Hard lock up with Seagate SATA drives on RAID mirror

[Edward]

I have two Seagate 80 gig SATA drives in a RAID mirror array that have
started to lock up every other night or so. Pressing control alt delete
will not do anything and I have to power off to get it to restart. I am
using an Asus P4P800-E Deluxe motherboard in an Antec Sonata case with
the stock fans. I do not have a fan in the front by the hard drives.
Dtemp reports the drive temperature to be 43 C at their hottest.

How can I test the integrity of the drives in a RAID array? Any ideas
as to what the problem could be?

If I remove the drives from the RAID mirror array, will I lose data?

 

[Mercury]

Please explain how you conclude that it is the drives and how the system
locks up.

eg
file IOs cease?
does mouse still move?
does caps lock still work?
are there any events in the event log (windows NT & later)?
what happens if you wait?
what is the CPU temp?

could the sata cables be loose?
what are the voltages like?

what controller are the drives on? what does the raid controller s/w say?

the answer, or a clue will be there somewhere.

"If I remove the drives from the RAID mirror array, will I lose data?"
IMHO, no, but don't trust me - its your data. I would image the drive /
partitions first.

 

[Paul]

I have two Seagate 80 gig SATA drives in a RAID mirror array that have
started to lock up every other night or so. Pressing control alt delete
will not do anything and I have to power off to get it to restart. I am
using an Asus P4P800-E Deluxe motherboard in an Antec Sonata case with
the stock fans. I do not have a fan in the front by the hard drives.
Dtemp reports the drive temperature to be 43 C at their hottest.

How can I test the integrity of the drives in a RAID array? Any ideas
as to what the problem could be?

If I remove the drives from the RAID mirror array, will I lose data?

Hmmm. Another motherboard with "Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet".

You are likely a victim of a certain Windows Update driver update.
If using the v8.35.2.3 driver, try another.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/bbs_view....anguage=en-us&topic_page=1&page_cnt=5&recc=45

HTH,
Paul

 

[Edward]

Please explain how you conclude that it is the drives and how the system

locks up.

eg
file IOs cease?
does mouse still move?
does caps lock still work?
are there any events in the event log (windows NT & later)?
what happens if you wait?
what is the CPU temp?

could the sata cables be loose?
what are the voltages like?

what controller are the drives on? what does the raid controller s/w say?

the answer, or a clue will be there somewhere.

"If I remove the drives from the RAID mirror array, will I lose data?"
IMHO, no, but don't trust me - its your data. I would image the drive /
partitions first.

It is a complete lockup. No mouse or anything. Control alt delete does
not do anything. The P4P800-e deluxe has an Intel RAID controller. The
SATA cables are not loose. Drive temperature never gets above 43C.
If I wait, it stays frozen for hours.

 

[Edward]

Hmmm. Another motherboard with "Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet".

You are likely a victim of a certain Windows Update driver update.
If using the v8.35.2.3 driver, try another.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/bbs_view....anguage=en-us&topic_page=1&page_cnt=5&recc=45

HTH,
Paul

Thanks a lot Paul. I did have the 8.35.2.3 driver. I used Windows
rollback and now I have 8.27.4.3. Hopefully this will solve the
problem. I'll let you know if may computer stays up and running for a
few days. I've learned a lot from many of your posts; thanks for your
time and effort at helping so much.

 

[Edward]

Hmmm. Another motherboard with "Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet".

You are likely a victim of a certain Windows Update driver update.
If using the v8.35.2.3 driver, try another.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/bbs_view....anguage=en-us&topic_page=1&page_cnt=5&recc=45

HTH,
Paul

Its been several days now and not a single lockup since I installed an
earlier Marvell drive. Thanks again.