Double Hard Drive Crash -- RAID 1

[guitonoklops9]

Has anyone else had this problem or heard of it. I've looked around and haven't seen anything quite like this.

My friends machine was set up with a RAID 1 mirror (an asus board), a couple weeks ago he complained about a noise -- but described what sounded like a bad fan. Next thing, his machine will not turn on.

I opened it up and tried to boot from either 1 of the hard drives, neither would work and they both were making identical noises. They would begin to spin up, and before any data could be read they would start to click, click, click and then spin down (not good, I know).

Why would they both fail at the same time in exactly the same way? If this is common, perhaps a RAID array is useless, no?

I've been using a mirror on my home system so that if one of my drives failed, I wouldn't loose any of my time restoring a backup. But if they both fail...well, what's the point.

 

[baddad]

It sounds to my like he was unlucky with the drives he bought and they both failed at the same time with the same problem.

 

[jitpublisher]

Sounds like your friend is just very unlucky. Could be a lot of things that caused this, maybe a power spike on the rail to the drives. I would check the PSU as well. Remember, the only thing that RAID 1 protects against is a mechanical drive failure. Virus, data corruption, boot sector virus and boot data corruption, HAL corruption, accidental file deletions, etc and it happens to both drives exactly the same.
RAID 1 is great in a server that needs to up 24/7 even the event of a mechanical drive failure.
As a backup of sorts, it is a really, really poor choice. Using RAID 1 as a backup on a home system, it is only a matter of time before you get burned.

 

[guitonoklops9]

yes, i agree. The thing I was confused about is that what I have seems to be a hardware failure and RAID 1 did not help at all, both drives went at exactly the same time! The user told me that he had restarted the machine twice in a row and the second time....nothing. I don't think that a restart would cause the Hard Drives to fail though. A power spike -- maybe I'll tel him to pick up a better surge protector or a ubs.

The PSU appears to be working fine -- bios powers on no prob, I'm downloading a live cd (ubuntu) now to see if the system is working ok, will post here if it boots ok. Is there a good method to test the psu and make sure it's working ok?

As I redo his machine for him, what do you think the best way to go is in terms of drive configuration? I'm thinking a smaller drive (40gb or so) to store the os (xp) with a separate partition to install applications. Then a second, larger drive with a partition for his docs and a second partition for auto backups of the system drive using Acronis. And maybe an external drive to backup user files periodically from the second drive. What do you think about this configuration? or is there a better way?

 

[jitpublisher]

The configuration of the drives you described looks very practical, and much better than RAID 1. I myself prefer to burn critical data to DVD occasionally. May seem like an extra step, but well worth the trouble if you absolutely do not want to lose something....family photos, finance statements, ect. I carry these DVD's in in a case in the trunk of my car. Even if the whole house burns down, at least I still have my stuff.