Raid 0 won't work anymore

[Rick]

In May of 2001 I purchased and set up a Promise fasttrak 100 controller
along with 2 IBM 60gxp 40 gig HD's running raid 0, surpisingly with
heavy usage all has gone well until recently.

I can't boot into windows anymore, when I boot into the promise fast
build utility it tells me one of the drives is off line, I tried
switching the ribbon cables, power supply lines etc but still no luck.

I ran the (latest) IBM DFT 32 ver 408B utility which would lock up
towards the end of the mechanical test in the basic and advanced mode
on both drives so I removed the Fasttrack controller and connected the
hard drives to the MB and ran the basic and advanced test on both HD's
several times and the results were great, both completed all testing
with no errors.

What are your thoughts? Does this mean the Promise controller conked
out, the motherboard may have issues or there may be a problem with one
of the HD's that the test isn't picking up?
also the MB is an ASUS P3B-F

Rick

 

[Arno Wagner]

In May of 2001 I purchased and set up a Promise fasttrak 100 controller
along with 2 IBM 60gxp 40 gig HD's running raid 0, surpisingly with
heavy usage all has gone well until recently.

I can't boot into windows anymore, when I boot into the promise fast
build utility it tells me one of the drives is off line, I tried
switching the ribbon cables, power supply lines etc but still no luck.

I ran the (latest) IBM DFT 32 ver 408B utility which would lock up
towards the end of the mechanical test in the basic and advanced mode
on both drives so I removed the Fasttrack controller and connected the
hard drives to the MB and ran the basic and advanced test on both HD's
several times and the results were great, both completed all testing
with no errors.

What are your thoughts? Does this mean the Promise controller conked
out, the motherboard may have issues or there may be a problem with one
of the HD's that the test isn't picking up?
also the MB is an ASUS P3B-F

I would suspect the drive. It may have a problem that causes it to
react slower to commands, which in turn may be too slow for the contoller.
A few hard to read sectors (typical way the "deathstars" start dying)
would do it...

Arno

 

[Rick]

I would suspect the drive. It may have a problem that causes it to
react slower to commands, which in turn may be too slow for the contoller.
A few hard to read sectors (typical way the "deathstars" start dying)
would do it...

Arno

Thanks, I'll just setup the better HD as a single, anyway if all goes
well I'll be totally rebuilding by fall just hate to loose the raid 0
in the meantime.

Rick

 

[Arno Wagner]

Thanks, I'll just setup the better HD as a single, anyway if all goes
well I'll be totally rebuilding by fall just hate to loose the raid 0
in the meantime.

Ok, here is one thing you can try if you want to save the data:
Copy the suspect disk sector-wise to another one that is the same
size or larger. If you are really lucky, that other disk will
work instead of the problematic one.

Arno

 

[Rick]

Ok, here is one thing you can try if you want to save the data:
Copy the suspect disk sector-wise to another one that is the same
size or larger. If you are really lucky, that other disk will
work instead of the problematic one.

Arno

Thanks, I was able to copy the failing drive to another I had laying
around using the free version of HD Clone (basic) which worked just
fine, when I reconnected to the Promise controller it booted up and is
running as if nothing ever happened.

Rick

 

[Arno Wagner]

Thanks, I was able to copy the failing drive to another I had laying
around using the free version of HD Clone (basic) which worked just
fine, when I reconnected to the Promise controller it booted up and is
running as if nothing ever happened.

Very good!

Arno