 but the matrix manager says port 0 port 1 port3 port 5 are the drive locations. Does the windows error message mean the drive at port 1 or at port 3? I have a drive sitting in front of me but I'm confused about where to put it. (No comments please.) Thanks for your help.

Regards. Ron.

[washu]

Re: raid 10 failure

What program causes this error? I should have caught on sooner, but sector 36 is outside of where any normal program would access. Are you sure it's a Windows error and not the program? Does it show up in the event log?

Also, do you have any other drives in the system? All my Intel arrays show up as disk 0 and not 2. It could be on a completely different drive.

You can also do a verify in the storage manager. It will take a while, but if it comes back ok then you can be pretty sure the drives are fine.

[rhomanski]

Re: raid 10 failure

It comes up when I call up Acronis true image home pc backup and recovery. I back up the array on two other external drives. It's a long story but I ended up with two suspect drives last year and I have been using them as backup and to prove them to be good. They've been fine so far so I think they would be okay to put in my array. I bought a ups recently because it would verify the array every time it rained and power would flicker. It takes ten hours. Perhaps it is talking about one of the external drives?

Regards. Ron.

[rhomanski]

Re: raid 10 failure

I originally had this built by a guy locally and when it still wasn't right, I went through it myself. I learned quite a bit. I found the two drives he put in had 3 eggs on newegg because of doa's and almost all failed within a month. I bought 4 hitachi deskstars and put them in and redid the install. I found them running hot so I put two fans on them. The processor was hot so I got a bigger cooler. Put in a better video card and it's worked fine for a year now. I just did the annual cleaning on it so before I close it up I'd like to get this issue resolved.

Regards. Ron.

[rhomanski]

Re: raid 10 failure

I just called up acronis without the external drives on and no message. I guess it is one of the external drives. I'm glad I didn't trust them if that's the case. I'll look at it some more. Thanks for the help.

Regards. Ron.

[rhomanski]

Re: raid 10 failure

I just called it up with both external on and no message. I'd better just keep an eye on it. Thanks.

Regards. Ron.

[rhomanski]

Re: raid 10 failure

I have one external on the one esata I have and the other on a usb port. Speed fan can see the esata drive and calls it hd2. I did an in depth check on line with speed fan and it says "high fly writes" is bad and needs watch. What does that mean? Is this the bad drive?

Regards. Ron.

[washu]

Re: raid 10 failure

I'd say it's very likely that the esata drive is your bad one. Backup what you can and then scan it with the drive manufacturer's diagnostic tool.

[rhomanski]

Re: raid 10 failure

Thank you very much washu, but it's a backup of a backup of a backup and not much concern to me. If that is the one going out and giving me this message, then i'll replace it when it goes bad. I have 2tb striped and mirrored in the array and I've used 800gb so far. Soon I'll have over 1 tb used and neither 1tb external drives will be useful for a full backup to the array. I have been planning on replacing these external with 2tb when the price drops. I just won't plan on using this seagate as a replacement for one in my array if one dies. I appreciate your help very much.

Regards. Ron.