JMB363 RAID 1 keeps getting degraded, but which drive is at fault?

[QuietLeni]

Dear All,

I built a Win 2008 R2 server last year with JMB36X RAID 1 (2 x 1TB) and UPS to stop it from dying.

All was OK, until the Internet went down (BT's fault) earlier on this year and the Person-With-A-Little-But-Not-Enough-Knowledge decided it was because the server was not working properly, so he tried to reboot it. When unplugging the server rack did not bring the machine down, yes, you guessed it, he pulled the plug out of the back of the server and probably caused a lot of hardware issues.

Anyway, every time we reboot the server, the server now tells us that the RAID 1 is now degraded, but the BIOS utility and the Gigabyte RAID Configurer do not tell us which drive is at fault! If I knew which drive was at fault, I could whip it out and replace it. the only thing that I can find is that one drive is marked with a 0 in one screen and the other is marked with a 5! What these mean is anyone's guess. Is 0 OK and 5 degraded or 5 is a level of good RAID and 0 is that it is non-functional?

Does anyone know of a good Hard Disk disagnostics Utility to help with? I tried HDDScan, but that errors on everything that I ask it to do...?!

If I can find out how to attach pictures to this, I will, but I am getting annoyed with this!!

Best regards,

QuietLeni

 

[QuietLeni]

The pictures that I meant to include are these:

 

[QuietLeni]

Spoken with the manufacturer (StarTech) and they said that the RAID controller always writes to the disk on channel 0 and then the controller copies to channel 1.

They suggested replacing the controller card and then, if that does not work, replace one of the disks... Oh well.

 

[FireWire2]

I wondering how good tech support at Startech 🙂

Anyway here is my suggestion:
Since it's degrade, you should be able to access the data with ONE drive
1 - Remove ONE drive, you should be able to access, boot from the remain drive.
If you can access/boot from this drive. Insert a NEW drive, then controller should rebuilt the RAID
And you are good to go

If not - do the step 2

2 - Switch out the HDD, you should be able to access/boot with this hard drive, insert a new HDD is should rebuilt.

If not - do the 3rd step

3 - Trash that controller, consider to replace with other brand...
A decent controller of RAID1 will allow you to access the date when report degrade raid.

That is the purpose of it... what is the point of have a RAID1 when one drive fail and you can not access to the data

 

[QuietLeni]

I wondering how good tech support at Startech 🙂

Anyway here is my suggestion:
Since it's degrade, you should be able to access the data with ONE drive
1 - Remove ONE drive, you should be able to access, boot from the remain drive.
If you can access/boot from this drive. Insert a NEW drive, then controller should rebuilt the RAID
And you are good to go

If not - do the step 2

2 - Switch out the HDD, you should be able to access/boot with this hard drive, insert a new HDD is should rebuilt.

If not - do the 3rd step

3 - Trash that controller, consider to replace with other brand...
A decent controller of RAID1 will allow you to access the date when report degrade raid.

That is the purpose of it... what is the point of have a RAID1 when one drive fail and you can not access to the data

Hmmm. I have removed both drives and replced them with a pair of spare drives (identical tot he originals. I have then attached the primary drive to the motherboard and the server is functional. The Primary Drive is again fast and I have another RAID 1 set. (I am using this RAID set for data robustness and not as a System Disk.) However, my precious data is not in a mirrored RAID.

I have ALWAYS been able to access the data. The speed at which I could write to it was terrible if the RAID controller was synchronising and it seemed to need to resynchronise the RAID every time the machine gets rebooted, even though the Windows 2008 R2 server was being properly shut down and restarted!

 

[FireWire2]

Glad to hear the the server is back an running.

RAID1 is not for speed, it is for redundancy, and it's worst when it rebuilt or resync.

The speed at which I could write to it was terrible if the RAID controller was synchronising and it seemed to need to resynchronise the RAID every time the machine gets rebooted, even though the Windows 2008 R2 server was being properly shut down and restarted!

I would ditch this raid controller and get hardware raid1 controller cost around $40 ~ $60.00
1 - At least it runs independent from MB and wont rebuilt/resync every time you reboot
2 - It will tell you which HDD fail or need to replace 🙂

That's to me it is worth it