Is it possible for 3 HDDs (Brand New) to Die all at once?

[DisrupTor75]

i guess all the experts on here dont have a clue as to what the hell is going on, hundreds of views (467!!) on this issue and hardly a response... oh well, i guess im off to Toms Hardware or something to try and get some insight.

No need to get snotty Keltik. Im sure someone will come along with an answer for this at some point, for myself i dont have a clue about RAID as i have never used it but the people on here are helpful and will answer you if they can, you just need to have some patience.

 

[Keltik THC]

No need to get snotty Keltik. Im sure someone will come along with an answer for this at some point, for myself i dont have a clue about RAID as i have never used it but the people on here are helpful and will answer you if they can, you just need to have some patience.

my apologies man, i didnt mean that the way it sounded... the community here is great and i wouldnt knock it... all i was reffering to was like 500 page views and nobody knows.

again no disrespect meant to anybody on here i was just saying im gonna post the problem on some other forums and see if anybody else can help.

but im pretty much resigned to starting all over again, ive installed XP on my RAID so that i can recover some data from my backup HDD, which im doing right now about 750gb worth of data.

Im then going to format my backup HDD and install XP onto it, then put the recovery partition which is now on an external HDD back onto my RAID. Then i will boot into XP, copy all my data like emails and steam games from the RAID partition that wont boot onto an external drive because even thoughn it wont boot i can see all the files on the RAID in Acronis, then format every single drive i have, unplug them all apart from the RAID, clean install Windows 7 back onto the RAID and then copy my steam data and emails onto the new installation.

Its taking absolutly for ever, moving about 750gb from backup HDD to external, formatting, then moving that 750gb back onto the new Win 7 installation.

i guess i would be suicidal if i didnt have MW2 on the 360 the keep me busy whilst it does all this.

again, sorry about the previous post... didnt mean it the way it sounded when i re-read it... as i hope you can understand im quite frustrated.

 

[DisrupTor75]

lol i know what you mean m8, it's damn puzzling and in your place i would be just as wound up about it
Hope this doesn't sound daft (raid virgin here) but after seeing this in one of your above posts...

boots up with a clean install but wont boot up with a clean install image?

I was wondering if there was any config / .ini files that might need altering to make it recognize the image properly?
i know im probably clutching at straws with that as im not really clued up about it.
hope you fix it soon.

 

[Keltik THC]

lol i know what you mean m8, it's damn puzzling and in your place i would be just as wound up about it
Hope this doesn't sound daft (raid virgin here) but after seeing this in one of your above posts...



I was wondering if there was any config / .ini files that might need altering to make it recognize the image properly?
i know im probably clutching at straws with that as im not really clued up about it.
hope you fix it soon.

The partition restored succesfully according to acronis and all the data is there, it just wont access the drive to boot for some reason.

THe only possibility i can think of is that maybe it has something to do with the multiple drives, as i have the RAID with 3x hdds abd i also have a 1tb RE3 SATA... i have read somewhere about conflicts but only after installation of Win7, not like a month later out of the blue.

Now im just installing XP onto my RE3 SATA so i can copy steam games etc.. from the RAID, im resigned to spending ages doing this... first i have to install XP, move partition onto RAID, copy yet more files from RAID onto external hdds, format everything again, install windows 7 onto the RAID and then hope pray this never happens again in my life whilst i re-sinatll and conigure all my games and software :'(

 

[JonJ678]

Stop trying to restore from the back up partition that renders the system unbootable. Or, after restoring, repair the mrb to render is bootable.

Instead install a fresh copy of windows, which as you've posted above works fine. It's looking pretty obvious that the image you're using is corrupt.

edit: for that matter I can't see anything above to the effect of "I installed xp onto a back up hard drive then tested the 300gb drives". Why not?

Raid isn't an easy option, and raid 0 across three 300gb raptors would be ridiculed by most people in this era of ssds. At a guess your eccentric hardware choice combined with testing methodology is putting people off posting. I think it's hilarious that you hope Toms hardware will do better, do you have a link to the thread you started over there?

 

[Arachnae]

Might've been a bit harsh there jon.

Personally I run a RAID0 with windows 7. I ran it on professional beta and on home premium and it all works perfectly.

Although you can have as many hard drives as your RAID controller supports, it doesn't mean you have to use them.

A RAID0 with more than 2 drives, and especially an odd number of drives is quite unorthodox in the first place. Plus, the more drives in a raid0, the more prone it is to failure simply by the virtue that if one drive dies you lose everything anyway, more drives = more possible drives that can fail.

What I have learned as a network technician is methodical trouble shooting.. start from the ground up when you have a problem. First, is it the hardware?
Are your drives spinning up? Do they have power? Are the sata cables properly connected? Reseat them to make sure.
Once you know they're physically working, you can check your low level software such as bios, raid controller for anything that looks odd, and then move onto your OS.

Also, the MBR will most likely not be on all 3 drives, it will be on just one of the 3, lack of OS choice suggests a lack of, or corrupt, MBR.. did you try running the windows installer repair tool from the original disc?

You will not see much of a performance increase between a RAID0 with 2 drives and 3 drives, you'd probably be better off doing as i suggested earlier and having a RAID0 over 2 drives leaving the third as a place to sit your backup images should things go **** up again.

I can't tell you why you suddenly lost your RAID or mbr, but neither can I answer why you would want 3 drives in a raid0

 

[BigglesPiP]

Perfectly possible, but highly improbable. A SATA controller failing is more likely.

 

[Keltik THC]

Stop trying to restore from the back up partition that renders the system unbootable. Or, after restoring, repair the mrb to render is bootable.

i am only doing this one final time to recover my data from the partition... which has worked fine, wont boot into Windows 7 using that partition but boots into XP on my RE3 1tb and ive manage to copy all my steam games/emails to backup HDDs etc..

I have tried to repair the mrb, that was obviously one of the first things i tried, no joy.

Instead install a fresh copy of windows, which as you've posted above works fine. It's looking pretty obvious that the image you're using is corrupt.

I would assume that too, BUT why then i wonder why the backup image i have work that is a simple image of a clean install of windows gets the same error too? this image has worked before no problems... as i say, clean install works, clean install image that worked many times before doesnt.

edit: for that matter I can't see anything above to the effect of "I installed xp onto a back up hard drive then tested the 300gb drives". Why not?

you probably missed it, but i have done this... ran a full format through the XP installation and checkdisk on each drive individually - no problems.

Raid isn't an easy option, and raid 0 across three 300gb raptors would be ridiculed by most people in this era of ssds. At a guess your eccentric hardware choice combined with testing methodology is putting people off posting. I think it's hilarious that you hope Toms hardware will do better, do you have a link to the thread you started over there?

In the era of SSDs that cost a fortune? yes, well im afraid im not made of money and to have the same ammount of space i do on my Raptors (900Gb) in SSD would be quite expensive.

And I fail to see how having 3x SATAs can be deemed as 'eccentric', i understand the problems associated with RAID configs, i expected drive failures but not this.

I was going to go an post on other forums but as i said im resigned to just starting all over again... ive managed to get critical data from the dead partition and im just going to format everything tonight, clean install windows 7 and then checkdisk everything one final time.

What I have learned as a network technician is methodical trouble shooting.. start from the ground up when you have a problem. First, is it the hardware?
Are your drives spinning up? Do they have power? Are the sata cables properly connected? Reseat them to make sure.
Once you know they're physically working, you can check your low level software such as bios, raid controller for anything that looks odd, and then move onto your OS.

I did do this, Drives spin up perfectly fine, BIOS can see all the drives, Asus RAID config can configure them no problem, Checkdisk checks them all with no issues, cables all disconnected then re-connected etc...

Also, the MBR will most likely not be on all 3 drives, it will be on just one of the 3, lack of OS choice suggests a lack of, or corrupt, MBR.. did you try running the windows installer repair tool from the original disc?

yeah this was one of the first things i tried too, Windows repair doesnt work... i assume, for some reason, it cannot see my RAID config, just like Acronis cant, i would accept the recovery partition is corrupt but it seems all my recoverys have suddenly been rendered corrupt and ive got them on different media (hdd/dvd etc..) and they all worked before!

You will not see much of a performance increase between a RAID0 with 2 drives and 3 drives, you'd probably be better off doing as i suggested earlier and having a RAID0 over 2 drives leaving the third as a place to sit your backup images should things go **** up again.


I can't tell you why you suddenly lost your RAID or mbr, but neither can I answer why you would want 3 drives in a raid0

Simply for the ammount of data i have is the reason for the 3x HDDs, but i after all of this i am tempted to maybe buy one SSD for my OS and then use the 3x 300gbs SATA in RAID for data, so at least the mrb should be stable and if anything goes wrong with the RAID my OS settings will always be intact.

Would there be any issues doing that? say have a small 80gb SSD as my C:/ with my OS and then use the 3x 300gb in RAID 0 to run my games from? i would then use my 1tb RE3 SATA as a backup for the RAID should anything go wrong, then even if this issue happens again, the partition will restore but because i wont boot from them this should never be a problem again?

programs and games should run fine from a drive thats not a boot disk right? ive never done this but i assume they would work fine?

 

[Arachnae]

No offence mate but you seem to only want raid for the sake of saying you have raid like its a buzzword.

Do you know why you want raid? Or do you just want it because you heard it is good and see others using it?

To be honest from what I can see it is the latter.

With raptors and SSDs, the gaming performance is not going to be any different between RAID0 and standalone disks. Most games are loaded into RAM from the start anyway with higher powered machines, so having a RAID0 array will only improve your initial or between level loading times and not any actual gameplay.

I can understand your frustration, you have bought X, and you're being told that having X isn't as good an idea in practice as you thought it was. It's sometimes hard to swallow. You can blame windows 7 if you want, but it is far more likely to be hardware incompatability.

If you're going to buy an SSD, then there is no real point in having that set of 3 in RAID0.. it's going to be as if you wasted your money buying them really. You have basically paid a lot of money, because raptors aren't cheap, for a slight upgrade in performance.. and it isn't even throughput performance, it's just seek time. At the end of the day your 3 raptors in raid0 won't be as far ahead of my seagate barracuda array as you think. And yet I paid under £70 for my drives.. you probably paid more than 10 times that.

That is the brutal truth.


EDIT: I thought I'd at least answer your question..

Yes there should be no problem with running games from your secondary hard drives. However if it is a hardware problem and windows fails to recognise that array again, you'll still be in the same boat of having to format the array as a restore probably isn't going to work. You'd end up havign to reinstall the games again after formatting instead.

 

[Keltik THC]

No offence mate but you seem to only want raid for the sake of saying you have raid like its a buzzword.

Do you know why you want raid? Or do you just want it because you heard it is good and see others using it?

To be honest from what I can see it is the latter.

No man, i used RAID 0 so that instead of 3 seperate drives i have 1 and also i did get a performance gain from it as i becnhmarked them and compared.

I can understand your frustration, you have bought X, and you're being told that having X isn't as good an idea in practice as you thought it was. It's sometimes hard to swallow. You can blame windows 7 if you want, but it is far more likely to be hardware incompatability.

I accept this, and i dont blame windows i know its something to do with the RAID.

If you're going to buy an SSD, then there is no real point in having that set of 3 in RAID0.. it's going to be as if you wasted your money buying them really. You have basically paid a lot of money, because raptors aren't cheap, for a slight upgrade in performance.. and it isn't even throughput performance, it's just seek time. At the end of the day your 3 raptors in raid0 won't be as far ahead of my seagate barracuda array as you think. And yet I paid under £70 for my drives.. you probably paid more than 10 times that. .

i didnt pay £700 for the raptors, i already had one that came with my rig, and then i bought another two for £300 in total, and as i say compared to my 1tb RE3 the 900GB raptors in RAID are quite a bit faster according to the benchmarks, i agree not worth the £300 but you live and learn i guess.

However if it is a hardware problem and windows fails to recognise that array again, you'll still be in the same boat of having to format the array as a restore probably isn't going to work. You'd end up havign to reinstall the games again after formatting instead.

This is my point though, when i restored my partition Windows can see the RAID, it just wont boot, so if my OS isnt on the Raptors then it wont be an issue... i hope!

 

[Arachnae]

Don;t take this list as gospel, but take a look at this:
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/common_drives.html

I guess what I'm asking then, is why get the third raptor when you could have gone for 2 raptors in a raid0 and then an extra 500gig harddrive to make up the rest of the numbers?

If it's for gaming use, I can't really see you using up all 600GB in game installs and savegame files tbh.

Your best bet is to just raid0 with 2 of them and keep the third out of raid Then you don't have to spend more money on an SSD.

 

[Keltik THC]

Your best bet is to just raid0 with 2 of them and keep the third out of raid Then you don't have to spend more money on an SSD.

genius! makes so much sense! i guess im just soo tired (4 hours sleep the past couple of nights trying to sort this out) that i couldnt see the forest for the trees - you are dead right, OS on 1 Raptor and then the other two in RAID 0 for gaming.

hopefully ill have my rig back up and running before the weekend.

thanks again.

 

[JonJ678]

Windows format and checkdisk is not a means of determining whether the drives are broken or not. Many suspect drives will pass this with flying colours.

At the least you want to run the WD diagnostics tool through it. Last time I suspected a drive it spent a day and a half undergoing destructive write testing.

Needing a 900gb boot partition is definitely eccentric. Even if you were insistent on installing every game ever made to the volume I don't think you'd fill it. Choosing raid 0 of hard drives over ssd only makes sense if you need a very large volume, I don't believe that you need most of a terabyte for windows. Perhaps you do, but that doesn't stop it being highly unusual.

 

[Keltik THC]

Thanks again for the info guys.

I now have a clean install of win7 running, havent lost any data apart from Crysis Wars and Shattered Horizon which i downloaded from Steam the weekend my RAID config died.

Although going from RAID 0 to standard SATA for my OS HDD has bumped my Windows Experience score down from a 6.9 to 5.9! but oh well , i know the rating is worthless but you always like to see high numbers.

This is the first time i have experimented with RAID, and i didnt think to keep my OS on a seperate drive which i have done now.

Jon - i created a 900gb partition purely because i didnt think of keeping a HDD seperate for my OS, aside from gaming i do a lot of video editing with raw DV footage which are usually massive files. I tried running WD diagnostic tools but kept on getting random errors, sometimes it would say 'no HDD found' and other times it would say 'no license agreement found' - although i have a sneaky suspicion this has to do with the disk i burned it onto, because i burned GParted and an XP disk and got CD errors straight after, so again i hope bad batch of CD-Rs rather than my hardware - i assume i can run the diagnostic tool on a drive with data? its non-destructive testing right?

But i like to think it wasnt my hardware, intel storage manager and asus RAID config show my HDDs status as 'healthy', but i will try to run WDs diagnostic tools again this weekend for peace of mind.

So im going to give RAID another go, if it causes as many problems again then im simply just going to combine the drives in a non-RAID config... i was playing about with Windows 7 drive manager last night activating some of my drives and i didnt realise that you can combine the drives with the 'create spanned HDD' option, i dont remember XP having those options.

Thanks again for your help guys, ill let you know if anything happens.

 

[JonJ678]

Setting up raid within windows is very likely to end badly, I wouldn't even consider that. I can't help feeling the majority of your issues are a result of overcomplicating things. All you have to do is take a number of known working drives, combine them as raid 0 in the bios, then install windows onto the volume that results. That's it.

WD's tool I believe is non destructive by default, it might be possible to make it destructive if you wish. Note that destructive testing will always be a better test than non destructive. I wouldn't trust the array until I knew the drives were good.

Bad cds would be unlucky but is definitely possible. Equally it could be the software you burnt the disk with that caused problems, or the source of the cd image that is corrupt. Hard to say.

On the bright side the most important thing with raid 0 is backups, and somehow I think you're going to keep back ups religiously from now on

 

[Keltik THC]

All you have to do is take a number of known working drives, combine them as raid 0 in the bios, then install windows onto the volume that results. That's it.

That is how i originally set my RAID up and it worked fine for about a month, i always create my RAID in the BIOS then i installed windows on the resulting volume.

WD's tool I believe is non destructive by default, it might be possible to make it destructive if you wish. Note that destructive testing will always be a better test than non destructive. I wouldn't trust the array until I knew the drives were good.

I have no data installed on my RAID config yet, so i will run the diagnostic tonight before i start installing my games again just to be sure.

On the bright side the most important thing with raid 0 is backups, and somehow I think you're going to keep back ups religiously from now on

I was already keeping backups religiously, this is probably the most frustrating thing as i expected issues with RAID, but for some reason the backups wouldnt work, they would restore succesfully but still gave me boot issues... luckily though this allowed me to install XP onto a spare HDD and then copy all my steam backups etc.. from my failed RAID partition in XP.

As i say this boot issue should never be a problem, im never going to install an OS onto a RAID config, always going to keep the RAID seperate for my programs and a single HDD for OS... so it wont matter if the recovery partition of the RAID wont boot, and ive already created a new backup of the clean install of windows and it restores and boots up with no problems.

It also makes sense in case of another catastrophic failure i shouldnt loose everything at once as i just have because the OS and programs will be split onto seperate non-RAID and RAID Member disks!

Im just going to call this a very frustrating learning experience.

 

[JonJ678]

I'm happy to hear it. Means you've lost lots of time and some sleep, but no data

If the drives are currently empty then you can run destructive tests through all of them. It'll take a day or so but the peace of mind is worth this. I'm not personally convinced by cloning drives, it's too easy for the image to corrupt slightly and then it all goes terribly wrong. I'm now just backing up individual files.

Raid 0 for programs, not for OS is a good call. I'm just in the process of taking down a four disk raid 5, finally decided that raid isn't really suitable for desktops. I'm glad I've played with it though, and sort of glad for the days of troubleshooting it.

The remaining worry is that somewhere along the line a clean install failed. If it was a hard drive throwing a fit, you'll see similar problems in the future. It may have just been bad luck though, I hope your drives are alright.

 

[Wizard Keyaz]

I haven't read majority of the posts here, but the most simplist thing you can do is replace the Sata/IDE Cables.

 

[Arachnae]

As jon said, RAID is definitely more of a server thing, not a desktop thing.. RAID0 isn't even a real raid, and as such is actually prone to failures instead of stopping them, but the performance yields are what attracts home users to it.

Even so, the performance gains between RAID0 and non-RAID0 in a home environment are there, but not necessary. Yes you gain throughput, but you need to look at where you gain throughput and why you need the extra throughput, which is why I called into question your reason for wanting RAID.

I have my OS on a RAID0 of 2 drives, I've installed windows 7 professional beta on it, and when my copy of home premium came i reinstalled it with that. I've had absolutely zero problems so far. You might just be unlucky

I'll also throw it out there that a single raptor will push out 120MB/s sustained data rate, whereas a barracuda such as mine has nearer 130, the seek time on the WD is about half that of the barracuda.

In my RAID0, I get 258MB/s max, 200MB/s average