A78NX raid problem

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

A clean build Dec2004, Win2k, 2* sata 160gb mirror built at same time.
Sys functioned fine untill this week when I received SMART hd failure. Used
manu.hd checking utility which reported probs on one hd.
Broke the mirror, removed faulty disk rebooted OK.
However much of the data which was stored within the mirror is out of date,
ie last date shown Oct 2004. Also a couple of Apps that were recently
installed were missing and win2k updates that had been done were absent.
Now I allways thought a mirror array offered data protection, this doesnt
seem to have been the case. So any ideas as to what went wrong?
PS As I restored from backups no data was lost - but not the point

 

[Paul]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

In article <Co5Pd.305$vc3.84@newsfe5-gui.ntli.net>, "old man"
<dl@spoofmail.notme> wrote:

> A clean build Dec2004, Win2k, 2* sata 160gb mirror built at same time.
> Sys functioned fine untill this week when I received SMART hd failure. Used
> manu.hd checking utility which reported probs on one hd.
> Broke the mirror, removed faulty disk rebooted OK.
> However much of the data which was stored within the mirror is out of date,
> ie last date shown Oct 2004. Also a couple of Apps that were recently
> installed were missing and win2k updates that had been done were absent.
> Now I allways thought a mirror array offered data protection, this doesnt
> seem to have been the case. So any ideas as to what went wrong?
> PS As I restored from backups no data was lost - but not the point

I wonder if the array broke in Oct 2004. And, you've been running
all this time, with the write ops only going to the one drive in
the array. Each disk in the array has a "reserved" sector on it,
and in that reserved sector is recorded info about the array that
the disk belongs to, including whether the array is working or not.
Once an array is declared broken, you have to do something explicit
to repair it. In the case of a mirror, after the array has been
reconfigured, the "good" disk will be copied to the "backup",
so that both disks are synced. When an array breaks, the
controller will stop maintaining the sync of the two disks,
until the other disk is repaired/replaced.

If there is a monitoring utility as part of the software package
for the product, you might want to check the array once a day,
and see what the array status is.

Just a guess,
Paul

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

The array was monitored, showed OK. There was also a specific 'state of
array' msg on reboot, not that it was rebooted that often.

"Paul" <nospam@needed.com> wrote in message
news:nospam-1102051521060001@192.168.1.177...
> In article <Co5Pd.305$vc3.84@newsfe5-gui.ntli.net>, "old man"
> <dl@spoofmail.notme> wrote:
>
> > A clean build Dec2004, Win2k, 2* sata 160gb mirror built at same time.
> > Sys functioned fine untill this week when I received SMART hd failure.
Used
> > manu.hd checking utility which reported probs on one hd.
> > Broke the mirror, removed faulty disk rebooted OK.
> > However much of the data which was stored within the mirror is out of
date,
> > ie last date shown Oct 2004. Also a couple of Apps that were recently
> > installed were missing and win2k updates that had been done were absent.
> > Now I allways thought a mirror array offered data protection, this
doesnt
> > seem to have been the case. So any ideas as to what went wrong?
> > PS As I restored from backups no data was lost - but not the point
>
> I wonder if the array broke in Oct 2004. And, you've been running
> all this time, with the write ops only going to the one drive in
> the array. Each disk in the array has a "reserved" sector on it,
> and in that reserved sector is recorded info about the array that
> the disk belongs to, including whether the array is working or not.
> Once an array is declared broken, you have to do something explicit
> to repair it. In the case of a mirror, after the array has been
> reconfigured, the "good" disk will be copied to the "backup",
> so that both disks are synced. When an array breaks, the
> controller will stop maintaining the sync of the two disks,
> until the other disk is repaired/replaced.
>
> If there is a monitoring utility as part of the software package
> for the product, you might want to check the array once a day,
> and see what the array status is.
>
> Just a guess,
> Paul