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Degraded RAID-5

S

sky.strife

n00b
Joined
Jan 15, 2007
Messages
37
(Cross-posted from EVGA forums.)

Just a scheduled reboot of my system to finish uninstalling a program.

When I got to the RAID detection part of POST, it seemed like it was hanging. I let it sit for about a minute, and it detected my RAID-5 array (my boot array with Windows XP). Status said it was "Degraded". I went into the RAID BIOS and found that only two of the three drives were detected.

I popped open the case and confirmed that the drives looked fine, unplugged them and replugged them back in (power and SATA cable), and booted again. Still Degraded, and still isn't detecting one of the drives (not sure how to tell which one as the manual apparently has the ports mislabeled).

I'm currently typing this on that machine, so the other two drives are running just fine and it would seem the RAID controller is working just fine. Could this be a total drive failure?

I'm going to try to determine what drive exactly is not being picked up by the RAID BIOS when I actually have time for cable plugging and such. I'm curious- could it be the physical SATA socket on the motherboard gone bad? I sure hope not, as RMAing a drive from a RAID-5 array is much easier than RMAing the motherboard. At least I can still run without that drive being detected thanks to my RAID-5 choice.

So, yeah, any ideas? I'm thinking that the drive just outright failed, but wouldn't that have given me some weird error, or even a BSOD in Windows? Could this be the side-effect of flashing to P24 through the nVidia System Update tool? I'd think that the flash shouldn't have anything to do with it since I booted into windows just fine at least twice (I didn't keep track) since the flash.

Very odd.

EVGA 680i, EVGA 8800GTX, 2GB DDR2-800, x3 Seagate 320GB in RAID-5, Intel C2D E6700 @ Stock 2.66 GHz, P24 BIOS
 
Check your RAID BIOS or management software in Windows to see if it lists the serial numbers of the drives anywhere. Match them up with the drive labels and whichever one's not listed, pull it and run diagnostics. If it's no good, RMA.

Most likely it's just a failed drive. The only outward sign of failure within Windows would be through whatever array management software you use. I'm not sure the controller would even report the failure to Windows otherwise, but you could check the Event Viewer. /shrug
 
Korrd said:
Check your RAID BIOS or management software in Windows to see if it lists the serial numbers of the drives anywhere. Match them up with the drive labels and whichever one's not listed, pull it and run diagnostics. If it's no good, RMA.

Most likely it's just a failed drive. The only outward sign of failure within Windows would be through whatever array management software you use. I'm not sure the controller would even report the failure to Windows otherwise, but you could check the Event Viewer. /shrug
Click to expand...

Here's the only bit in the Event Viewer about the raid (nvraid).

"The driver detected a controller error on ."

There are five of these in succession, same hour, minute, and second. My guess is that's where the drive decided to kick the bucket.

protias said:
Look to see what the SMART status is.
Click to expand...

I don't think these drives have SMART. I may be mistaken though.

EDIT: I'm going to power down now and do some cable switching, plugging, and all that fun stuff to determine the drive, because the RAID BIOS just reports the drive's model number (and I'm using three of the same drive, so that does me no good). I'll post back with my results. I'll probably just find that it's a failed drive though.
 
They do. Many programs can read SMART data. I suggest Everest (I don't see a link on Lavalys' website any more, just Google "everest 2.2" or "everest home edition"), as it's easy to use and shows tons of system information. Is there no Windows RAID management software available?

EDIT: Install nVidia's MediaShield software. According to the user guide, it'll show you graphically (has a picture of the SATA connectors) which port the problem drive is connected to. That should make it even easier to track down than with the serial number method. It's quite groovy, actually.
 
Caught me just a bit too late. I did it the hard way (moving the drives to different ports, cable switching, etc.) and was able to determine the faulty drive. No matter where I moved the thing it refused to be detected by the BIOS. I can't test the drive on another machine, and after nearly an hour of moving things around and testing, I think the drive just outright failed.
 
Yep. Get that RMA started so you can get a new drive and restore redundancy. Unlikely as it may be, losing another drive would be bad. o_O
 
Yeah, that would really suck. More than really suck. My music...

I'd cry. =P

Thank God I went with NewEgg though, I've heard their RMA service is awesome.
 
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