EX-58-UD3R RAID 1 Issues

[jouno53]

Hello everyone, I recently built a computer for a client and set up a mirrored RAID 1 array for this 2 640GB WD drives. Specs are:

2 640 GB Western Digital SATA drives
Gigabyte EX58-UD3R rev 1
Core i7 920
3x2GB DDR3-1333 G.Skill
Radeon 4830
Corsair 550watt
Antec 900

I set up the RAID array using the Intel chip instead of the Gigabyte raid (I heard on here that this was the better setup), and Vista 64 bit installed fine. The Intel Matrix Storage also said that the RAID array was in perfect health.

I just got this email from him:

"I was just working and all of a sudden the screen went black, the drives inside revved up (at least it sounded like the drives) and it died. I tried to move the mouse and press the restart button, but nothing happened. I ended up having to press both of the buttons on the top of the machine for it to finally power down. After starting up, it said there was a serious problem and asked if I wanted to start in safe mode, or safe mode with network support or safe mode with drivers something-or-other or normally. I started it normally since I didn't know what to do when it opened up that way anyway.

Now, there is a icon flashing in the toolbar at the bottom-right that says "a volume initialization is in progress" and it looks like the RAID is not working. When i opened Outlook to send you this message, it said that it had to check the files because it wasn't shut down properly. It appears to have verified or fixed that problem (bevcause i'm sending you this message), but i don't know what to do.

I'm going to shut it down now and see if it starts up any differently."

and then this

"The icon is still "morphing" back-and-forth in the toolbar in the bottom right. When you hover the mouse over it, it says "a volume initialization is in progress". When you left-click on it, the Intel Matrix Storage Console comes up. When you right-click on it, you have 2 choices... you can either bring up the Intel Matrix Storage Console or you can "Ignore current alert for now".

Don't know what to do, but i'm still letting it run for now."

Do you know what could be wrong or what I should do? I know I set up the raid correctly.

Thanks a lot!

 

[GhislainG]

After installing Vista, did you download and install the latest Intel Matrix Storage software? I had a similar issue with a system running Windows Server 2008 and installing the latest version resolved the issue.

 

[spamhater007]

Simple question: Are you using the Western Digital Enterprise edition drives? The Desktop version of Western Digital drives do not support RAID setup and will ultimately fail.


Recommend replacing with Seagate.

 

[bilbat]

Seagates - same thing - someone just posted a few weeks back with a lovely note from Seagate tech saying, essentially, "sorry, no workee - you shoulda known..." Caviar blacks will not reliably RAID - need to go to RE3s or 4s...

 

[spamhater007]

Seagates - same thing - someone just posted a few weeks back with a lovely note from Seagate tech saying, essentially, "sorry, no workee - you shoulda known..." Caviar blacks will not reliably RAID - need to go to RE3s or 4s...

Sorry, should have been more specific: Recommend replacing with the Seagate Barracuda 7200 desktop series drives, they support RAID and are priced the same as WD. Seagate even states this:

Good For:
Workstations, desktop RAID, gamer PCs, high-end PCs, mainstream PCs and USB/FireWire/eSATA external storage

on their main web page for Barracuda drives.

The Enterprise series in both Seagate and Western Digital are priced about 50% higher than the desktop, but only Seagate supports RAID on the desktop series.

 

[spamhater007]

I have heard from other's a trick to get WD working with RAID, not really a trick just a method to avoid the "deep recovery cycle" that causes the RAID failure - Western Digital KB Answer ID 1397.

Before setting up RAID, simply run each drive individually through a complete wipe disk routine the writes to every sector of the drive, serveral times, this will cause the WD error recovery to mark every bad sector and skip them in the future, thus creating a clean drive that is less likely to get stuck on deep recovery cycle. Of course you can plan to burn up about 40+ hours wiping a set of 4 drives.

 

[spamhater007]

DO NOT USE THE INTEL "Intel Matrix Storage Manager" VERSION 8.9.xxx

This update reports random drive failures and will cause lost data. Intel has dropped the ball on this update and denies any issues, but you will see thousands of posts on all sites from users complaining about the IMSM.