Raid Problem In Vista x64- Help!

[strocky]

Currently running Vista Ultimate x64. System has been stable for about a fortnight, however the other day Vista hung for about 20 secs and then informed me that my raid array had failed.

When I pulled up the NVdia controller info box it informed me that sata 1.1 drive had failed (i.e. one of my two Raided Maxtors had failed under vista)

From then on I can boot as normal, access/use the "failed drive" for around a couple of minutes before the same raid array failure error occurs again.

If I run scandisk to check the drive it analyses about 3/4 of the way through then I get the dreaded BSOD.

My motherboard is -: Asus A8N-SLI, the raid controller is NVdia.

Is this a vista problem or is one of the Maxtor HDD's about to die for good?

This is the following Vista Error Message I get when I re-boot -:


Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID:
Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 1e
BCP1: FFFFFFFFC0000005
BCP2: FFFFF980007067B6
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
OS Version: 6_0_6000
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1
Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\Mini091607-01.dmp
C:\Users\strocky\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-5371843-0.sysdata.xml
C:\Users\strocky\AppData\Local\Temp\WER71C6.tmp.version.txt

 

[Brink]

Hi Strocky,

Welcome to the forum.

You might see if this tutorial may help you any.

• Simple Solution to Avoid the Common Raid Boot Error

Shawn

 

[strocky]

Hi Strocky,

Welcome to the forum.

You might see if this tutorial may help you any.

• Simple Solution to Avoid the Common Raid Boot Error

Shawn

thanks mate, but Vista boots perfectly every time, and even the failed array works for about 2-3 minutes under Vista before failing.

It's either a driver problem or the HDD is on it's way out

 

[teknomedic]

In your situation what I normally do is break the RAID and try running any needed scans or data recovers from the bad drive as a slave or non-boot drive in either your current PC or another PC.

With luck it's just a corrupted MFT/MBR or some other software/data issue, vs a hardware failure. The best way to figure it out though is to remove the RAID hardware itself as a possible cause.

I've had a few RAIDs where the drives were fine (even with all data), but the RAID chip/card had gone bad.

Just make sure you double check all your data on both drives.... I've had bad RAIDs kill random data on both drives leaving me to basically merge both drives data to get the full restore again.

((personal opinion, but I don't trust RAID anymore... I just do the extra work of doubling my copies/deletes to ensure I've got two identical drives... doesn't help with having a boot drive... but a reinstall of Windows is a small price to pay for me to ensure my data is at least doubled.... and in some cases trippled))

TK.

 

[strocky]

In your situation what I normally do is break the RAID and try running any needed scans or data recovers from the bad drive as a slave or non-boot drive in either your current PC or another PC.

With luck it's just a corrupted MFT/MBR or some other software/data issue, vs a hardware failure. The best way to figure it out though is to remove the RAID hardware itself as a possible cause.

I've had a few RAIDs where the drives were fine (even with all data), but the RAID chip/card had gone bad.

Just make sure you double check all your data on both drives.... I've had bad RAIDs kill random data on both drives leaving me to basically merge both drives data to get the full restore again.

((personal opinion, but I don't trust RAID anymore... I just do the extra work of doubling my copies/deletes to ensure I've got two identical drives... doesn't help with having a boot drive... but a reinstall of Windows is a small price to pay for me to ensure my data is at least doubled.... and in some cases trippled))

TK.

Thanks for the reply. A question though, how do you access a striped array if you disable the raid?

Surely both HDD's need to be raided to access the data (as it's split across the 2 HDD's)

The good news is that my Raided Boot HDD's are fine :D

 

[f_vo]

Tk, allow me to disagree.

The best thing that ever happened in computer development is.... raid protection.

I use it for years and it never let me down.

Best raid protection ever: Raid60, unfortunately one needs 8 drives for this.

Second best Raid5EE, here one needs only 4 drives, BUT in my opinion only Adaptec offers this kind of raid.

François

 

[f_vo]

Strocky,

do you have the possibility to replace the drive. That way you know if it is a failure.

You could try to separate the failed one and reformat it to see if errors occur (which probable will).

François

 

[teknomedic]

ouch... didn't know they were stripped... that would make it a bit more compliacted, since both drives become one drive to speed up loading. That's the risk of stripping to gain speed though since you're (at the very least) going from one possible fail point (one HDD) to three points of failure (2x HDD and the RAID controller).

I'm not a super expert when it comes to RAID but here are the options I see...

Hook both drives up to another RAID controller (PCI Card, another PC, etc) and hope that it's not the hard drives... or if so, then hope it can repaired in some way from that... or maybe the RAID controller will allow the drives to run longer to allow you to copy the data off them.

Also, if you have another HDD you can toss into the RAID, maybe (I'm just guessing) you could enable RAID 3, 4 or 5 and have the RAID (might take many reboots if the HDD keeps locking up?) basically backup the data between the 3 drives... in RAID 3, 4, or 5 the RAID can still operate with one drive gone so once the data is spanned then you swap out the bad drive. I'm not hopeful of this though as I would assume all this would have to be setup before hand and simply adding another may not work.

You could also try using the recovery console command prompt from a WinXP CD (not sure if Vista has that as I've not tried)... to give you access to NTFS drives... maybe the lower requirements of recovery console would allow the drives to keep working long enough for you to perform a copy of the data to another drive??

Lastly, not sure if these will help at all for the RAID setup you've got... but here are some HDD recovery programs. The one that's worked the best for me is the first one listed... it always seems to get the data the other can't find... although I'm not sure if any of them are free.
(my fav) = Active@ File Recovery Pro v7.1
(other options)
Stellar Phoenix
Recover my files
partition table doctor
ontrack
forensic utility suite


Good luck... I hope the data isn't too important.
TK.

 

[teknomedic]

Tk, allow me to disagree.

The best thing that ever happened in computer development is.... raid protection.

I use it for years and it never let me down.

Best raid protection ever: Raid60, unfortunately one needs 8 drives for this.

Second best Raid5EE, here one needs only 4 drives, BUT in my opinion only Adaptec offers this kind of raid.

François

It's not a problem... I know overall RAID is a great thing... I've just run into too many close calls and data loss due to RAID. I'm sure a lot of that comes from the fact that I'm using hardware ment for light home use and not buying server or enterprise quality hardware... and then only being able to use 2 HDDs... I just can't afford to do much more than that. If could spring for some quality hardware and run a RAID with 4 or more drives I would and my opinion would probably change.

...but for me.... for home use with just 2 HDDs, it hasn't worked out like I wanted. The final straw was when the RAID controller went crazy, I didn't get any warning it was even happening. The first sign something was wrong was when I tried to access my wedding photos and found the directory was empty!! You can't image the feeling I had in my stomach at that point. After a bunch of troubleshooting I found it was the RAID controller. The Controller had been not fully cloning the drives. At first from the outside all the data was there because the data was at least on one drive... but the controller eventually killed the MFT and that's when I started finding my data gone. (both drives were 100% fine and I'm still using them now).

After using the software "Active File Recovery" for 3 days, I recovered 98% of my data between the two hard drives (100% of the wedding photos recovered). ((each drive had about a 40% data loss)).


Now... before I sound all negative.... there have been a few times where RAID has saved me and I thank it for that.... BUT, what RAID can do for me is the same I can do for myself... and that's duplicate the data between hard drives.


Later on when I'm running 4+ HDDs in RAID and can afford more server class hardware I probably jump back to RAID, but for now my data is too important for me to trust it RAID.

TK.

 

[f_vo]

Thanks for the info TK.

I can imagine what you went through. Happy you got it fixed.

François

 

[strocky]

ouch... didn't know they were stripped... that would make it a bit more compliacted, since both drives become one drive to speed up loading. That's the risk of stripping to gain speed though since you're (at the very least) going from one possible fail point (one HDD) to three points of failure (2x HDD and the RAID controller).

I'm not a super expert when it comes to RAID but here are the options I see...

Hook both drives up to another RAID controller (PCI Card, another PC, etc) and hope that it's not the hard drives... or if so, then hope it can repaired in some way from that... or maybe the RAID controller will allow the drives to run longer to allow you to copy the data off them.

Also, if you have another HDD you can toss into the RAID, maybe (I'm just guessing) you could enable RAID 3, 4 or 5 and have the RAID (might take many reboots if the HDD keeps locking up?) basically backup the data between the 3 drives... in RAID 3, 4, or 5 the RAID can still operate with one drive gone so once the data is spanned then you swap out the bad drive. I'm not hopeful of this though as I would assume all this would have to be setup before hand and simply adding another may not work.

You could also try using the recovery console command prompt from a WinXP CD (not sure if Vista has that as I've not tried)... to give you access to NTFS drives... maybe the lower requirements of recovery console would allow the drives to keep working long enough for you to perform a copy of the data to another drive??

Lastly, not sure if these will help at all for the RAID setup you've got... but here are some HDD recovery programs. The one that's worked the best for me is the first one listed... it always seems to get the data the other can't find... although I'm not sure if any of them are free.
(my fav) = Active@ File Recovery Pro v7.1
(other options)
Stellar Phoenix
Recover my files
partition table doctor
ontrack
forensic utility suite


Good luck... I hope the data isn't too important.
TK.

Thanks for that, I''ve got a spare PC, so i'll try the two drives in that.

The only data I'm bothered about is my Music files and 70% of it is on my Ipod anyway :D

Thanks once again

 

[teknomedic]

Another one of those "what?" tips.... you could try cooling the HDD more using a cold pak or place it in a ziploc bag and put in the freezer for a bit so see if that will get it working that little bit longer.