RAID 5 problems with ICH8R

[Sailing_Nut]

Hi,


I'm having lots of problems with my RAID 5 array on my motherboard's ICH8R chipset. I keep on getting errors on disks and having to go through a rebuild.


I have kept track and at first I thought it was one of the SATA channels on the board was bad, so I moved that drive to another port, but with no luck. I have noted errors on drives connected to every port that has a drive attached.


I'm curious about what I can do next to determine if it is the motherboard going bad or if there is some other cause.


Any and all suggestions are welcomed!

 

[jaquith]

Welcome Back Newcomer!

RAID 5 even IF you can get it to work with an on-board controller is a bad idea and will slow your PC down; RAID 5 requires the resources of both your CPU and controller to perform distributed parity vs RAID 0/1/10 where this is not required.

If you have a Gigabyte MOBO then don't bother, and instead purchase a dedicated RAID Controller. My experience is back-up the data, break RAID, and re-institute a new array. Further, if your HDD lack TLER then RAID 5 in particular is difficult; only Enterprise WD have TLER. I am also assuming that ALL 3 or 4 of your HDD are identical.

Q - What MOBO, What HDDs, and Which Ports are you using?

 

[Sailing_Nut]

I did some benchmarking and it is not terribly slowing my machine down. I had a RAID 0 array before and one drive failed, so I wanted to get some redundancy.

All of the drives are identical (WD3200AAKS-00UU3A0)

I am using an ABIT AB9PRO MOBO

 

[jaquith]

When I Googled the {WD3200AAKS-00UU3A0} it came up as {Home} WD Caviar Blue with NO TLER. WD TLER HDD - http://www.wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=2

Trust me I only suggest RAID 0 for {OS + Apps} replaceable and never Data {1/2 Data = 0 Data}.

I would either 'try' to rebuild the RAID from scratch and monitor/test {ATTO} or "I would" encourage you to purchase an Adaptec RAID Controller card {maybe a 3ware}. I clearly understand that your MOBO is supposed to support 0/1/5/10 Matrix RAID. However, I wouldn't trust my Data on your MOBO. Also, NO PARTITIONS!!!

The first thing ABIT will do is to refer you to their Certified/Tested components - http://www.abit.com.tw/test-report/ab9_series.htm?3

You may want to look into a RAID 1 mirror with no partitions, and use the third HDD as a periodic backup <- this is the smartest route.

I understand this is not the answers you want hear, but they are correct. I have a room full of servers with all different RAIDs.

Good Luck!

 

[Sailing_Nut]

jaquith,

Thanks for the info. Any thoughts on moving to a RAID 0 + 1 setup since I have 4 drives?

 

[jaquith]

I would recommend RAID 10 {1 + 0} instead. I use RAID 0, 1, 10 {web servers}, RAID 5 & 6 {Data} + NAS. The NAS is a "periodic backup" in case the RAID gets corrupted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

Good Luck!

 

[Sailing_Nut]

Best answer selected by Sailing_Nut.

 

[Sailing_Nut]

I will probably re-build as RAID 10 then. I thought it might be better, but wasn't 100% sure how the performance would be without TLER on the ICH8R shipset.

Might just limp along with my current setup & upgrade the MOBO, CPU & RAM but will still build it as RAID 10 on the new rig.