ABIT mobo - RAID crash

Folks,

Here is the problem:

I have an ABIT motherboard with two identical Seagate hard drives
running in a RAID 1 configuration. This situation started several
weeks ago. My drive on Port 1 would become listed as "failed", and
the RAID volume would become listed as "degraded". The connection
appeared fine, so I just clicked on "mark as normal". This triggered
rebuilding to occur, which concluded successfully , and the system
continued working. Sometime after that, the system bluescreened and
automatically restarted, which it did several times (at random times
during operation.) At some point the drive on Port 1 became listed as
"failed" again. Tried marking it as normal again, same result --
rebuilds, then works fine, and starts bluescreening at weird times.
On a couple of occasions, the reboot caused some significant work for
CHKDSK on startup. The interesting thing is that, when I don't try to
mark the "failed" drive as normal, no reboots or bluescreens appear to
happen.

Here is my setup:
motherboard: ABIT IP35 (built in RAID)
Ram: 4GB
Hard drive: Seagate Barracuda ST3500320AS (2x)
OS: Vista Ultimate
Intel Matrix Storage Console 7.5

Please let me know if you have any ideas or would like additional
information. Thanks in advance.

wrote:
> Folks,
>
> Here is the problem:
>
> I have an ABIT motherboard with two identical Seagate hard drives
> running in a RAID 1 configuration. This situation started several
> weeks ago. My drive on Port 1 would become listed as "failed", and
> the RAID volume would become listed as "degraded". The connection
> appeared fine, so I just clicked on "mark as normal". This triggered
> rebuilding to occur, which concluded successfully , and the system
> continued working. Sometime after that, the system bluescreened and
> automatically restarted, which it did several times (at random times
> during operation.) At some point the drive on Port 1 became listed as
> "failed" again. Tried marking it as normal again, same result --
> rebuilds, then works fine, and starts bluescreening at weird times.
> On a couple of occasions, the reboot caused some significant work for
> CHKDSK on startup. The interesting thing is that, when I don't try to
> mark the "failed" drive as normal, no reboots or bluescreens appear to
> happen.
>
> Here is my setup:
> motherboard: ABIT IP35 (built in RAID)
> Ram: 4GB
> Hard drive: Seagate Barracuda ST3500320AS (2x)
> OS: Vista Ultimate
> Intel Matrix Storage Console 7.5
>
> Please let me know if you have any ideas or would like additional
> information. Thanks in advance.

I think your computer is hinting that you need backups.

Each of the disks should have the Seagate diagnostic run on it.
It is available for download from the Seagate web site.
Either there will be an immediate report of a SMART failure,
or a surface scan is going to identify a bad spot on one of
the disks. (Perhaps all spare sectors in the bad spot are
exhausted.)

You've got to develop a maintenance plan of action. Your usage
of RAID1 is buying you some time, but that time could be rapidly
running out.

You could purchase one new disk, go from port to port and
run the Seagate diagnostic, just to determine whether a
bad cable or a bad port is implicated. After that,
you might consider copying the data from the array,
to the single new drive. Connect a second new drive and
convert to a new RAID1. Then, decommission the old
RAID array, turning the disks back into ordinary disks,
run the Seagate diagnostic and so on. If one of the
old drives is still good, you can use it for backups.

Paul

wrote:

> Folks,
>
> Here is the problem:
>
> I have an ABIT motherboard with two identical Seagate hard drives
> running in a RAID 1 configuration. This situation started several
> weeks ago. My drive on Port 1 would become listed as "failed", and
> the RAID volume would become listed as "degraded". The connection
> appeared fine, so I just clicked on "mark as normal". This triggered
> rebuilding to occur, which concluded successfully , and the system
> continued working.

And this didn't give you a clue ?

Graham

On Nov 22, 12:57*pm, Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelati...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
> alex.kip...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Folks,
>
> > Here is the problem:
>
> > I have an ABIT motherboard with two identical Seagate hard drives
> > running in a RAID 1 configuration. *This situation started several
> > weeks ago. *My drive on Port 1 would become listed as "failed", and
> > the RAID volume would become listed as "degraded". *The connection
> > appeared fine, so I just clicked on "mark as normal". *This triggered
> > rebuilding to occur, which concluded successfully , and the system
> > continued working.
>
> And this didn't give you a clue ?
>
> Graham

Call me a noob, but no. Care to elaborate?

Should I convert the RAID into two regular hard disks before running
all these diagnostics? And if so, should I mark the failed drive as
"normal" before converting (otherwise, I don't think the Intel console
is going to let me)? Thanks in advance.

On Nov 22, 5:34*am, Paul <nos...@needed.com> wrote:
> alex.kip...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Folks,
>
> > Here is the problem:
>
> > I have an ABIT motherboard with two identical Seagate hard drives
> > running in a RAID 1 configuration. *This situation started several
> > weeks ago. *My drive on Port 1 would become listed as "failed", and
> > the RAID volume would become listed as "degraded". *The connection
> > appeared fine, so I just clicked on "mark as normal". *This triggered
> > rebuilding to occur, which concluded successfully , and the system
> > continued working. *Sometime after that, the system bluescreened and
> > automatically restarted, which it did several times (at random times
> > during operation.) *At some point the drive on Port 1 became listed as
> > "failed" again. *Tried marking it as normal again, same result --
> > rebuilds, then works fine, and starts bluescreening at weird times.
> > On a couple of occasions, the reboot caused some significant work for
> > CHKDSK on startup. *The interesting thing is that, when I don't try to
> > mark the "failed" drive as normal, no reboots or bluescreens appear to
> > happen.
>
> > Here is my setup:
> > motherboard: ABIT IP35 (built in RAID)
> > Ram: 4GB
> > Hard drive: Seagate Barracuda ST3500320AS (2x)
> > OS: Vista Ultimate
> > Intel Matrix Storage Console 7.5
>
> > Please let me know if you have any ideas or would like additional
> > information. *Thanks in advance.
>
> I think your computer is hinting that you need backups.
>
> Each of the disks should have the Seagate diagnostic run on it.
> It is available for download from the Seagate web site.
> Either there will be an immediate report of a SMART failure,
> or a surface scan is going to identify a bad spot on one of
> the disks. (Perhaps all spare sectors in the bad spot are
> exhausted.)
>
> You've got to develop a maintenance plan of action. Your usage
> of RAID1 is buying you some time, but that time could be rapidly
> running out.
>
> You could purchase one new disk, go from port to port and
> run the Seagate diagnostic, just to determine whether a
> bad cable or a bad port is implicated. After that,
> you might consider copying the data from the array,
> to the single new drive. Connect a second new drive and
> convert to a new RAID1. Then, decommission the old
> RAID array, turning the disks back into ordinary disks,
> run the Seagate diagnostic and so on. If one of the
> old drives is still good, you can use it for backups.
>
> * * Paul

wrote:
> Should I convert the RAID into two regular hard disks before running
> all these diagnostics? And if so, should I mark the failed drive as
> "normal" before converting (otherwise, I don't think the Intel console
> is going to let me)? Thanks in advance.
>

First step - make the backup copy! No matter what happens, you should
have a disk in your hand, with all the files on it. If you buy
a new Seagate drive (or two), there is a disk copy program to download
from Seagate. It is a version of Acronis, and should be able
to transfer your data to a new clean disk. Note that each drive
manufacturer, may be more or less generous than Seagate, so
check their website before buying a product. I think Hitachi isn't
quite as helpful, which is why you want to make sure the new disk
maker has the tools you need before you buy their stuff.

Next, if you want to run the diagnostic, the diagnostic doesn't
care what special relationship the drives might have with respect
to one another. But the diagnostic may care about the BIOS setting
of the interface. Motherboards now have IDE, AHCI, and RAID options
for the SATA ports. You may want to set the ports to IDE, before
the diagnostic boots. (The diagnostic will tell you when it starts,
whether it "sees" any drives or not. If it cannot see a drive,
then you'd suspect it needs to be set to IDE in the BIOS. One
failing of diagnostics in the past, is they could not support
just any chip on the motherboard. Some stand alone RAID chips
for example, could not be used with the diagnostic.)

You can "break the array" using either the RAID BIOS setup
screen or the motherboard RAID management utility, as the
very last step before you stop using the array. I don't see
a reason to be trashing the array immediately. The diagnostic
doesn't check the partitions or anything fancy like that, so
doesn't care that you think the disk is a RAID disk. But
the diagnostic has to be able to access the disk, and
sometimes that means changing a BIOS setting. A couple
tries at booting the diagnostic should tell you what is
required.

Paul

On Nov 22, 2:54*pm, Paul <nos...@needed.com> wrote:
> alex.kip...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Should I convert the RAID into two regular hard disks before running
> > all these diagnostics? *And if so, should I mark the failed drive as
> > "normal" before converting (otherwise, I don't think the Intel console
> > is going to let me)? *Thanks in advance.
>
> First step - make the backup copy! No matter what happens, you should
> have a disk in your hand, with all the files on it. If you buy
> a new Seagate drive (or two), there is a disk copy program to download
> from Seagate. It is a version of Acronis, and should be able
> to transfer your data to a new clean disk. Note that each drive
> manufacturer, may be more or less generous than Seagate, so
> check their website before buying a product. I think Hitachi isn't
> quite as helpful, which is why you want to make sure the new disk
> maker has the tools you need before you buy their stuff.
>
> Next, if you want to run the diagnostic, the diagnostic doesn't
> care what special relationship the drives might have with respect
> to one another. But the diagnostic may care about the BIOS setting
> of the interface. Motherboards now have IDE, AHCI, and RAID options
> for the SATA ports. You may want to set the ports to IDE, before
> the diagnostic boots. (The diagnostic will tell you when it starts,
> whether it "sees" any drives or not. If it cannot see a drive,
> then you'd suspect it needs to be set to IDE in the BIOS. One
> failing of diagnostics in the past, is they could not support
> just any chip on the motherboard. Some stand alone RAID chips
> for example, could not be used with the diagnostic.)
>
> You can "break the array" using either the RAID BIOS setup
> screen or the motherboard RAID management utility, as the
> very last step before you stop using the array. I don't see
> a reason to be trashing the array immediately. The diagnostic
> doesn't check the partitions or anything fancy like that, so
> doesn't care that you think the disk is a RAID disk. But
> the diagnostic has to be able to access the disk, and
> sometimes that means changing a BIOS setting. A couple
> tries at booting the diagnostic should tell you what is
> required.
>
> * * Paul

Thanks, Paul. I have an external (networked) WD MyBook drive which I
use for my ordinary scheduled backups. Can that be used to copy my
existing drive on to, or would I need to purchase another internal
SATA drive?

wrote:

> Eeyore wrote:
> > alex.kip...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > > Here is the problem:
> >
> > > I have an ABIT motherboard with two identical Seagate hard drives
> > > running in a RAID 1 configuration. This situation started several
> > > weeks ago. My drive on Port 1 would become listed as "failed", and
> > > the RAID volume would become listed as "degraded". The connection
> > > appeared fine, so I just clicked on "mark as normal". This triggered
> > > rebuilding to occur, which concluded successfully , and the system
> > > continued working.
> >
> > And this didn't give you a clue ?
>
> Call me a noob, but no. Care to elaborate?

Ummm....... if it's working OK you NEVER need a rebuild except maybe in the
event of a system power failure.

A need to rebuild (especially more than once) indicates a latent FAULT !

Graham

Paul wrote:

> Each of the disks should have the Seagate diagnostic run on it.
> It is available for download from the Seagate web site.
> Either there will be an immediate report of a SMART failure,
> or a surface scan is going to identify a bad spot on one of
> the disks. (Perhaps all spare sectors in the bad spot are
> exhausted.)

I've known drives that pass SMART tests just fail anyway.

Graham

wrote:

> Should I convert the RAID into two regular hard disks before running
> all these diagnostics? And if so, should I mark the failed drive as
> "normal" before converting (otherwise, I don't think the Intel console
> is going to let me)? Thanks in advance.

Read the controller details. Most likely a Highpoint controller on an Abit
mobo.

Graham