what is my problem? (raid 1)

imported_coho

Junior Member
Dec 8, 2007
12
0
61
My system consists of as follows:

Win XP sp3
DFI Lanparty 250gb NF3
1.5gb ocz pc3200 @ stock speeds & voltages
2 westerndigitial wd5000aaks in raid 1 via nf3
benq dw1640
amd athlon64 3200+ @ stock speeds & voltages
Nvidia geforce 7800gs @ stock spees & voltages

i've tried troubleshooting the problem without success...and i've tried searching for a solution without success.

Until this "incident", the system ran flawlessly...bulletproof. The machine was powered off for a week while i was away from home. Upon return i powered up the machine and while the machine was posting/windows was loading, I somehow managed to accidentally flick the switch on the power bar which turned the power bar off (along with the computer). When I proceeded to turn the machine back on again, windows wouldn't boot. "Windows is corrupt" i figure...it'd been months since i last formatted, so I only needed an excuse to reinstall windows.

So i do...or at least try, But, I kept getting degraded raid arrays. I test the harddrives using bootable data lifeguard cd, - one drive is fine, the other automatically resets the machine every time it's tested. So I replace the drive with another identical drive and go on my way. The array is made and windows installs/runs fine, but then when I reset the machine, the array is magically degraded and windows won't load?!?! I can repeat this scenario with 100% reproducibility...i can use windows fine upon entering the desktop after a fresh install and all diagnostics say things are fine while in use - until i reset the machine?! The weird thing is that in order to reinstall windows again, i have to delete & reform the array...if i just leave the array from the previous install, windows won't recognize the drive during install.

I tried formatting the drives and i tried writing zeros to them...i've ran several loops of memtest without fail

any suggestions on ze problem?
 
Last edited:

somethingsketchy

Golden Member
Nov 25, 2008
1,019
0
71
Along the same lines, have you tried Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN)? If all else fails, usually DBAN works every time, that I've used it, even with software RAID.

This should get both of your disks back to a blank slate, so you can try and create a new RAID 1 array.