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raptor reliability

S

sdadept

Limp Gawd
2FA
Joined
Jul 3, 2004
Messages
433
I got a set of 2 raptors back in December. One drive was flakey right off the bat and I RMA'd it back to newegg and got a replacement. The second drive started going our in March and I RMA'd that back for a replacement. Now the first RMA'd drive is starting to quit out on me and I'm starting to get a bit concerned. My case is very well ventilated and I've got more than enough power from the power supply.

I use a pacific digital talon raid card for the drives and I run them in raid 1.

anyone else having reliability problems with these drives or am I just especially cursed here.
 
Are they 36 or 74 GIG..I had a problem with a few 36's.... They would crap out every 4 months or so.....I have the 74's now and havent had any trouble with them.... They are about a year old now....and they are installed in the same case, in the same location, so It wasnt a cooling issue

.
 
They are the 74g models. This is the third one that has crapped out now.
 
So you've had 3 enterprise-class drives fail on you in a row? I think you may want to check your system again. I have a feeling that something's not right there. Could you list some specs, please?
 
The Raptor is not an "Enterprise-Class" drive. It is only marketed as such. Then rvms are too high and the mtbf hours too low to be considered enterprise. It's a nice drive for the niche market it fills, but not an true enterprise drive.
 
StorageJoe said:
The Raptor is not an "Enterprise-Class" drive. It is only marketed as such. Then rvms are too high and the mtbf hours too low to be considered enterprise. It's a nice drive for the niche market it fills, but not an true enterprise drive.
Click to expand...

1.2 Million MTBF too low? It's the same as my MAU
RPMs too high? My MAU operates at 15,000 RPM.
WD calls it an enterprise drive

I feel safe calling it an enterprise-class drive.
 
StorageJoe said:
The Raptor is not an "Enterprise-Class" drive. It is only marketed as such. Then rvms are too high and the mtbf hours too low to be considered enterprise. It's a nice drive for the niche market it fills, but not an true enterprise drive.
Click to expand...


Uh....OK
 
I agree with TeeJay on this one. This looks like power supply or BIOS/driver issue. Just because a power supply is high wattage doesn't mean it will deliver that given wattage under a specific load. It may exhibit poor crossload performance, an unusually steep curve in the relationship of internal temperature to current output, allow poor line conditions in the current from the wall to be passed to the peripherals, etc. Power/data cables, the host BIOS, and the host driver are also suspect. Check all of these things before proceeding to blame drives, especially when they fail at such an alarming rate.

There's a reason the Raptor ships with a five year warranty. It is designed and built to take the knocks of highly random, 24/7 loads enterprise loads that would kill a consumer drive in short order.
 
I've got 2 36G raptors running in Raid 0 and haven't had a problem in over 2 years of having them. They run probably an average of 4 hours a day.
 
TeeJayHoward said:
RPMs too high? My MAU operates at 15,000 RPM.
WD calls it an enterprise drive

I feel safe calling it an enterprise-class drive.
Click to expand...

RVM not RPM. It's a measure of rotational vibration. Like I said, the RVMs on the Raptor are too high to be considered enterprise. RVMs not only affect performance a drive (more so when grouped in a single chasis as the vibration of numerous drive will kill seek times and transfer rates) but also are a good measure of the build tolerances of the drive itself.

So what if WD calls it an enterprise class drive. They also call some of their desktop drives "SATAII". WD has a great marketing dept. They also make a 10k SATA, which in it's niche market, is great. But it is not enterprise, and really does not sell well in the enterprise market.
 
ok, fair enough. Here are the exact specs on the system. I built this system in October of 2003.

Corsair XMS (4 x 512MB) 184 PING ddr 400 Unbuffered Dual Channel
Intel P4 2.8 with HT / 800bus
MSI 865PE_Neo2-PFS_(Platinum_Edition) (MS-6728)
OCZ Powerstream 520W
Pacific Digital Talon Raid TL-150 2 port
2x 74g 10k Raptors running in raid 1
Sony DVDR/CDR
3.5 floppy drive

Currently none of the other components have gone bad.
 
Hitachi white papers

If you read the first paragraph on page 2, it illustrates my point quite well. I'll see if I can pull up the exact numbers on the Raptor and a couple SCSI drives from Seagate, Hitachi, ect...
 
Are the revisions the same?

There is another active thread dealing with a similar issue which I'm sure you're aware of. Are they the same firmware? Also I know cooling has been brought up, but they do tend to run hot. Are you running hard drive fans?
 
StorageJoe said:
RVM not RPM. It's a measure of rotational vibration.
Click to expand...
Eep! My brain typo'd. Anywho, can we help the poor man now? :D

What kind of video card do you have? The nVidia 6x00 series likes to suck down power, too :)

26A on the 12V rail isn't bad... Do you have a multimeter you could test the PSU with?
 
I have a GeForce 3 card I bought back in 2001. Sorry I forgot to include that.
 
Hmm... Well, it doesn't look like your system would be pulling massive loads through the power supply. I'd still recommend checking it with a multimeter, but for now, I'll assume it's good. Definately check your drivers, your cables, and the power comming out of the wall. Also, I am assuming that this is NOT a LAN PC, that would be moved around, and possibly jostled with the drives still spinning.

Could you mention a bit more about what exactly the drive is doing that makes you think it's going bad?
 
Some more info. I run the talon card in full TCQ mode as I multi task like crazy with VMWARE os's. I also have a hard drive fan that fits in front of the drives.

The drives all exhibit the same behavior when they fail. They start consistently dropping out of the array. Since I've got it mirrored, I am able to rebuild and I lose nothing, but then a few days later it drops out again.
 
sdadept said:
Some more info. I run the talon card in full TCQ mode as I multi task like crazy with VMWARE os's. I also have a hard drive fan that fits in front of the drives.

The drives all exhibit the same behavior when they fail. They start consistently dropping out of the array. Since I've got it mirrored, I am able to rebuild and I lose nothing, but then a few days later it drops out again.
Click to expand...

Like StorageJoe mentioned, are they the same revision?
 
no, they aren't. Therefore, I just bit the bullet and ordered another 74g raptor from newegg. Hopefully it will be a rev 2 (i've currently got a rev 0 and rev 2 drive) and I'm going to try that new drive in the system pairing it with the other rev 2 drive.

the thing I find puzzling is the drives work for a month or so then start dropping out consistently from the array.
 
That could be a problem right there. Their packaging of bare drives is a little shady. If they are getting bashed around that could lead to bad sectors. When you drop a drive the head smacks the platter and can mess it up. If they haven't shipped yet, I'd cancel and order from zipzoomfly. Worth a shot at least.
 
ok i have the talon card and 2 raptors in raid 0

yea i have an A1 and A0 revision

my problem is they dont disappear from the raid, but i will get bluescreens on boot, scsiport.sys and it will hang on boot and never get to windows.

other times i get an inaccessable boot device

i cant bear to 'bite the bullet' and get TWO new drives. but im headin to Frys today at lunch and see if they have an A0 or A1 revisions. if they have A2 then im screwed...

ive wrote another email to pacific digital asking if i can run A2 with A1/A0 but i think i already know the answer to that...
 
I found this while looking around after reading about your problem:

Ripped from => http://ninjamicros.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-1578.html

Unfortunetly the revision does matter. The HD raptor as far as
performance goes in a SATA drive is the best drive on the market. We
are unaware of the A1 having faulty TCQ. However TCQ is handled
differently in revision A1 then in revision A0.

We have tested both the A0/A0 an A1/A1 with the Talon card. It is not
recommended to run two drives in a RAID that are different revisions.
There are small various in the TCQ properties which can lead to data
sync issues and drive errors.
Click to expand...

I've been running a 74g raptor since just after they came out and have as yet to have one fail.

-dB

Edit: BWAHAHAHA!!! I just quoted you didn't I? That's great...

Ouch my sides hurt.
 
LOL! yes you did! from another board no less. and i posted this in another thread about raptor revisions....now my dillema is do i go and get two new A2 rev's since theyre newer revisions, its better to have the latest revision no? and then sell my old A1 and A0 rev's so meh. that or i explain my situation to Western Digital, which i have about all this revision crap and asked for RMA and if i could get 1 drive rma'd to get 2 identical revisions, or if they will rma both and give me A2 revision. i was considering an advance replacement from them, that way the drives get here first, and hopefully i get two new A2's BUT when i RMA'd the A0 last time they sent me an A0 for advanced replacement, so it wasnt like they sent me a new drive, they sent me the same rev drive of the one i RMA'd so im hopin i can get two new A2 ones or else i might have to sacrafice and get two new ones and sell the old ones...blah!@
 
Wow this is pretty coincedental, BOTH my raptors screwed up yesterday. Now I cant even do a clean winstall without one of them getting a write error or BSOD. Both are rev a2 and were powered via molex (had the WD secureconnect sata cable). I doubt it was power as I was powering them with PCP&P 510 SLi
 
wankers!

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support.

The series of numbers and letters after the dash in your model number are for internal use only, and is considered proprietary information. We cannot guarantee what revision you will get if you create an RMA. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Sincerely,
Dallas L
Western Digital Service and Support


so im SOL and im probably goin to do an advancved replacement of both the drives at the same time, and just hope for the best.
 
Zxcs said:
Wow this is pretty coincedental, BOTH my raptors screwed up yesterday. Now I cant even do a clean winstall without one of them getting a write error or BSOD. Both are rev a2 and were powered via molex (had the WD secureconnect sata cable). I doubt it was power as I was powering them with PCP&P 510 SLi
Click to expand...

how's the heat inside your case? i'm guessing it's high due your that PSU :p
 
My first 36GB Raptor came DOA. It was detected as a 0MB drive lol. I did and advanced RMA (that you WD!) and my new one runs great. I've been running it 24/7 for over a year.

My only complaint is that I didn't get the 76GB model. Oh well, I still have Christmas! :D
 
the reason Any IDE is not enterprise is because not only is SCSI significantly quicker but the SCSI interface requires less CPU overheads (the SCSI adapter card takes load off the CPU during use) :rolleyes: - to call a Raptor enterprise is laughable! :eek:
 
perplex said:
how's the heat inside your case? i'm guessing it's high due your that PSU :p
Click to expand...
Low since a side is off and all gpu/cpu heat is taken away via water. Room ambient is high but I doubt that could've done anything as I had a fan blowing air across them.
 
perplex said:
the reason Any IDE is not enterprise is because not only is SCSI significantly quicker but the SCSI interface requires less CPU overheads (the SCSI adapter card takes load off the CPU during use) :rolleyes: - to call a Raptor enterprise is laughable! :eek:
Click to expand...

Interface has little to do with it. It's the build and tolerances of the drive itself. A SCSI drive and a SATA are not the same drive just with different interface cards, they are very different.
 
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