BSOD after installing new WD3200AAKS drives -why ?

[eatmoreoats]

Hi,

I just replaced my hard drives with 2 new Western Digital Caviar SE16
WD3200AAKS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb drives from Newegg.
They are installed as a RAID 0 mirror pair using the mobo's nVidia
Chipset RAID controller. During XP install I hit f6, stuff my floppy
with the raid drivers in etc and the install works fine. Then when I
come to boot XP I get a blue screen of death with a STOP 0x0000007B
error (about removing any newly installed hard drives or hard drive
controllers etc).

Whats the most likely cause ? Is it a h/w incompatibility issue ?
Driver issue ? A bad drive ?

I've a ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe mobo. Prior to these WD3200AAKS
disks, I had a pair of Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200KS 320GB
7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb disks in raid 0 which worked ok.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Dom

 

[eatmoreoats]

btw these disks are OEM from Newegg

 

[Paul]

Hi,

I just replaced my hard drives with 2 new Western Digital Caviar SE16
WD3200AAKS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb drives from Newegg.
They are installed as a RAID 0 mirror pair using the mobo's nVidia
Chipset RAID controller. During XP install I hit f6, stuff my floppy
with the raid drivers in etc and the install works fine. Then when I
come to boot XP I get a blue screen of death with a STOP 0x0000007B
error (about removing any newly installed hard drives or hard drive
controllers etc).

Whats the most likely cause ? Is it a h/w incompatibility issue ?
Driver issue ? A bad drive ?

I've a ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe mobo. Prior to these WD3200AAKS
disks, I had a pair of Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200KS 320GB
7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb disks in raid 0 which worked ok.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Dom

You can:

1) Get the disk drive manufacturer's test software, and test each
drive individually. The software may fit on a floppy or a USB
stick. This will give you some idea if each drive is OK.

2) When connecting a new set of disks, if you want to RAID two
drives, enter the RAID BIOS (go to BIOS and use the magic
key press to enter the RAID subsection). Declare the array
in there. That will install metadata (reserved sector) declaring
that the disks are an array. The Nvidia RAID driver and the BIOS
INT 0x13 will read the reserved sector on each disk on subsequent
boots, and know what to do.

3) RAID 1 is a mirror. RAID 0 is a stripe for speed (double bandwidth).
In RAID 0, if one of two drives fail, the data is lost. In RAID 1,
if a single drive is lost, the other one still works (redundancy).
Make sure you're declaring the array type you actually want.

4) Nvidia Mediashield supports "migration" from one array type to another.
You could, for example, install one hard drive, set the ports to RAID
mode in the BIOS. You don't need to declare an array type for the single
drive (and if doing this now, you'd need to "Delete" the existing array
while the two disks are still connected). Press F6 and install RAID driver.
Install the OS. Reboot at least once to prove it all works. Shut down
and install the second disk. Boot up into Windows. Use the RAID management
software in Windows to perform a migration. Then, the data from the one
drive, will be copied to the second for a mirror. If going from single drive
to RAID 1 mirror, the size will not be an issue (same available storage
space as before, as it is a mirror). The Mediashield manual should have
a table of allowed migration types. (I think there is also a 6.1 version
of manual on the site as well.)

NVMediaShield_UGv6.pdf `1.64MB
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_32130.html

Inaccessible boot volume 0x0000007B could mean a couple of things. A mismatch
between what is in boot.ini and where the array is located. Or a problem
with the driver not being the right type for the disk setup (RAID versus
non-RAID driver). That kind of thing. Your problem probably is not a
hardware problem, but something like that. I'm guessing, that perhaps you
forgot to set up the array, and have only installed to a single disk or
something. But you can still do a quick test with the hard drive
diagnostic software anyway, if you want.

Once you start using RAID, if you want to use the disks independently at
some point in the future, you need to remove the reserved sector information.
"Delete array" in the RAID BIOS, would be one way of doing that. Occasionally,
a poster installs disks in a computer, and cannot understand why they
are operating strangely. It turns out, that some experiment they did last
year, left RAID reserved sector information on the disk, and the driver
or BIOS can pick that up and use it. "Delete array" can return the disks
to operating singly again.

HTH,
Paul

 

[eatmoreoats]

You can:

1) Get the disk drive manufacturer's test software, and test each
drive individually. The software may fit on a floppy or a USB
stick. This will give you some idea if each drive is OK.

2) When connecting a new set of disks, if you want to RAID two
drives, enter the RAID BIOS (go to BIOS and use the magic
key press to enter the RAID subsection). Declare the array
in there. That will install metadata (reserved sector) declaring
that the disks are an array. The Nvidia RAID driver and the BIOS
INT 0x13 will read the reserved sector on each disk on subsequent
boots, and know what to do.

3) RAID 1 is a mirror. RAID 0 is a stripe for speed (double bandwidth).
In RAID 0, if one of two drives fail, the data is lost. In RAID 1,
if a single drive is lost, the other one still works (redundancy).
Make sure you're declaring the array type you actually want.

4) Nvidia Mediashield supports "migration" from one array type to another.
You could, for example, install one hard drive, set the ports to RAID
mode in the BIOS. You don't need to declare an array type for the single
drive (and if doing this now, you'd need to "Delete" the existing array
while the two disks are still connected). Press F6 and install RAID driver.
Install the OS. Reboot at least once to prove it all works. Shut down
and install the second disk. Boot up into Windows. Use the RAID management
software in Windows to perform a migration. Then, the data from the one
drive, will be copied to the second for a mirror. If going from single drive
to RAID 1 mirror, the size will not be an issue (same available storage
space as before, as it is a mirror). The Mediashield manual should have
a table of allowed migration types. (I think there is also a 6.1 version
of manual on the site as well.)

NVMediaShield_UGv6.pdf `1.64MB
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_32130.html

Inaccessible boot volume 0x0000007B could mean a couple of things. A mismatch
between what is in boot.ini and where the array is located. Or a problem
with the driver not being the right type for the disk setup (RAID versus
non-RAID driver). That kind of thing. Your problem probably is not a
hardware problem, but something like that. I'm guessing, that perhaps you
forgot to set up the array, and have only installed to a single disk or
something. But you can still do a quick test with the hard drive
diagnostic software anyway, if you want.

Once you start using RAID, if you want to use the disks independently at
some point in the future, you need to remove the reserved sector information.
"Delete array" in the RAID BIOS, would be one way of doing that. Occasionally,
a poster installs disks in a computer, and cannot understand why they
are operating strangely. It turns out, that some experiment they did last
year, left RAID reserved sector information on the disk, and the driver
or BIOS can pick that up and use it. "Delete array" can return the disks
to operating singly again.

HTH,
Paul

Hi thanks Paul very much for your excellent reply.

1. I downloaded the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics tool and they both
checked out as ok, with quick and extended tests.

2. Yup, I set up the raid array (F10 to set it up and created it in
there by adding the two disk etc). On boot, it says the array is there
and in good condition

3. I meant to say raid 1 - mirror

4. I'm going to try installing to just one disk and then add the other
in later. What I don't get tho is why this all worked fine with the
pair of WD3200KS 's I had before. Is there something special about
these new disks ?

I'll try the single disk install and see how that goes. Stay tuned and
thanks again for the help with this!

 

[eatmoreoats]

Hi thanks Paul very much for your excellent reply.

1. I downloaded the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics tool and they both
checked out as ok, with quick and extended tests.

2. Yup, I set up the raid array (F10 to set it up and created it in
there by adding the two disk etc). On boot, it says the array is there
and in good condition

3. I meant to say raid 1 - mirror

4. I'm going to try installing to just one disk and then add the other
in later. What I don't get tho is why this all worked fine with the
pair of WD3200KS 's I had before. Is there something special about
these new disks ?

I'll try the single disk install and see how that goes. Stay tuned and
thanks again for the help with this!

Hi again,

I was able to install and start XP normally on one disk (while the
other was disconnected and RAID is disabled). Where I'm having
problems now is adding the second one back in. I created a new RAID
mirror and enabled RAID in the BIOS for the two disks. Booting then
would hang with a blank screen just before where you'd expect XP to
start. A single underline flashing cursor was at the top of the
screen, and I could only power off (ctrl-alt-del wouldn't work).
So what I'm trying now is thiselete the RAID array and disable raid
in the bios. Then I've Installed XP on just one of the disks and
installed all of the drivers for this mobo, including any nvidia
drivers., from a disk that came with the mobo. So far so good. XP is
working on the one disk w/o raid. Then I turned to the mediashield
pdf.
One thing I noticed is that my version of mediashield when I hit f10
during boot, is different. For example, when I Clear the disk, I do
not get the option to clear the MBR. Another thing is I don't appear
to have an nvidia control panel installed, or the mediashield software
so am unclear on the "Use the RAID management software in Windows to
perform a migration" steps.

Can you outline the steps for now going from my single disk install to
raid 1 mirror given this info ? For ex, how do I upgrade so that I
can the latest mediashield controller (when I press f10 - that bit) ?
Also where do I get the nvidia control panel etc ?

Thanks again!

 

[eatmoreoats]

Hi again,

I was able to install and start XP normally on one disk (while the
other was disconnected and RAID is disabled). Where I'm having
problems now is adding the second one back in. I created a new RAID
mirror and enabled RAID in the BIOS for the two disks. Booting then
would hang with a blank screen just before where you'd expect XP to
start. A single underline flashing cursor was at the top of the
screen, and I could only power off (ctrl-alt-del wouldn't work).
So what I'm trying now is thiselete the RAID array and disable raid
in the bios. Then I've Installed XP on just one of the disks and
installed all of the drivers for this mobo, including any nvidia
drivers., from a disk that came with the mobo. So far so good. XP is
working on the one disk w/o raid. Then I turned to the mediashield
pdf.
One thing I noticed is that my version of mediashield when I hit f10
during boot, is different. For example, when I Clear the disk, I do
not get the option to clear the MBR. Another thing is I don't appear
to have an nvidia control panel installed, or the mediashield software
so am unclear on the "Use the RAID management software in Windows to
perform a migration" steps.

Can you outline the steps for now going from my single disk install to
raid 1 mirror given this info ? For ex, how do I upgrade so that I
can the latest mediashield controller (when I press f10 - that bit) ?
Also where do I get the nvidia control panel etc ?

Thanks again!

Oh one other thing - after I posted this I tried adding the second
disk back in , creating the raid 1 array, telling the bios to boot
from it and rebooted. The result was a message telling me to insert
something to boot from. I then removed the second disk and tried to
reboot and I was back at the original problem where XP wants to reboot
itself during startup. Could it be that one of these disk's mbrs is
broken somehow and for some reason that isn't picked up by the diags
s/w ?

 

[Paul]

Oh one other thing - after I posted this I tried adding the second
disk back in , creating the raid 1 array, telling the bios to boot
from it and rebooted. The result was a message telling me to insert
something to boot from. I then removed the second disk and tried to
reboot and I was back at the original problem where XP wants to reboot
itself during startup. Could it be that one of these disk's mbrs is
broken somehow and for some reason that isn't picked up by the diags
s/w ?

As far as I know, when doing RAID migration, the single disk you install,
would need the RAID driver installed too. Even though no array has
been declared on the single drive.

At least with Intel RAID, when you change between vanilla mode and
RAID mode, in the BIOS, it actually changes the device enumeration.
That, in turn, prevents the old driver from loading. If you had
an IDE driver loaded, then switched the chip to RAID mode, then
tried to boot the computer, the driver will refuse to load, because
the enumeration is no longer correct for that driver. So you need
to install using F6 and a RAID driver, with your single drive. And
then you should be able to migrate later, to some array type.
(I don't know if all RAIDs work like the Intel does, but it is
something to be aware of as a possible reason for not being able
to boot.)

Sorry I could not get back to you sooner - my "free" USENET server
appears to be dead. I allowed a day, to see if anything would happen,
and so far it is still broken. So I had to find another server.

Paul