"Error Occurred(0)" with RAID 0. What does it mean?

[John]

During boot up, one of my two week old hard disks in my RAID 0 is now
reporting this error:

"Error Occurred(0)"

I googled for this error message and found only one other person that
reported this error and his screen snapshot is nearly identical to my
problem.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1132761

None of the responses that I read in that thread were helpful to me.

Using Western Digital diagnostic tools, I tested each drive and no
errors in either drive were discovered. Chkdsk also reported no errors.

From the time I first observed this error message some days ago, the
computer has been working without any apparent problems (boots up and
runs just fine) but the error message is driving me nuts.

I have two of these disks:

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200KS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA

RAID 0 with Intel Matrix Storage Manager

Motherboard: ASUS P5B-E (latest BIOS installed).

Intel ICH86/DO/DH SATA RAID Controller:
Driver date: 5/11/06
Driver version: 6.0.0.1022

JMicron JMB36X Controller:
Device type: SCSI and RAID controllers
Manufacturer: JMicron Technology
Driver date: 12/5/2006
Driver version: 1.17.8.1

Device manager reports no errors for either of the above controllers.

XP Professional. All service packs and updates installed.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor


Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can resolve this error message?

 

[HDRDTD]

It 'might' be that one of the drives has developed a SMART error.

Years ago when the WD 36gig Raptors first came out, I had two iof them
running in a RAID 0 array.

My symtoms were slightly differenrt than your, mine would randomly lock up.
Usually re-booting the system got it going again but I could never find the
problem.

One of the thing I did notice, was that none of the programs I tried could
read the SMART status of either drive.

After a while, I finally decided to change to a single Raptor 74gig in part
becauise I wanted to replace the RAID array drives with some other drive for
troubleshooting.

Once I got the system running on the new drive, I installed the old drives
as seperate drives, and lo and behold, one of the drives started reporting a
SMART error.!

I downloaded the WD diagnostics, it found a bad spot that SMART had been
trying to report. I got an rma from WD, they replaced the drive and the
replacement drive is still running in another system years later.


My point is, One of the drives may have developed a SMART error, but because
they are in a RAID 0 array, nothing can report the SMART error in detail,
and you may not see the actual error until the RAID array is broken into two
ordinary drives.

 

[old man]

I agree hd's in a raid array do not allways show SMART errors
The hd manu checking utilities do not allways work perfectly when they are
on an array

 

[John]

It 'might' be that one of the drives has developed a SMART error.

[snip]


My point is, One of the drives may have developed a SMART error, but because
they are in a RAID 0 array, nothing can report the SMART error in detail,
and you may not see the actual error until the RAID array is broken into two
ordinary drives.

I went into BIOS and deselected the RAID option so that I had two
separate drives. The computer, of course, couldn't boot but I was able
to run the WD diagnostics from a bootable floppy for each separate HD.
No problems were detected. I used DLGIDIAG5.EXE

01/06/2007, 11:09:33
SELECTED OPTION - "QUICK TEST"
SELECTED DRIVE -
Model : WDC WD3200KS-00PFB0
S/N : WD-WCAPD2868494
Firmware : 21.00M21
C H S : 620181 16 63
Capacity : 320G
Drive : 0 Port: 0xEC00
RESULTS - "NO ERRORS FOUND"
ERROR/STATUS CODE = 0000


01/06/2007, 11:11:40
SELECTED OPTION - "SMART STATUS"
SELECTED DRIVE -
Model : WDC WD3200KS-00PFB0
S/N : WD-WCAPD2437481
Firmware : 21.00M21
C H S : 620181 16 63
Capacity : 320G
Drive : 0 Port: 0xE800
RESULTS - "NO ERRORS FOUND"
ERROR/STATUS CODE = 0000

 

[Arno Wagner]

During boot up, one of my two week old hard disks in my RAID 0 is now
reporting this error:

"Error Occurred(0)"

I googled for this error message and found only one other person that
reported this error and his screen snapshot is nearly identical to my
problem.

None of the responses that I read in that thread were helpful to me.

Using Western Digital diagnostic tools, I tested each drive and no
errors in either drive were discovered. Chkdsk also reported no errors.

From the time I first observed this error message some days ago, the
computer has been working without any apparent problems (boots up and
runs just fine) but the error message is driving me nuts.

I have two of these disks:

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200KS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA

RAID 0 with Intel Matrix Storage Manager

Motherboard: ASUS P5B-E (latest BIOS installed).

Intel ICH86/DO/DH SATA RAID Controller:
Driver date: 5/11/06
Driver version: 6.0.0.1022

JMicron JMB36X Controller:
Device type: SCSI and RAID controllers
Manufacturer: JMicron Technology
Driver date: 12/5/2006
Driver version: 1.17.8.1

Device manager reports no errors for either of the above controllers.

XP Professional. All service packs and updates installed.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can resolve this error message?

Ok, it seems to be something transitional. It may be a drive in the
process of dying (so a SMART check to find that out) or an interface
problem. Maybe one of the (S)ATA connectors does not sit quite right?

Side note: I would not depend on a controller that gives this
type of obscure and entirely unhelpful error messages. Hints
at an overal unclean design....

Arno

 

[Michael Daly]

Intel ICH86/DO/DH SATA RAID Controller:
Driver date: 5/11/06
Driver version: 6.0.0.1022

JMicron JMB36X Controller:
Device type: SCSI and RAID controllers
Manufacturer: JMicron Technology
Driver date: 12/5/2006
Driver version: 1.17.8.1

You might narrow it down if you knew which of these two controllers the drives
were connected to. Is it possible to switch between these two or is the
existing RAID setup exclusive to one of them?

Mike

 

[John]

You might narrow it down if you knew which of these two controllers the
drives were connected to. Is it possible to switch between these two
or is the existing RAID setup exclusive to one of them?

Mike

That's an excellent question.

I wonder what the consequences will be by disabling a RAID controller?
Will the operating system start? I do have a full OS partition backup,
but still....

 

[Michael Daly]

I wonder what the consequences will be by disabling a RAID controller?

Since it's a RAID0 config, your drives will look like gibberish to the OS if you
turn off RAID. Disabling one controller in BIOS will result in a boot error if
you disable the one with the disks attached (no drives found or some such
error). You'll always be able to boot to BIOS to reset.

If you have the motherboard manual (you can usually find one online at the
manufacturer's website) you can determine which sockets are for which
controller. Then just look at which one the cables are plugged into.

Mike

 

[John]

Since it's a RAID0 config, your drives will look like gibberish to the
OS if you turn off RAID. Disabling one controller in BIOS will result
in a boot error if you disable the one with the disks attached (no
drives found or some such error). You'll always be able to boot to BIOS
to reset.

I found that out the hard way. I had accidentally set the BIOS settings
to default and I "lost" my drives. Once I reset the BIOS settings I was
good to go.

What I had meant was what would happen if I had go into 'Computer
management console'->'Device Manager'->'SCSI and RAID controllers' and
disabled one of the controllers then restarted the computer?

I'm a little squeamish about doing this at this point until my large
hard disk arrives so that I can first backup the entire hard disk.

If you have the motherboard manual (you can usually find one online at
the manufacturer's website) you can determine which sockets are for
which controller. Then just look at which one the cables are plugged into.

I have the manual but I'm not sure what you mean. I plug the cable into
the left-most socket for drive 0 and I plug in drive 1 to the socket to
the right. Like so: http://i10.tinypic.com/2qvgtpt.jpg

Mike

To answer someone else's question: Yes, I replaced the cable on drive 0.

 

[Michael Daly]

I have the manual but I'm not sure what you mean. I plug the cable into
the left-most socket for drive 0 and I plug in drive 1 to the socket to
the right. Like so: http://i10.tinypic.com/2qvgtpt.jpg

There are four SATA sockets there and you are using two of them. There should
be some other sockets someplace else. One set is controlled by the Intel
chipset and the other by the second controller. I'm guessing the four we see in
the picture are for the Intel chipset and the others are elsewhere - possible
for eSATA and are exposed outside the box. If this is the case, the Intel RAID
controller is kicking out the error message.

Mike

 

[John]

I installed 'Intel Matrix Storage Console' version 6.2.

It's stating 'Error Occurred' on 'Device Port 0'

'A drive in a RAID 0 volume is failing. Try to back up data immediately.'

The '(0)' (I believe) refers to the device number and is not an error
code. This is what threw me off.

I backed everything up and I'll clone the dying drive to an identical
replacement.

I ran the Western Digital diagnostics again and it says that everything
is peachy.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I installed 'Intel Matrix Storage Console' version 6.2.

It's stating 'Error Occurred' on 'Device Port 0'

'A drive in a RAID 0 volume is failing. Try to back up data immediately.'

The '(0)' (I believe) refers to the device number and is not an error
code. This is what threw me off.

I backed everything up and I'll clone the dying drive to an identical
replacement.

I ran the Western Digital diagnostics again and it says that everything
is peachy.

After you have backed up, maybe connect the drive directly and
post its SMART attributes here. Maybe we can spot some problem.
I don't know the WD usilities, but for Maxtor both the disks and
the diag-software are over-optimistic in their thresholds. The
attributes themselves tell the true story, however.

Arno