Data Corruption on PERC 5/i RAID HBA

[terayon1515]

Hey All,

I have a Dell PERC 5/i RAID card I purchased off eBay with a BBU. It is running in my Norco 4020 on an Intel-based Asus board (listed in my sig) - I had to block the SMBus pin on the card in order to have it function on this board.

I am experiencing extreme data corruption across the array. I have eight WD 500GB's (WD5000AAKS) drives connected to the controller. Everything was fine when the array was initially set up, tested it out and everything was gold. A few weeks later I experienced a HDD failure, the array was still accessible, so was the data.

When I inserted a replacement drive and rebuilt the array - 50% of all data was corrupted, still there, but totally garbled. (I use it for housing large MKV's) - I started the arduous task of replacing the bad files, and everything has been fine for months. I chalked it up to me hotswapping the drive in my Norco 4020 (which has a bit of an issue hotswapping with its backplanes)

BUT, last night I had another drive fail, replaced it (by powering down the machine, and cold-swapping) - rebuilt, and I'm hit with the same amount, if not more of garbled MKV's and data corruption. Moreover the file folder that keeps this data was reported as 'Corrupt and Unusable" by Windows Server 2008 - After I ran a 'chkdsk /f /r /v' the folder became accessible, but the files within are mostly garbage now.

The BBU is healthy and (checking the logs) has been cycled and tested. I am running a 'consistency check' from the MegaRAID manager right now, ETA 2hrs - but I haven't seen anything pop up in the logs, so that could be useless.

Does anyone have any good experience with these PERC 5/i cards? I had read on here of many users who like the cards. I can no longer use the card for any purpose as any drive failure will result in massive loss of most files (indiscriminately)

Can anyone help me with this? I would be forever grateful!
Happy holidays!

 

[Red Falcon]

This really sounds like the PERC card is dying (processor on it is going out).

I've used everything from the PERC 2 to 6 cards, both integrated and expansion versions, and the only time I've seen this is if the controller or processor on the card itself is starting to die.

This happened to another person on this forum recently (piglover I think), but it wasn't a PERC card. Though the results were the same, corrupted drives from a bad controller card.

If possible, depending on the OS you run, you may be able to just attach the HDDs to the RAID card, and then setup software RAID through the OS. It won't be as fast, but it should work.


Sorry, I'm not sure if there is a way to fix this. You could try baking the card.

 

[terayon1515]

Thanks for the reply Red!

The card finished its consistency check, nothing happened, nothing fixed.

It's sad to think the card is pooched, do you think maybe the 256MB DDR stick (cache) could possibly be the issue? (I have some IBM FB-DIMMs I could try in there - as a last ditch effort) Or are you fairly sure these are the signs of a dying card?

I guess I could end up using it as a host only, but I hate Windows software RAID5 (or any other level it has) (I'm running Win 2008 Ent. BTW) I already have an older Highpoint card I'm using as a host only (given its 2TB array limit)

I checked eBay for a PERC 6i - but my confidence is seriously shaken with these second hand cards. Should I go for it? or just go out and buy some more huge drives and attach them to the crappy onboard Intel-RAID - which has never failed me...

 

[Red Falcon]

Yeah, I don't blame you, FakeRAID is kinda crappy as it is proprietary to the drivers used and Windows only, rather than software RAID which can span across multiple OSes for compatibility.

You know, I never though about the RAM going bad. If you have a spare ECC stick, I'd say definitely try it out as that is a huge possibility.

PERC cards are good, but some of them are proprietary to the systems they come in and it is kind of a crap shoot to see if they are compatible beyond those systems. Also, if you can in any way go from 2008 to 2008R2, do it. 2008 is like a server version of Vista, a bloated slow OS. 2008R2 however is very stable and is much more memory efficient and is very similar to Win7. If you can't, just do the best you can.

Is there a reason you need 2008? If you can use any version of Linux/Unix, it will be much more efficient and all of them support software RAID.

I'd avoid any more PERC cards unless you can get them for very low cost (or free) or if you get them with the system they come in, especially the 6i card.

I hope it works out for you.

 

[terayon1515]

Thanks for the reply Red,

I've set my focus on a new high port-count (24) card: a Highpoint RocketRAID 2760

I am going to try swapping the cache stick for another, I will update as soon as I sift through the dead data and take the array down for good.

I will be switching to R2 as soon as I can (once I get all this data settled)
I am using it primarily for its DFS features, I use the DFS shares for simplistic backups of systems and an easy way to deal with all my different controllers' arrays.

I love Linux software RAID, but I have downsized my box-count to just my server and Win7 workbox. I love Linux, but I'm a heavy windows guy, and I don't want to risk my data with my knowledge boundaries on Linux - just yet.

Thanks for the advice on the PERC's - I'm also a RocketRAID133 owner (seeing it in your Sig took me back
Thanks again!!

 

[parityboy]

Yeah, I don't blame you, FakeRAID is kinda crappy as it is proprietary to the drivers used and Windows only, rather than software RAID which can span across multiple OSes for compatibility.

Didn't quite understand this. Are you saying then that Windows' software RAID can be read by Mac OS X and Linux?

PERC cards are good, but some of them are proprietary to the systems they come in and it is kind of a crap shoot to see if they are compatible beyond those systems.

Is this something that they do in the firmware, to make sure the card is running in a Dell system?