Seatools, chkdsk and raidxpert give conflicting reports

[gtripathi]

Hello,

I have a strange problem on my PC - AMD Phenom II X4 940, Gigabyte MA78GM-US2H, Seagate ST3500418AS (SATA 500GB) X 2, RAID 1. One day, AMD Raidxpert reports that may raid array is broken due to failure of disk on port 1 (port 2 disk is good). Raidxpert turns that disk 'offline' and now it can't be seen, even in BIOS. After a while I shutdown my PC and when I bring it on after about an hour, the drive is port 1 is back, but RAID is still critical. I try to rebuild using raidxpert. It fails at 7% and again marks the drive offline, making it disappear both from running system and BIOS. I repeat my cool off restart like before and the failed disk is back. Since the disk is still in warranty, I run Seatools for DOS on it to be able to return it. All diagnostics pass. I try a rebuild again using raidxpert, it fails again at 2% - disk offline again. A cool off restart brings it back, Seatools and chkdsk again show no errors but RAID rebuild fails. The funny thing though is that on the good disk in port 2, Seatools tests pass but chkdsk report 1516 bad sectors. Now I don't know what I do next - Raidxpert says port 1 disk is broken - port 2 disk is good, chkdsk says port 1 disk has bad sectors - port 1 is good and Seatools for DOS says both are good. Can someone make sense of this and advise. Thanks in advance.

 

[gtripathi]

A correction in my previous post: Raidxpert says port 1 disk is broken - port 2 disk is good, chkdsk says port 2 disk has bad sectors - port 1 is good

 

[johnb0118]

I would try to test this on a different motherboard (easier said than done, I know). But it kind of sounds like you might have a bad SATA controller or a bad Southbridge. I tend to trust SeaTools with its results. Somehow you need to try this on a different board. Or try using two other Hdd's and see if you can create a RAID with them. I would even go so far as installing windows. Otherwise try and find another Hdd to test with. If that all works then you know that your mobo is fine and its probably a bad Hdd. Sorry I can't be more help.

Good Luck!

 

[gtripathi]

Best answer selected by gtripathi.