Server needs an Exorcism...HELP

[Planetbrian]

I need some help.

About once per day the ARECA 1230 Raid controller says that we have a hard drive fail. Usually it is a different hard drive. We have swapped out the “failed” HD’s for new ones and the new one sometimes will show up bad.

After we unplug only the data cable and plug it back in the array starts to rebuild itself, after the rebuild is finished the data is still there even if 2 drives showed up “failed” at the same time. When the HD’s show up “failed” we have checked and the HD’s are spinning.


2 Brand new servers, the only difference between the 2 servers is that one server has 4 gigs of ram and the other has 2 gigs.


Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2003 server 64 bit.


Array 1 has (3) HD’s in a raid 5 and Array 2 has (6) HD’s in a raid 5

Raid card: ARECA 1230 most current Firmware

Hard drives: Model 6v250f0 http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/...data_sheet.pdf

CPU 2 per server: AMD Opteron 252

ATI 128meg PCI-E video card

Ram: http://corsairmemory.com/corsair/pro...2sd1024rlp.pdf

Motherboard: Tyan http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we.html

Power Supply: http://www.pcpowercooling.com/produc...hp?show=T85SSI

Case: http://www.silverpcs.com/product/CS_PCV2100PLUS

High CFM fans blowing on hard drives and one of the exhaust fans is above the ARECA 1230 and video card

Battery backup: http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/PR2200.asp

The HD “failures” have always been on array 2 on both servers, maybe it is a coincidence that there have been no “failures” on array 1 and maybe not a coincidence.

Areca (Tekram) tech support is saying that it is a power issue. Is my power supply big enough?

We even tried unplugging the case fans while leaving the sides off so as to eleminate the idea of too much current draw on the MB.

Can you all think of anything to try?

Thanks for your help.

[Sterling_Aug]

An 850 watt power suppy should be PLENTY of power.

Have you ever tried hard drives other than Maxtor? I would rather cut off both arms than use Maxtor drives (personal preference only).

It may also be an issue with your RAID controller. I would do additional research on that as a possibility.