Where to post for RAID help? RAID10-4x500gb,SB710+M4A785TD-MEVO

[supernova777]

I just had a problem with my first attempt at a RAID10 setup. (RAID1+0)

Basically what happened was one of my disks dropped out.. and i got a message saying my raid volume had gone critical from AMD RAIDXPERT software..

The disks are not dead. They are all still functioning. What I dont understand is how to reform the proper RAID ARRAy.. as it wont 'go back together' perhaps there actually is something wrong with this disk but all the disks involved, 1 is an RMA'd drive i just received from WD and its working fine, the other 3 are all the same model WD caviar Blue 500gb Volumes. And Ive bought them all within the last 30 days pretty much. Ive NEVER IN MY LIFE had problems with hard drives i have hard drives that ive had since 4-5 years ago working fine still, so this is bizarre, but mind you i dont usually use RAID.
The IDE drives that i have in the same box on a software win7 Stripe raid0 are working like a rock.. i dont understand why when i wasnt even using the computer.. i get these messages saying the volumes are being plugged in and out.. the
motherboard i have is the asus m4a785TD-M EVO which seems to be a great board i really doubt the boards at fault.. it says its a SB710 chipset for the Raid controller in the manual in the SATA configuration page.

does anyone know where i can post to get some feedback on my situation? im running windows 7 64bit.. is there another forum i can try to post on aswell? perhaps?

 

[supernova777]

Still having problems with this.. i dont know what to do other then to bring back the motherboard.. which means tearing apart my system.. It seems to be an issue with the SB710 RAID controller built into this asus board..

theres a total of 5 sata ports on the board +1 esata on the back to make 6 sata ports.
1 of which is of course my boot drive SSD.
and the other 4.. 2 of them work just fine apparently, but the other 2.. keep "plugging in" and "plugging out" while im up + running.. for no apparent reason..
really wish someone could give me a clue here

 

[Golden]

Hi,

You need to post your system specs, including how you built the RAID in the first place, so we can try help you.

Also, I don't understand what your third post is about, but I can guarantee very few people will read it. Try to present some concise information, instead of copying and pasting whatever output that is. Perhaps you can post some information using Speccy?

Regards,
Golden

 

[googs]

check the sata leads maybe m8, i built my mums pc brand new recently, and her 2nd drive seems to dissappear randomly, have just changed the leads, and waiting for her to return from holidays for testing... i noticed, sata leads look pretty dodgy to me (electrician), like the micro usb leads the phones use these days, im treating mine with care to try ensure the longest possible life with them...
some sata leads have little clips to help hold them in too which may help...
maybe try swapping leads around, might fix it, or replicate problem to another disk...

 

[supernova777]

i have swapped the harddrives. its not the drives themselves.. thats for sure..

 

[supernova777]

i dunno what to do other then to bring back the motherboard to the store because the hard drives work in raid formation in my other machine which uses a different RAID chipset.. intel ICHR chipset... on the p5b deluxe asus board.. this one, whatever hard drive gets plugged into SATA port 6 will always fall out of the raid.. amd raid xpert software reporting that the drive has been plugged out and will pop back and forth between in and out.. very frustrating as everything else with the machine is golden. works fast + i didnt want to put the time + efffort into redoing everything ive already done ;(

 

[supernova777]

one other thing i noticed is that in the bios.. ports 1-4 have their own settings .. for AHCI, IDE, RAID
and 5-6 are isolated.. and the problems im having is mostly with ports 5-6..
im wondering if this could have been caused by me installing windows with ports 5-6 set to IDE in the bios
and then changing it to raid after when i got the hard drives to expand..

guaranteed this is going to waste a few more days of my life. ugh

 

[Packet]

sounds like it - on both counts (IDE set to RAID after and the time wastage)

what's special about ports 5 and 6?

 

[supernova777]

i dunno i guess its because AHCI is only supported on ports 1-4??? but they are seperated in the bios.

im about ready to get a different motherboard though.. i mean i cant use my harddrives in hardware raid knowing theres a chance that the raid can be unstable and have drives plugging in and out at random.. im gonna have a heart attack if thats the case. the reason i even bough this board was to have a raid10 setup so id could sleep at night knowing my data is safe x2...

right now my brain is telling me the potential causes could be:

a) a problem with my software install of windows + amd raid xpert? (unlikely imo)
and/or related to the settings of AHCI/IDE/RAID in the bios for the SATA channels
AT TIME OF INSTALL.
b) a problem with THIS SPECIFIC BOARD
c) a general problem with the SB710 Raid chipset (??anyone else had a problem?)

all 3 of these potential causes could be eliminated if i got a new board with a different raid chipset (SB850 instead of SB710) and reinstalled windows 7.

 

[supernova777]

this is what im seeing in my output of RAID XPERT software log..
im going to delete my 3xRAID0 now and try to make them single disks and raid them together with windows 7.. and test for stability over the next 2-3 days.. (the amt of time i have left before i have to take the motherboard back as my 30 days from purchase date will be up!)

 

[Packet]

how about just using RAID on the first 4 ports and testing if that has issues too?

if it does, time to get a new board

 

[supernova777]

yeap thats exactly what im going to do .. new experiment i just got another seagate drive so i have 2 seagates 500gb baracudas and 2 wd's caviar blues.. going to put the caviar blues on port 2+3 and seagates on the really troublesom ports 5-6 and hardware raid0 each pair and see what happens

 

[supernova777]

do you think quickformating vs formatting properly would have an impact on my situation here?

heres my new experiment im trying

2xWD caviar blue on SATA ports 2-3
raid0 with 128k stripe
SLOW Format (ive been quickformatting the past few times)

2xSeagate Baracuda on SATA ports 5-6
raid1 / 64k
SLOW Format again

 

[Packet]

nope, no impact re: quick / regular.

all the regular does is check for bad blocks and mark any it finds.

also, just to throw this into the mix - if you get any RAID issues now on ports other than 5-6, do look into the TLER aspect... (apparently, it can be disabled on some drives so that they dont drop out of the RAID array... and just to complicate things a bit, the RAID software itself can also cause drives to drop out of the array - though in your case, it seems to be a hardware issue rather than a software issue because of those ports 5-6)

 

[supernova777]

i may just have to use Software RAID.. im pretty sure i wouldnt have any problems if the drives were singular as far as the hardware is concerned.. this is my last attempt at hardware.. if i get so much as one msg of a drive unplugging thats it.. im either taking the board back or going with software raid.. depending on how lazy i am. although i have my eye on a gigabyte board that has usb3 capability and pretty much the same specs but also has raid5 capability with the SB850 io chipset

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3632#ov

dunno if my situation would be any different with a gigabyte board as opposed to an asus board.. i think they pretty much use the same chipsets

 

[supernova777]

a guy on another board suggested that i wont have the same problem with the seagate drives and that yes its related to the Timing out of the error correction on the WD drives.. but i had 1 seagate in a trple stripe raid0 yesterday and it was 'unplugging' , and i also have 2 other WD drives in my asus intel based pc running on the ICHR8 intel raid chipset and its working like a rock. never had a problem.. meanwhile the same exact drives in THIS amd machine, RAID XPERT was telling me that the drive had bad blocks etc... and giving me all kinds of error messages so i put those wd drives back in my intel machine and they again, worked like a rock, never a problem. ZERO prob;lems.

i also read a thread somewhere on a board about ATI drivers messing up RAID drivers... thats a possibility because this machine with the problems.. its got ATI graphics built in.. amd board. etc.. anyways the story i read on the other board somewhere ( cant remember where at this moment but i can track it down i think) was that this guys machine went thru windows update and the driver overwrote some southbridge drivers and he had the same type of problem.. i read this a few days ago and im just remembering about it now.. what if its just the RAID XPERT software thats screwing up on me..??? somewhere theres a problem.. ive got to find out what it is..! damnit

 

[haxcid]

Jumper your drives for staggered spin up...

Also what raid are your trying to achieve. The post title says 10 (actually 0,1 double stripped with a mirror?)

Unless you are doing a 5 or just 2 raid 1's you will not be able to do a 0 + 1 unless both volumes are of equal size. Raid controllers can be finicky with mismatched drive sizes in 0+1 combos.

I would create your raid on 0,1,2,3 and put your boot drive on 4.

Also you are going to have issues if you do not remove the raid stripes before transferring the drives to another raid setup. I read where you took your WD's that worked great in 1 machine and tried them in another and it does not work... You cannot generally do that unless both machines are using the same raid controller. You have to break your array, wipe the drives, then move them to the other machine, configure your raid array and let it build.

Also drives with different firmware revisions can cause issues despite them being the same exact size.

Good luck.