RAID 5 Problem need help

[jimlenz]

I built a HTPC with raid 5 setup. I have a boot drive and 3 WD green caviar 1 tb drives in the setup. Every so often the computer hangs at shutdown, running windows 7 64 bit. I have to reboot the computer or shut off as it wont shut down. When I reboot I get a message that the raid is degraded. I go into the intel console click the drive as normal and then it rebuilds the raid. Generally takes 2+ days for this to happen.

This has happened 1x per month with the same drive, drive #2. It sounds like I may have a problem with the drive as it is always the same drive.

I need some assistance on what to do? Is there any testing I can do on the drive to make sure it is okay? Or should I just replace the drive? I have not lost any information yet but dont want too.

Thanks for your help.

Jim

 

[sub.mesa]

You do know onboard RAID5 is very unsafe and many lost their data, right? Generally you should avoid RAID5 under windows. Why not put the RAID disks in a (real) server and stream across the LAN?

Either way, seems something goes wrong. I assume you still have access to your data? Do you have a full 1:1 backup of all data?

If so, you could try to see if you can access the SMART data. Because the disks are in RAID, it won't give you that info. But you can boot with Ubuntu and use smartmontools to check the SMART data of the 3 drives in RAID.

Also, if you do not have a proper backup, now is the time to think about another setup, before you're going to lose data. It's just a matter of time if you just continue, i think.

 

[jimlenz]

I do have access to all my data, that is not a concern. If Raid 5 is not safe, which raid setup do you suggest? I only have about 2tb of data, which is why i use raid 5, thought being redundant was a good thing.

I really dont want to spend anymore money, so I dont want to setup another server and stream across lan.

Are there any tools to test the hard drives to make sure they are okay?

Jim

 

[sub.mesa]

I'm not concerned about your harddrives. More than 50% of windows-based RAIDs fail and people lose their data with the disks being perfectly fine; perhaps a small hickup or not even related to the disks themselves. In that case it is the RAID-layer that can fail. So actually running a RAID5 with low-quality RAID drivers may be more dangerous than just running three disks without RAID.

Often people forget that introducing RAID means your storage setup is more complicated and in the case of Windows relies on low-quality proprietary drivers. Any mistake in there will put your data at risk, without the disks having to do anything wrong.

In your case, i would suggest not using RAID at all. You have three 1TB disks. So use one disk as system disk. Second as large data disk (containing most your important files) and the third disk is a manual backup (no RAID) of the second disk.

In this case, you have 1TB backup space, do not run RAID and generally won't have any problems either. I think you would be much happier with this problem-free setup than the RAID5 solution you were about to take.

The disadvantages are that you manually need to backup your second drive, that your free space is divided between two disks and that you have no performance increase from having multiple disks. But hey these disks are fast enough for the usual stuff.

A backup is worth so much more than RAID regarding data security. Especially on Windows, i'd say.

 

[jimlenz]

Thanks for the feedback.

I already have a drive for my OS so I have 3 drives in the raid. How would you deal with the 3 drives now? If I use one for data and one for backup, what about the other?

How do I stop using the raid without losing my information?

Jim