Just thought i'd write everything here to see if anyone can make any sense of it storage setup: 500GB Seagate ST3500841AS 500GB Seagate ST3500630AS* 500GB Seagate ST3500630AS* *these two configured as RAID0 with the onboard nvidia RAID Now, two days ago my PC's windows GUI would randomly lock up, windows like task manager would continue to update, you could change focus on windows by clicking on them, but not actually bring up any dropdown boxes (or do anything for that matter) HD light would blink every 3secs or so constantly and uniformly, only solution was a reboot I was thinking this was a windows bug, so was preparing for an XP re-install, but today it took a turn for the worse - firstly, only 1/3 or so of cold boots wold detect the raid array, most of the time it'd list the array as failed due to a disk offline, only fixable by switching off the PC entirely - the times it did boot, it'd lock up after ~10mins or so with the 3sec HDD LED blink thing again (i'm assuming this is the SATA/RAID controller lockup error code by this point) After a bit of that the PC would only boot with the RAID <or> the standalone drive, but not with both. plugging in both would result in a blank screen just after the BIOS post screen and the 3second LED blink again. I tried deleting the XP partition on the raid array and re-installing from the windows CD, PC will not boot with the standalone drive plugged in. reverse is true if i unplug the raid array and delete/install windows on the standalone drive. Getting a bit frustrated by now, so i turn off the raid bios (so the drives are listed individually) and from the standalone drive, run both the windows and linux vesrions of the seatools diagnostics program on all drives... all tests pass with flying colours So... most of the stuff i can pull off the raid array and back up onto USB/network drives so i can try nuking all partitions and trying again, but as that'll be very time consuming i'm wondering if anyone has anything else i could try?
I would say your RAID controller is on its way out, I would get the data off ASAP as it will be very difficult to get off if the controller dies. Is your motherboard still in warranty? If so try for a RMA. Just remember with most on board RAID setups you wont be able to drop them in another motherboard as it probably won't recognize the array. Can't think of anything else sorry.
I do believe my PC is taunting me... Today it's working flawlessly as if nothing had ever happened I think i will move forward my plans to upgrade my server PC to larger drives for use as a backup though!
If you're going to do any sort of RAID in a server, you definitely want the semi-redundancy (at the very least) of RAID5. Personally I don't bother and just pay $5 a month for unlimited backup space on Mozy and use whatever disks I can throw in. TBH given the cost of the 'lost' disk space and the added irritation of getting any kind of RAID up and running, it seems a pretty reasonable solution. Of course, if you're looking to back up a terabyte of data to Mozy (or some similar service) you should strongly consider bringing the machine into work so you can have some decent upload speeds so that it doesn't take three decades to finish. If I maxed out my 1Mbit up for a solid day, I'd still only get ten gigs put up *rolleyes*. Still... start now, I suppose. In any case, RAID0 in a file server is frankly retarded, unless you've got some ten-disk fiber channel array used for capturing 4k raw video.
I'm sure they are indeed a reasonable alternative for some. But online backups, must surely be a much slower backup solution, than using a hardware setup - i.e. RAID 5? Especially if you have oodles of stuff which requires regular backup You can always just do incremental backups of course. But you're still relying on your upload speed, and those are pitifully slow for the majority of us home users, here in the UK So even a relatively small backup could take a while to complete, during which time anything could happen! And if you're anything like me... it would The phrase "If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any" could've been invented for me personally
