ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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Those of you who use a RAID setup on your PC, preferably mirroring like me, could you tell me how many times this setup has fuck up for you this year please? Min keeps on fucking up, and this time is is not just the simple case of rebuilding the array, it has really died 
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Tim
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Registered: 21st Apr 00
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Mine's fine. What motherboard/disk controller are you using?
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PaulW
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Registered: 26th Jan 03
Location: Atherton, Greater Manchester
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same, no issues here
only thing I can think of is driver/controller/disk issues...
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Reedy
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Registered: 11th Apr 04
Location: Hammersmith
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ed what mobo you got? sounds like one of the first releases motherboards that mess up raid. Your probably best off Bios flashing it.
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Russ
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Registered: 14th Mar 04
Location: Armchair
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im guessing your using cheap hdd and onboard raid 
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Reedy
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Registered: 11th Apr 04
Location: Hammersmith
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quote:
Originally posted by Russ
im guessing your using cheap hdd and onboard raid
There isnt such thing as a cheap hard drive.
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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quote:
Originally posted by Russ
im guessing your using cheap hdd and onboard raid
whats wrong with onboard raid? And cheap HDs....use seagates all the way 
Run a stripped array here on a Silicon Image Raid chipset, no problems - been stable since the last format about 2 years ago, and its on par with my friends raptor drive.
bro runs a mirrored system though using nforce chipset (silicon image again i think) but has problems and its slow as hell, so its half way getting rebuilt for a stripped array!
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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I have 2x Maxtor 6V300F0 SATA II disks and a Asus A8N-E mobo. It's totally fucked this time. I can now only run the computer with RAID turned off as the computer stops when it trys to detect the array upon boot. I didn't realise there were hardware and software RAID setups, the nVraid setup i'm using is terribly un-reliable and I cannot see a way of sorting it, it's totally fucked  I really don't want the hassle of re-installing everything either
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Tim
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Registered: 21st Apr 00
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Onboard RAID setups on desktop motherboards are actually software based anyway.
Proper hardware RAID is usually only found in server boards or more expensive expansion cards.
To be honest I'd hit the Asus website and check for driver and firmware upgrades, or Google for similar issues with that board and hopefully someone has found a fix. It's unlikely the drives themselves are the cause.
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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Still no joy
I can't seem to find anything on this problem.
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
User status: Offline
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like tim said check the asus website for a bios update, if so flash your bios and see if that helps - current ver is 1013 (asus states that you should have chipset ver 6.65 for XP before updating to avoid hanging - more on there >> SITE <<)
Would also try updating your Nvidia mobo chipset drivers as well and see there are alternative IDE/Sata drivers.
though it sounds a bit odd - brothers got the SLI version motherboard (same chipset) and doesnt have any problems like that, hes running to 150gig sata II seagates.
Btw, are the drives in perfect condition?eg: have you done a scan disk on both of them for corrupt sectors and the like? Seems a bit odd that it hangs on trying to boot the raid - have you got a pair of other drives to test the raid - if so try it, might just be the maxtors.
Failing that, dodgy mobo perhapps? Especially as you cant find any probs on Google and you usually find stuff on there...oh, try Nforce forums (think its called that), might help you!
Tim - im guessing most motherboards now are software raid?, but my ASUS and Abit boards both have a Silicon Image raid chipset (same as there PCI raid cards), so there are a few desktop boards out there that are still hardware.
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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Everything is in perfect condition. The system is normally increadibly reliable and had only frozen a few times in the 3 months or so I have had it.
It seemed to be a Windows driver issue, rather than a chipset issue, as I gave up in the end and wiped the disks so I could start fresh. It runs perfectly again now. Just need to re-install everything...
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Tim
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Registered: 21st Apr 00
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Yeah even the Highpoint and Silicon Image chipsets are generally referred to as "soft raid" by the manufacturers.
It's not such a big deal for mirroring, but proper hardware RAID would support the parity generation RAID5 (for example) in hardware logic. None of the 'cheap' onboard stuff does this -- it's just emulated in software either on the chip firmware or the driver.
It's not really important for desktops -- just an academic discussion hehe.
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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I'm never pressing the reset button again though  I think that's what broke it this time 
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Tim
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Registered: 21st Apr 00
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Yeah that doesn't do much for the integrity of the logical drive
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Claire
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Registered: 19th Jan 03
Location: The Sarrrf
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Mine's fine 
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
User status: Offline
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I am actually under the impression tha the main board has given up already... Or is just faulty. It seems to keep on forgetting what hard drives it has attached to it. It was running fine last night, I left it turned on to download all the Windows updateas and to install them, however, I woke up to find that it the RAID arrary had died already. So I rebooted the machine only to find that when it POST'd it thought there were no drive attatched to it, it then made itself 2 RAID arrarys... Err. Kaput.
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
User status: Offline
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do any bios settings get lost? could be your bios battery dying, but it does sound like a fault with the motherboard
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ed
Member
Registered: 10th Sep 03
User status: Offline
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Na, the Mobo batt is fine. I think I might need to send it back. Damn me for building ym own PC as I now have to dismantle the whole thing to take it out....
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