Raid 1 Mirroring issue

[jmhcs]

I am working on a Dell XPS 400 Desktop running WXP Pro SP3. It uses Raid 1 (mirroring). I had a drive fail and ordered and installed a new one. It is a MAXTOR 7L250S0. The Raid controlling software is Intel Matrix Storage Console 5.1 Ver. 5.1.0.1022

The replacement drive seems to have failed also, at least the rebuild blue screened with 0X00008086 (0X00000000, 0X00000000, 0X00000000, 0X00000000). I restarted the computer and it went into CHKDSK after which it successfully restarted.

I have restarted the rebuild which seems to be going well but have no idea if anything is happening. The hard drive indicator on the front of the computer is not blinking but the rebuild indicator on the task bar is.

This leads to my questions:

1. The first drive is in port 0 and the second is in port 2. Is this O.K.?

2. If my replacement drive (MAXTOR 7L250S0) is also bad, can I get one of greater capacity as a replacement? The Maxtor's are old and getting hard to obtain.

Please advise. Thank you

[Midknyte]

did you run Seatools on the drives yet?

It shouldn't matter which ports you use. You should use the same ports that you created the array on.

You can get a larger drive, but the array will be limited by the smallest drive.

[jmhcs]

I did not run Sea Tools yet but will if it fails during the second rebuild attempt. This attempt has been running for 4 hours. The icon in the system tray says it is rebuilding so I assume it is. It just seems like a long time for about 120GB.

Thanks for looking

[jmhcs]

Assuming a new hard drive is needed (even though the one I installed was supposd to be new), I know it can be bigger by your last comments. However, can the transfer rate, buffer size, seek time, etc. be faster than the good one left in the array?

[Midknyte]

They can be completely different models, so performance can be different.

BTW, I hope you broke the array first before you rebuilt the mirror.

[jmhcs]

I do not know what you mean. I very seldom work with RAID. Am I in trouble??? (I did a complete dada backup first.) The Intel Matrix Storage Console 5.1 software said one drive was dead.

[Midknyte]

Some cards/software can do an auto-rebuild, but I would recreate the array if you are using dissimilar drives. If a drive fails, the RAID card essentially breaks the array. You should break the mirror array, install the new drive, then rebuild the array. This might not be such a big deal since you're using software RAID.

Since you said you were using Intel RAID software:
http://www.intel.com/support/chipset.../CS-023342.htm

[jmhcs]

I have used Sea tools to check 2 drives that have failed on this array. With both drives, the Long Drive Self tests pass. However, when I check Drive Information, it comes up with "Identity Fail". I have no idea what this means.

[Midknyte]

Does the new drive pass without the Identity Fail? I think Identity Fail had something to do with SMART, but I'll have to look it up.

[jmhcs]

I need to test that. I don't have it in my hands right now. I will post when tested.

[jmhcs]

Just a final note and resolution on this thread. I finally retrieved the MAXTOR 7L250S0 hard drive and did the Sea Tools diagnostics. In this drive, the Drive Information test passed. However, both the Short and Long drive self tests fail. Strange, exactly the opposite of the other drive(s). I contacted the EBay seller and they are sending me a return label for the defective drive.

The good news is I have purchased and installed a Seagate 320GB SATA drive, Model ST3320613AS BM. I first did a basic format on a different computer then installed. It went perfectly with no errors. Back in business.

Thanks for your help.