Excessive fragmentation of the ntfs

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Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

I have two western digital sata 36 g raptors setup in a raid 0 128 stripe using xp home. The array beomes severly fragmented after only about a week of normal use. I also experience frequent lock-ups as the array becomes increasing fragmented. The event monitor sometimes indicates the ntfs is corrupt & unusable. I have tested the drives independently using WD lifeguard 11.0 and they test fine. I have tested the overall performance of the system using SiS Sandra and it performs great until the drives whack out. Any ideas on how to correct this issue would be appreciated.

 

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Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

In RAID 0, the drives are not fault tollerant. I would check with my
motheboard maker to see if there are any BIOS updates which may include
BIOS updates for your RAID controller. Also, check and see if there are
any chipset drivers (and Intel Application Accellerator for RAID if you
have a newer chipset that i845 (Intel Chipset only)). It depends on
what chipset you have as to what kind of RAID controller drivers may be
available. I would suggest checking up a littl here too:

http://www.acnc.com/raid.html

Nathan McNulty

totlpkg wrote:

> I have two western digital sata 36 g raptors setup in a raid 0 128 stripe using xp home. The array beomes severly fragmented after only about a week of normal use. I also experience frequent lock-ups as the array becomes increasing fragmented. The event monitor sometimes indicates the ntfs is corrupt & unusable. I have tested the drives independently using WD lifeguard 11.0 and they test fine. I have tested the overall performance of the system using SiS Sandra and it performs great until the drives whack out. Any ideas on how to correct this issue would be appreciated.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

Thank you for your suggestions and for the link...very informative. Unfortunately I have already flashed my bios to the latest version available and udated IAA to the latest version. My motherboard is an abit ic7-max 3. It has the i845 chipset. My processor is a P4 3.06 and I have 1 gig of ddr 400 ram. I do not overclock. I am comfortable with my installation of the raid with the exception of one area:

I recently found out that when you format your hardrives, the default cluster size for Windows is 4k. I have been told to change this to 16 (I do not remember having an option). Also, I have been advised to not use a 128 stripe. It should be no larger than 64 (why?). What do you think? I appreciate your time...Jeez, I just want to edit some video...

"Nathan McNulty" wrote:

> In RAID 0, the drives are not fault tollerant. I would check with my
> motheboard maker to see if there are any BIOS updates which may include
> BIOS updates for your RAID controller. Also, check and see if there are
> any chipset drivers (and Intel Application Accellerator for RAID if you
> have a newer chipset that i845 (Intel Chipset only)). It depends on
> what chipset you have as to what kind of RAID controller drivers may be
> available. I would suggest checking up a littl here too:
>
> http://www.acnc.com/raid.html
>
> Nathan McNulty
>
> totlpkg wrote:
>
> > I have two western digital sata 36 g raptors setup in a raid 0 128 stripe using xp home. The array beomes severly fragmented after only about a week of normal use. I also experience frequent lock-ups as the array becomes increasing fragmented. The event monitor sometimes indicates the ntfs is corrupt & unusable. I have tested the drives independently using WD lifeguard 11.0 and they test fine. I have tested the overall performance of the system using SiS Sandra and it performs great until the drives whack out. Any ideas on how to correct this issue would be appreciated.
>