Hard Drive (Raid5) problem

sirv

Junior Member
Dec 2, 2006
4
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Situation:
(five - Raid 5) HDD 320GB 7200RPM S-ATA300 Seagate 7200.10 16MB Ca
ASUS M2N-E
Cooler Master Centurion 534 (Silver)
POWER SUPPLY YESICO 560W SilentCool w/modular cabl
S40 Sapphire ATi X1600 XT 256DDR3 PCI-E TVout DVI
LG DVDRW+/- 16x DL LightScribe (black/white?)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
(two) Corsair 1024MB,DDR2, PC6400,XMS2-6400,Heatspreader

The raid 5 (totalling 1.16TB) has been split into two partitions. The first partition (100GB) contains windows XP 64bit SP1, program files, games, ... I haven't had any problems with this, as far as i can tell. The second partition is 1.06TB (1,092GB) containing data, backups etc. It had been without problems until recently, around the time about 800GB was being used. Last defragmented around when it was about half full, but seeing as i've deleted virtually nothing, i don't know how it's getting fragmented. Disk Defragmenter lists 22% File Fragmentation, if that matters.

Problem:
Program (and usually windows) locks up completely when trying to access the hard drive.


I've done error checking of the 1TB partition, no problems. However i did another scan, with both options ("Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors"), when i hung in Phase 5 about 40% of the way. It has hung when reading data, as well as when writing data. It's hung when defragmenting (at 3%).

Guesses:
Windows XP Pro 64Bit doesn't like big partitions?
Raid chip of mobo gone bad?
One (or more) Hard Disks gone bad?
Maybe a crash somewhere glitched a dll driver or something?
avast Anti Virus bug?

Thanks for your time,
Kirsten
 

sirv

Junior Member
Dec 2, 2006
4
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0
perhaps it's similar to the old 32GB/127GB boundaries, but the raid is correctly recognised as a 1.16TB raid in the boot-up raid manager, and the partition recognised as a 1.06TB partition. It seems if this were the problem, windows simply wouldn't recognise the correct partition size...
 

RebateMonger

Elite Member
Dec 24, 2005
11,586
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The limits for Basic Volumes with NTFS is 2 Terabytes. This was discussed a while back in these Forums.
Microsoft Technet: Partition Tables on MBR and GUID disks
"Partition Tables on MBR and GUID disks
Master boot record (MBR) disks use both basic and dynamic volumes. Because partition tables on MBR disks support partition sizes only up to 2 terabytes, you must use dynamic volumes to create NTFS volumes over 2 terabytes. Windows Server 2003 manages dynamic volumes in a special database instead of in the partition table; therefore dynamic volumes are not subject to the 2-terabyte physical limit imposed by the partition table. Dynamic NTFS volumes can be as large as the maximum volume size supported by NTFS. Itanium-based computers that use GUID partition table (GPT) disks also support NTFS volumes larger than 2 terabytes."


My bet would be the RAID controller/drivers.
 

sirv

Junior Member
Dec 2, 2006
4
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0
http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=101&l3=308&model=1181&modelmenu=1
"NVIDIA nForce® 570 Ultra? MCP
... With 6 Serial ATA ports enabled through the SATA 3Gb/s RAID controller..."
googling "NVIDIA nForce 570 Ultra" raid problems didn't turn up any results on the first 10 pages so i'm not sure what to do there.

I'm somewhat sure i already have the latest drivers (mid september), but i downloaded the latest MCP 64bit driver -which i'll install later tonight- and the "RAID" driver (not 64 bit?) which i'll try installing if the MCP driver doesn't fix things.

thanks for the advice so far
 

sirv

Junior Member
Dec 2, 2006
4
0
0
Well i've installed the MCP drivers and the system still boots up - yay - but the drivers it installed were for Ethernet, IDE, and SMBus. On the other hand, i did find this in the readme of the installation:
Installation of the NVIDIA IDE SW Driver is required to enable the NVIDIA RAID solution. If you are installing NVIDIA RAID into a NEW Windows Operating System, a floppy disk with the NVIDIA IDE Drivers must be created to enable installation of NVIDIA RAID.
That leads me to believe that something raid related at the least got updated (if not fixed). Still, the RAID was working (if with some problems) so i'm not sure this makes any difference...

Now i'll use tonight to see if i can replicate a situation where it would have crashed the system, hopefully in a way where i don't lose any data.