Solved Random BSOD in ntoskrnl.exe

[Tsunamijhoe]

Well, it seems there is some other things going on too, i might have 2 bad drives among the pool,or a bad asrock sata controller..
I havent had a bsod,but i get a lot of smart errors, especially read error and pending sector errors,so this might be a whole range of errors.

I have moved all EARS drives away from the supermicro,but now boot up takes 20 minutes for windows to be ready,so 1 or more drives on the supermicro doesnt respond as it should,or the controller is bad,or there is a dma conflict or something,this goes away if i mix and match the drives around,it is really strange.

I noticed one of my asrock controllers only reported 1 drive connected even though there are 2 on the controller,and it reported only 1 drive even though i tried changing cables and drives,so i think this controller is definitly bad,but this much hardware failure in the span of a few days with no power loss or lightning is a bit much to be coincidence.

 

[Vir Gnarus]

You said this was a relatively new system, though? It is not uncommon to receive bad parts, be they DOA or just happen to putter out in a couple months. Why, just previously a workstation PC I had to build came with both a bad stick of RAM and a bad mobo, and I've had previous ordeals with bad drives, RAM sticks, PSUs and other occasional items. That's why usually when I make new purchase orders for the department I'm over, I have my own little lab to do test runs on all the hardware prior to building production systems out of them, to ensure they're all working fine. Even then one of them may conk out in the near future, so I always make sure to be prepared for that eventuality. It's a harsh and pessimistic way of looking at things, but when reliability and stability is crucial in a work environment, it's necessary.

It seems you are running through some configuration changes to try to figure this out, so more power to you. You're already trying to isolate whether it's a bad controller or not which is what I would've preferred to do next. Understand that though most of your drives are hooked up to the Supermicro controller, all that still has to run through the PCI-E bus, so if the mobo is going bonkers, then it may affect the Supermicro's performance as well. Again, I'm just throwing out speculation. It's a larger configuration, but it would be best to verify with a smaller configuration and then grow it from there to try to find stability problems.

 

[Tsunamijhoe]

OK, all hardware,and about 8 of the drives are brand new,the rest of the drives have been scavenged,i have especially gutted ALL my "my book" usb drives for the sata drives inside,and it is these drives EARS that is crapping out.. I am SURE it is due to the fact that they have run in the usb enclosure without the wdidle, i only ran wdidle when i took the drives out of the enclosures,so the oldest had run for about a year parking every 8 seconds,which will wear the drives down fast..

However, i knew 1 drive for certain was bad, and i have removed the questionable controller, and the boot up was normal, all drives present and accounted for,transfer speeds as they should be, no BSOD and no drive dismounts. x-fingers :-D

Can a bad controller result in reports of smart errors that are not really there?

I will over the course of the next 6 months exchange the rest of the EARS Drives for blacks or the new reds depending on what the reviews says.

So hopefully i have hit the correct configuration,and removed the bad parts.. Only time will tell..

Thank you so much for the help so far,and i will get back to you wether the problem is solved,or not

 

[Vir Gnarus]

To my understanding, a bad controller shouldn't affect a drive's internal SMART data, but any SMART report given by the system or any kind of SMART test will not go well if the controller is bad.

Sorry this ended up being woefully complicated. I hope things get resolved in the most expedient and simplest manner. Yes, keep us up to date on any future events.

 

[Tsunamijhoe]

OK, no bsod for awhile,but i keep getting drive dismounts,so now i have ordered a new controller, the ibm serveraid 1015 which i will flash to IT firmware to disable the raid part so it becomes a 8-port sata controller,which should fix all my problems. Gonna take until after new years before i know for certain this is 100% fixed,as there is still 1 piece of hardware which could be at fault, namely the backplane on my 5in3 drive cages (norco re-branded to x-case)

Anyways,time will tell,i will kepp ya updated

Merry xmas guys

 

[Tsunamijhoe]

*UPDATE*

OK,i think this problem is solved. It was multiple problems i believe.
I exchanged my supermicro controller for an IBM serveraid 1015M flashed to IT mode, and i replaced a backplane on 1 of my norco drive cages, i have deleted ALL non essential software,as well as updated all intel drivers, and so far my system is stable,no bsod (cross-fingers)

Thank you for your help

 

[Vir Gnarus]

Phew, what a hassle. I'm sorry it came to that, skipper, and that I couldn't be more accurate with my assessment - you can only go so far when it comes to diagnosing hardware issues. Here's hoping it's all taken care of, for sure!

 

[Tsunamijhoe]

Phew, what a hassle. I'm sorry it came to that, skipper, and that I couldn't be more accurate with my assessment - you can only go so far when it comes to diagnosing hardware issues. Here's hoping it's all taken care of, for sure!

Well, with problems of this nature where many parts can be at fault, the only true method,is the old true and tried one of deduction, which is basically a hail mary,and hope it works,in which case it did,or sort of ..

I now have a brand new problem present itself,which i have started a new thread for,as it seems unrelated to this one, but that is a whole nother story..

Anyways, again thanks a lot for your kind help, as 2 minds (or more) are better than 1 in these cases