Please help: RAID problems

[depeet]

Dear all,

I have a Win2000Prof machine runing besides an OS disk, for my data 2
250 Gb SATA disks in RAID 1.
Recently at startup of the pc I get a warning about having an
incomplete RAID set, prompting me to access the Silicon Image RAID
configuration Utility..

Here I can either Resolve Conflicts or Rebuild the mirrored set.
Both options lead to nothing, saying either "No conflicts exist" or
"You cannot rebuild".

If I continue the regular boot of the pc and I access the Silicon Image
SATAraid GUI I see in the RAID set that one of the members has been
dropped.

Can I simply add a new set and delete the old set or do I need to do
more drastic things (I already backup up all my data to an external
disk, so the data is safe for now).

I hope someone can help me with this.
Thanks a lot for your attention.

Petro.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Dear all,

I have a Win2000Prof machine runing besides an OS disk, for my data 2
250 Gb SATA disks in RAID 1.
Recently at startup of the pc I get a warning about having an
incomplete RAID set, prompting me to access the Silicon Image RAID
configuration Utility..

Here I can either Resolve Conflicts or Rebuild the mirrored set.
Both options lead to nothing, saying either "No conflicts exist" or
"You cannot rebuild".

If I continue the regular boot of the pc and I access the Silicon Image
SATAraid GUI I see in the RAID set that one of the members has been
dropped.

Can I simply add a new set and delete the old set or do I need to do
more drastic things (I already backup up all my data to an external
disk, so the data is safe for now).

I hope someone can help me with this.
Thanks a lot for your attention.

Actually you need to find out wht the one disk was dropped.
Depending on the reason you may have to replace the dropped
disk first.

Does the utility show the dropped disk and give some status info?

Arno

 

[depeet]

Arno Wagner schreef:

Actually you need to find out wht the one disk was dropped.
Depending on the reason you may have to replace the dropped
disk first.

Does the utility show the dropped disk and give some status info?

Arno

Hello Arno,
Thanks for the quick respons.
The utility only shows the following information:
0 PM WDC WD2500JD-00FYB0 238475MB
1 SM WDC WD2500JD-00FYB0 238475MB

*Set0 SiI Mirrored Set <PM> 238474MB
1 WDC WD2500JD-ooFYB0 Current
0 WDC WD2500JD-ooFYB0 Dropped

When I look in the SATARaid GUI software I see the following in the
log:
twice a SCSI errors - medium error
followed by a BBR error - Flag failed

Does that mean anything to you?

Best regards,
Petro.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Arno Wagner schreef:

Hello Arno,
Thanks for the quick respons.
The utility only shows the following information:
0 PM WDC WD2500JD-00FYB0 238475MB
1 SM WDC WD2500JD-00FYB0 238475MB

*Set0 SiI Mirrored Set <PM> 238474MB
1 WDC WD2500JD-ooFYB0 Current
0 WDC WD2500JD-ooFYB0 Dropped

When I look in the SATARaid GUI software I see the following in the
log:
twice a SCSI errors - medium error

Possibly an unrecoverable or slow to recover read error.

followed by a BBR error - Flag failed

No idea.

Does that mean anything to you?

The real problem may be that WD drives are too unreliable for RAIDs
and take too long on error recovery. WD had to create a special RAID
edition of their drives to address this problem. Naturally they claim
that this was to make their drives even better in RAIDs, but the
simple fact is that their drives are perhaps the least reliable on the
market and thet their hardware has serious problems.

If you can afford it, move to Samsung, Seagate or Hitachi drives.
They all should not have this problem. If you cannot, then you can
try to reinitialise the drive with the RAID tools. If you are
unlucky, re-initialising and re-building can become a regular
activity with thesed drives though.

Arno

 

[depeet]

Arno Wagner schreef:

Possibly an unrecoverable or slow to recover read error.


No idea.


The real problem may be that WD drives are too unreliable for RAIDs
and take too long on error recovery. WD had to create a special RAID
edition of their drives to address this problem. Naturally they claim
that this was to make their drives even better in RAIDs, but the
simple fact is that their drives are perhaps the least reliable on the
market and thet their hardware has serious problems.

If you can afford it, move to Samsung, Seagate or Hitachi drives.
They all should not have this problem. If you cannot, then you can
try to reinitialise the drive with the RAID tools. If you are
unlucky, re-initialising and re-building can become a regular
activity with thesed drives though.

Arno

Hi Arno,

Thanks for your answer.

Does this mean that I can simply add a new set and after that delete
the old one?
I'm not that familiar with RAID and have no other tool than the Silicon
Image SATARaid software.
Thanks for your time!

Petro.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Arno Wagner schreef:
Hi Arno,

Thanks for your answer.

Does this mean that I can simply add a new set and after that delete
the old one?

Actually I meant thet you should be able to unRAID the failed
fdisk and then be able to re-add it to the array.

But if you have no valuable data on the raid, you should be able
to remove/clear all sidks and then create a new RAID array with them.

I'm not that familiar with RAID and have no other tool than the Silicon
Image SATARaid software.

In principle you can do all with RAID arrays and disks that is
theoretically possible. Unfortunately many RAID implementations
suck badly and do not allow you to do rather obvious and
sensible things. My personal experiences are with Linux software
RAID (pretty good) and Adaptec SATA hardware RAID (sucks badly,
the controller was worse than useless and now served as a
paperweight).

I have no specific knowledge of the limitations Silicon
Image has n its tools and software.

Arno

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Possibly an unrecoverable or slow to recover read error.


No idea.


The real problem may be that WD drives are too unreliable for RAIDs
and take too long on error recovery. WD had to create a special RAID
edition of their drives to address this problem. Naturally they claim
that this was to make their drives even better in RAIDs,

but the simple fact is

And when babblebot says that it simply has become a defacto fact.

that their drives are

perhaps

Perhaps, babblebot? Just a few words ago it was a FACT.

the least reliable on the market and thet their hardware has serious
problems.

Clueless, as always.