RAID 5 degraded - advice on fixing needed

[alancfa2001]

I just finished building a new computer a couple of weeks ago with a RAID 5 array. I am running MS Vista and mostly things have gone fine. But I installed Quick Time and iTunes and when the installation finished, iTunes began scanning my HDD for movies, mp3 files, etc.

During this process, I had several apps open and was switching between some research on the web and an open Excel worksheet where I was pasting some of the web info. At one point the computer became unresponsive. I noticed the HDD light was a steady color, no flashing. Then I got a message from Vista that the computer was shutting down to avoid some type of damage.

When the computer rebooted, I got a message saying that my RAID 5 array was degraded. The computer seemed to work just fine and I did not notice it slow down. But I rebooted again to get into the Intel Storage Matrix Manager and see what the situation was. The list of RAID array(s) (there is only one) showed "Degraded" in the "Status" column and in the "Bootable" column, it showed "Yes".

The Physical Drives showed the port, drive model, serial number, size, type/status. The three drives are identical. They are on ports 0, 1, and 4. They are all Samsung HD321KJ models and, in fact, their serial numbers are identical for the first 13 digits and only the 14th, last, digit differs (the last digits are 5, 7, & 9).

So, here is the deal. I do not think that a brand-new hard drive had a head crash. I may be wrong, but I think that it is unlikely. My guess is that some data on the drive became corrupted and that it can be rebuilt. However, all of the web sites that I have reviewed assume that the drive is dead and give instructions that say I should remove and replace with a new drive and that the data will be rebuilt automatically.

I would like to try and rebuild the data without buying a new drive. I'd like to make the system think that it is a new drive, but I am not sure how to go about it. Do I delete the RAID volume in the Intel Storage Matrix Manager? Do I simply power down, unplug the drive and then plug it back in? Should I use a disk maintenance utility or try defragging or something else?

I moved all of my files from my other computer a week ago and very little new info is on the new computer, though there is some. My point being that if I botched this and had to erase all data and do a new, clean, install I could do it but, of course, I'd rather not (the xfer of files was a 27 hour process with the idiotically expensive USB cable).

So even though it is possible that a new HD is the best idea, I'd like to try a less-expensive and faster remedy, like fixing the problem without buying a new HD.

p.s. the system is QUIET! (sorry for the shouting).

[Natronomonas]

Before rebuilding the array I'd be checking the HDDs are actually OK.

Can you check the SMART status or run a manufacturer utility over them through the controller?
You should be able to do this, or at least pull the drives individually into another computer to give them the once-over to ensure you don't actually need to replace the drive.

[alancfa2001]

Before rebuilding the array I'd be checking the HDDs are actually OK.

Can you check the SMART status or run a manufacturer utility over them through the controller?
You should be able to do this, or at least pull the drives individually into another computer to give them the once-over to ensure you don't actually need to replace the drive.

I'm not sure if I could pull the drive as they are SATA II and my old computer used drives that take the old ribbon-style cable. At any rate, I would be happy to run some manufacturer utility, but I went to the Samsung site and they show two utilities, one for some model numbers and another for other model numbers plus "older" drives. Of course, my model number was not included in either group, in fact, the entire T-Series of drives was not shown regardless of the model number.

I am looking for a SMART program on their website - I bought the drives OEM, so there was no software or manual supplied with them.

But I feel fairly certain that the drive is not bad, it just has some corrupted data. Two of the drives show as working OK in the Intel Storage Mgr Matrix. The other one shows "Error Occurred". I ran my Vista "experience score" and it has not changed, still a 5.9 on the HDD test.

Any ideas about how to rebuild the RAID array?

[Ethyriel]

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/ ... 2-HDDScan/

[sjoukew]

Look at the brand of your harddisk. Almost every manufacturer has tools to diagnose harddisks. These tools can also give the hdd a full test to see if anything is wrong with them.
I think this is the best way to test your harddisk.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hello,

I have not used RAID5, but occasionally with RAID1, this message simply means that the system has not had enough time to catch up with the duplication/redundancy. I guess this might happen when the system is new because you are installing and updating so many files and programs?

So, maybe if you wait a little, it will "go away" -- if it is this sort of thing causing it?

[mikelatsko]

This is clearly a problem with a compatibilty issue between iTunes and the Intel matrix. I have been having the same problem and have seen other people online with the same problem. I posted the following over at the Cnet forums. If you have anything to add, Please help!. The following does explain how to clear the status of the drive marked as 'Error Occured' Just as an extra note: I did the following following in the Intel Matrix Windows console. There was no need to rebuild. And I still can't sync my iPod.

I too am experiencing the same problem. My system specks are as follows:

Dell Precision workstation 390
Windows Vista Ultimate, 32 Bit version
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor 2.4Ghz
Intel Matrix Raid 0
2 250 GB Hard drives
Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 512Mb Video Card

I have tried to shut off all 3rd party apps, (Roxio, removed AntiVirus, etc, etc...) I also turned off windows defender and windows search.

After 2 hours It finished importing music (which normally would have taken about 5 minutes.)

Now that the music is imported, iTunes will play music fine, but as soon as I hook the iPod to the system The writing to the ipod takes forever. and after about 5 minutes, the Error Occurred appears on the Intel Matrix.
After shutting down iTunes, I go to the start menu, right click on the Intel Matrix, 'Open as administrator', open 'Advanced options', right-click on the drive in err, and select 'Set as normal'
Then the system will run fine, all microsoft apps run well, explorer, office 2007. As long as I don't run iTunes the computer is great.

I have called Dell and iTunes and both seem to want to help but are too back logged with problems that affect a wider range of people.

Any help on this would be great.

_Mike

[nzimmers]

i don't think there's an incompatibility between Itunes and Intel Matrix raid - what you described it pretty much normal

I have a large Itunes library, both mp3 and video on a raid 5 array. when you import a large library into Itunes - it thrashes the HDD and pegs the CPU useage (Itunes is lousey at managing resources and just hogs the system) Raid 5 reads much faster than it writes and as Itunes reads your media library it's also writing to it's own temporary files and determining gapless playback. On a raid 5 array this results in very slow performance

while you were multitasking the system stopped responding probably because Itunes is so poorly written and it can't recover and reinitialize processes.

when you rebooted the raid array was "degraded" which sounds bad but just means that it needed to rebuild because it was shutdown improperly. when raid 5 rebuilds it's pretty slow, and the kiss of death would be to run Itues again which, as I mentioned before, is written poorly.

generally speaking, I don't recommend running raid 5 on the same system as your desktop for reasons you just experienced - any poorly written application that dumps your system or causes it to hang results in breaking the array and requiring it to automatically rebuild.

I have moved my raid array off my desktop and now run a seperate home server with raid 5 and while the performance over the lan leaves alot to be desired, is 100% stable and bomb-proof

Itunes is (performance wise) awful, it was designed basically for small MP3's or AAC files that comprise a small library, if you have a large library and especially with large files (either audio or video) Itunes chokes quite regularly.

just to change some file information (such as adding an artist or episode number) to a 400MB video files will freeze itunes until the operation is complete, and the slower the access the longer it takes. To do just a minor change as such on a 54mps wireless lan might take a full minute, during which Itunes does not respond.

[AZBrandon]

I no longer trust any form of on-board RAID. I ran for about 10 months without any significant problems with a 4-drive nvidia RAID 0+1 SATA array. Performance was fantastic right up until it decided it didn't want to be able to read anything anymore. Fortunately I use Acronis True Image and had just taken a backup a few hours prior when it started acting up.

I had to wipe out and rebuild the array, and it was still acting flakey, so I finally gave up, just yanked two of the drives entirely and run it with just a single boot/data drive and separate excess data drive. I put one of the now spare drives in an external eSATA enclosure which gives me the ability to run very high speed backups (performance is the same over external eSATA as it is internal; about 58mb/sec sustained) and leave that drive powered off and unplugged as protection from power surges I suppose.

At any rate, I'm thinking probably the only way to get a truly reliable server setup would be with a single regular boot disk, then have all your data on a RAID array driven by a dedicated RAID controller. Of course for RAID 0+1 now you're talking at least 5 drives, but if you prefer RAID5 then you could do it with just 4 drives.

[mikelatsko]

i don't think there's an incompatibility between Itunes and Intel Matrix raid - what you described it pretty much normal

I have a large Itunes library, both mp3 and video on a raid 5 array. when you import a large library into Itunes - it thrashes the HDD and pegs the CPU useage (Itunes is lousey at managing resources and just hogs the system) Raid 5 reads much faster than it writes and as Itunes reads your media library it's also writing to it's own temporary files and determining gapless playback. On a raid 5 array this results in very slow performance.

But I have RAID 0. Would you say the same applies. Raid 0 is supposed to improve speed performace.

I have been running iTunes on an older computer with Vista for 4 months. Performace was not excellent but it got the job done and I was able to sync.

-Mike

[Ethyriel]

At any rate, I'm thinking probably the only way to get a truly reliable server setup would be with a single regular boot disk, then have all your data on a RAID array driven by a dedicated RAID controller. Of course for RAID 0+1 now you're talking at least 5 drives, but if you prefer RAID5 then you could do it with just 4 drives.

Really just 3 drives, since you don't need the 0 for reliability. Also, in a server you can easily get by with a 2.5" 5400 RPM drive for the OS, so you can do very well in terms of noise with a couple 500GB Samsung drives mirrored and a decently large laptop drive for OS and apps.

[AZBrandon]

Good point, you could run a small 2.5" as the boot drive and then just a pair of performance drives in RAID-1 if you wanted to get right down to it for low cost. The 0+1 would really just be for the doubling of throughput and total capacity, but if redundancy is the chief goal, you can do that with a single pair of drives and RAID-1. Heck, this makes me want to play around with recreating RAID arrays again! This is why I love True Image, I've blown away and rebuilt my drives several times already without any trouble reloading from true image backup.