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raid 5 - strange issues

E

EzekialRage

Gawd
Joined
Jul 25, 2001
Messages
580
having some interesting issues with my pc that as of yet, i've been unable to nail down. the reason I beleive the raid array is to blame (or the controller) is the problem occured after the install of the array... coincidence maybe, but you never know.

Fresh install of WinXP with no software save MSOffice 2k3 and the system started responding slowly. When you open My Computer, it takes literally 2-5 minutes for it to display the contents. The same thing happens if you try to save a torrent, or a document and attempt to browse. The odd thing is, If I try to start->run->d:\ or c:\ it comes up right away.

anyways, the system:

MSI K7D Master
2 x XP 1800
1 x 512 Crucial XMS PC3200
1 x Promise TX4000 w/ 128M PC133 memory

Master (boot drive) = 120 GB WD SE w/ 8M Cache

Raid Drives = 4 x 160 Maxtor w/ 8M Cache configured as Raid5

I'm new to the hardware IDE raid setups, so if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears.

Thanks!
 
Do you have a disc in your CD/DVD drive? I have seen My Computer take forever to come up because Windows is polling the optical drive. Usually a bad disc when this has happened to me in the past.

Other than the My Computer window, are you noticing any other sluggishness?
 
good thought spectrum, but no. i've pulled all hardware save whats listed above just in case. i've also disabled network searching in case that was the issue, but to no avail.

the only time the machine appears to bog down is when trying to browse to my computer. within any application, including the explorer view.
 
Strange to say the least. Only other thing I could think of would be to load an updated driver for the raid controller. Beyond that maybe one of the more RAID savvy readers can give you a clue.
 
Have you installed all critical, and any relevent XP patches? Coupla relevent issues addressed. Have you checked to see if you aren't running in PIO mode? Really shouldn't be be that slow, but who knows. Proper drivers are installed, and detected? No yellow question marks in Device Manager?
 
make sure your controller is not "scrubbing" the drives... or rebuilding the array due to a sh*tty drive. Make sure u have your raid card monitoring program(s) installed and checkthem out.

i personally have two rigs on raid 5
1. 3ware 7810 with 7x 200gb raid5
2. 3ware 7500-8 with 3x 250gb raid5.

before, when i had a crappy relayed ps, one of the drives would constantly "die" and the controller will warn and try to rebuild the array when teh drive is back (crappy power connectors) performance hit was HUGE.
 
i personaly have a TX4000
using 128mb cache

i'll tell u right now
GET RID OF IT
i suffered many many data losses while using raid5 with that card!!!!
any version of the driver
tried replaceing the card2x
kept either droping drives from the array or corupting data on the drives

swaped over to a adaptec 2400A
http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/pr...odkey=AAR-2400A&cat=/Technology/RAID/ATA+RAID

using the exact same drives (never thought to rma them)
it has been stable for 8 months since the swap
no data loss no coruption

system is a Squid (internet cache) server for a 1200 student college
4x120gb IBM 120gb 8mb HD's in raid5
its floged 24x7
 
Sorry for the late response, just moved and went for a while without cable.. blech.

Correction on orginal post, it is an SX4000, not TX. Sorry for the mixup, I was braindead when I posted.

1. I've installed all critical updates.
2. Installed newest drivers (save bios, which I'm doing tonight)
3. There are no apps installed to this drive, only storage. As far as I can tell, the drives arn't scrubbing upon opening my computer.

Keep in mind, though. The drive opens properly when I hit a direct shortcut. Its 'My computer' that hangs. C Drive, and DVD RW work like a charm too directly. NO network drives loaded, and I've disabled network search w/in XP. I also just replaced the PC133 128 DIMM with a 256MEG DIMM, and I"m using write back cacheing.

Any other thoughts or suggestions before I reinstall XP?

Thanks,

er
 
flashed the bios on the sx4000, also the bios on my msi k7d master to the newest versions, same problem

finally formated xp and reinstalled. problem resolved. I guess I jumped the gun on the raid causing the problem.

Thanks for your suggestions guys.
 
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