Loud hard disk "clunks" coming from BD7 Raid

[BTInternet News]

Can't be sure if it is the Raid discs but I have the following line-up new 2x160GB Maxtors as a striped HPT RAID and two recent 200GB Maxtors as single drives on an IDE port. Apart from the regular noise of hard disk access a loud single "clunk" comes from the disk area at irregular intervals average once per few minutes. Does not seem to be related to active disk access. Everything seems to be working fine although I suspect data transfers momentarily stop as this happens - but data is not lost. Can only describe as a relay click or a solenoid switching sound for those that can remember them!! Can it be the heads jumping to "park" position for some reason? Thought it might be thermal shutdown but it seems unrelated to heat and I have improved airflow without change. Is there something about the RAID setup that could cause this - though I didn't notice it before. Difficult to isolate which drive(s) it is without disassembling. Though I'd try the experts here before stripping the PC again. After previous disasters I'm now constantly backing up critical data just in case!! Any ideas about this rather disturbing noise. Thanks John I

 

[TomG]

what Highpoint bios and driver versions and do they match?

 

[BTInternet News]

Thanks Tom - With your help I got this system up and running reliably following the tracking down of spontaneous shutdowns and temperature rises. During this process and with the help of another newgroup member I managed to install the latest CR Bios upgraded modified to take the latest 2.34 drivers. I believe however that this noise existed before with previous drivers. It does seem to be the RAID - I'm just wondering if I need to set the Acoustic Management on the new Maxtors - it seems they may be shipped set for low acoustic noise (excluding clunks!) and therefore lower performance. However I am reluctant to take them out of the raid to check/set them in case I break the raid structure and again lose the data (the acoustic properties have to be set from a floppy Dos boot disc - I guess it should only touch the acoustic part though?). What do you think? Regards John I

"TomG" wrote:

what Highpoint bios and driver versions and do they match?

--

Thomas Geery
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... new 2x160GB Maxtors as a striped HPT RAID and two recent 200GB Maxtors as single drives on an IDE port. Apart from the regular noise of hard disk access a loud single "clunk" comes from the disk area at irregular intervals average once per few minutes. Does not seem to be related to active disk access. Everything seems to be working fine although I suspect data transfers momentarily stop as this happens - but data is not lost. Can only describe as a relay click or a solenoid switching sound for those that can remember them!! Can it be the heads jumping to "park" position for some reason? Thought it might be thermal shutdown but it seems unrelated to heat and I have improved airflow without change. Is there something about the RAID setup that could cause this - though I didn't notice it before. Difficult to
isolate which drive(s) it is without disassembling. Though I'd try the experts here before stripping the PC again. After previous disasters I'm now constantly backing up critical data just in case!! Any ideas about this rather disturbing noise. Thanks John I

 

[Richard Hopkins]

"BTInternet News" wrote:

It does seem to be the RAID - I'm just wondering if I need to set the Acoustic Management on the new Maxtors - it seems they may be shipped set for low acoustic noise (excluding clunks!) and therefore lower performance. However I am reluctant to take them out of the raid to check/set them in case I break the raid structure and again lose the data

The answer to that one is simple. If you regularly back-up your data, the is no desperate loss even if your RAID array does break, as you just reinstall and restore from backup. If you are not backing-up, you should start like right now, as your array could still potentially fail at any time.

I can't comment directly on the Maxtors, but I've run drive diagnostics on both WD and IBM/Hitachi drives in the past without negative effect for any RAID arrays, so you are probably on safe ground running a feature tool to reconfigure the acoustic management, or indeed a fitness test to make sure the drives are all working safely. Don't take this as gospel though; you need ot be backing-up - especially if one of your drives is making unfortunate noises...

 

[TomG]

I used the Maxtor utilities to set the modes of my drives after they were in a raid configuration. with the version of the utility available at the time, I even had to disconnect the drives from the raid controller and connect them to the regular ide controller to do it. I then reconnected them to the raid controller and all was well.

have a current backup if you are going to do this and remember, your mileage may vary!

 

[BTInternet News]

Thanks guys I will give the disk set-up utility a go. I've used it suceessfully on the non RAID drives. So a few more questions before I proceed:

Maxtors offer three modes: 1) Quiet with acoustic management 2) Fast with acoustic management and 3) acoustic management off.

Which do you guys use? I assume acoustic management off will be fastest and Fast an intermediate speed. My inclination is to turn the acoustic management off, as I find the sound of the hard drives working re-assuring! Except when they clunk!

Second back-ups -

There are so many possibilities.

If something went wrong with the changes I guess "Ghost" would be the easiest recovery method. In one step the entire disc could be restored and the backup can be compressed with less space required.

How about Microsoft backup - this seems quite comprehensive - no compression however and how easy is it to rebuild an entire multi-partition disk??

I have also Data-Keeper but this seems to make selective backups and would not be appropriate for an entire disk rebuild.

Any comments?? Thanks John I

"TomG" wrote:

I used the Maxtor utilities to set the modes of my drives after they were in a raid configuration. with the version of the utility available at the time, I even had to disconnect the drives from the raid controller and connect them to the regular ide controller to do it. I then reconnected them to the raid controller and all was well.

have a current backup if you are going to do this and remember, your mileage may vary!

--

Thomas Geery
Network+ certified

ftp://geerynet.d2g.com
ftp://68.98.180.8 Abit Mirror <----- Cable modem IP
This IP is dynamic so it *could* change!...
over 117,000 FTP users served!
^^^^^^^
... managed to install the latest CR Bios upgraded modified to take the latest 2.34
drivers. I believe however that this noise existed before with previous
drivers. It does seem to be the RAID - I'm just wondering if I need to set the Acoustic Management on the new Maxtors - it seems they may be shipped set for low acoustic noise (excluding clunks!) and therefore lower
performance. However I am reluctant to take them out of the raid to
check/set them in case I break the raid structure and again lose the

data

(the acoustic properties have to be set from a floppy Dos boot disc - I
guess it should only touch the acoustic part though?). What do you

think?

Regards John I

"TomG" wrote:

what Highpoint bios and driver versions and do they match?

--

Thomas Geery
Network+ certified

... line-up new
2x160GB Maxtors as a striped HPT RAID and two recent 200GB Maxtors as single
drives on an IDE port. Apart from the regular noise of hard disk access
a
loud single "clunk" comes from the disk area at irregular intervals
average
once per few minutes. Does not seem to be related to active disk access.
Everything seems to be working fine although I suspect data transfers momentarily stop as this happens - but data is not lost. Can only
describe
as a relay click or a solenoid switching sound for those that can
remember
them!! Can it be the heads jumping to "park" position for some

reason?

Thought it might be thermal shutdown but it seems unrelated to heat and
I
have improved airflow without change. Is there something about the RAID
setup that could cause this - though I didn't notice it before.
Difficult
to
isolate which drive(s) it is without disassembling. Though I'd try the experts here before stripping the PC again. After previous disasters I'm
now
constantly backing up critical data just in case!! Any ideas about this
rather disturbing noise. Thanks John I

 

[TomG]

"BTInternet News" wrote:

Thanks guys I will give the disk set-up utility a go. I've used it suceessfully on the non RAID drives. So a few more questions before I proceed:

Maxtors offer three modes: 1) Quiet with acoustic management 2) Fast with acoustic management and 3) acoustic management off.

Which do you guys use? I assume acoustic management off will be fastest

and

Fast an intermediate speed. My inclination is to turn the acoustic management off, as I find the sound of the hard drives working

re-assuring!

Except when they clunk!

acoustic management off would be the fastest.

Second back-ups -

There are so many possibilities.

If something went wrong with the changes I guess "Ghost" would be the easiest recovery method. In one step the entire disc could be restored and the backup can be compressed with less space required.

How about Microsoft backup - this seems quite comprehensive - no compression however and how easy is it to rebuild an entire multi-partition disk??

I have also Data-Keeper but this seems to make selective backups and would not be appropriate for an entire disk rebuild.

Any comments?? Thanks John I

I have been using PowerQuest Drive Image 7 (AKA 2002) but some folks point out that it takes a backup of the volumes while the OS is active using Volume Shadow Copy approach. Some point out that this might not have the absolute freshest image of the files available as would shutting down and running the backup from an alternate booted OS such as DOS.

Ghost is much too slow when compared to the speed that Drive Image runs at so I am willing to make that trade off.