RAID 0: Error Occurred

[llazarus]

I am running two 1tb drives with raid 0 on scan 3xs system.

On boot up, the RAID status shows one of the drives status as: Error Occurred(0)

From a previous thread on RAID, I downloaded and ran the Intel Matrix Manager, which says that "A hard drive has reported that a read or write to it has failed"

I have backed up my data and am not seeing any specific error, but of course am very concerned about this.

Please advise me on how I can correct this problem.

Many thanks for your help

[smargh]

This happens with RAID 0.

Just wipe the volume and restore from your backup. Perhaps use the manufacturer's diagnostics application on both disks, just to be safe. I use h2testw to verify that all data is written correctly. Perhaps someone can recommend a different write & test utility - I know Spinrite does read+write+verify+write+verify+write+verify+write kind of test, but that costs money.

[jim]

Would advise you to run some tests on the drives, check that they're both working properly.

If so, you can re-create the array and restore your data.

[llazarus]

Thanks for the comments.

Given that my OS is on the drive, wiping it would mean that I have to rebuild my machine before restoring my data. So this would be last resort for me.

Are there any other options open to me?

[smargh]

Having an OS on a RAID0 array is very dangerous - any single write error will cause all data to be lost.

User RAID 1 for your OS, and RAID 10 for data. Some people say to use RAID 5, but they are clueless - 10 is better. RAID0 is only suitable for scratch disks or other cases with easily disposable data.

Windows 7 has a built-in backup imaging utility, or there are free 3rd-party applications. You must test any backup first,though.

[llazarus]

Update:

I ran a full ChkDsk and got no errors so I marked the drive as normal and now no error status is shown at boot time.

I am assuming that this was a blip caused by the power cut to my house that preceded the problem - I do hope this was not a stupid thing to do.

[jim]

Thanks for the comments.

Given that my OS is on the drive, wiping it would mean that I have to rebuild my machine before restoring my data. So this would be last resort for me.

Are there any other options open to me?

If you have a failure on RAID 0, no.

If you're going to run RAID 0, make sure you've got good backups. I mean, you should be running backups with RAID6, RAID16, RAID11, whatever the heck you've got you still need backups - but RAID 0 is particularly hopeless when it comes to resilience.

If it's so much of a last resort, I would advise getting another backup solution or switching to standard hard drives with no RAID.

[1stRaven]

Having an OS on a RAID0 array is very dangerous - any single write error will cause all data to be lost.

User RAID 1 for your OS, and RAID 10 for data. Some people say to use RAID 5, but they are clueless - 10 is better. RAID0 is only suitable for scratch disks or other cases with easily disposable data.

Windows 7 has a built-in backup imaging utility, or there are free 3rd-party applications. You must test any backup first,though.

Thats a little too back and white there. Raid 5 is perfectly fine but your wont have the performance of raid 10, same as raid 6. Some issues can of occur when using very large drives but Raid 10 is an expensive array to run due to the number of disks required.

Raid 0 is also ok for OS drives although if you run this, I would always recommended a drive image be taken so if the array fails, a new drive can be installed and the image restored. If you follow this, then there is little requirement to run a Raid 1 array unless you need your computer to be up and running 24x7 (hence the server requirement for raid 1)