Strange Aurora-R4 software installation issue

[Phenix234]

I have given up on calling tech support as we have reformatted the PC now 4 times and one of the people helping me did not know how to setup a raid 0 drive over 2 gigs and told me that I would have to live with the smaller drive. I ended up calling back in and getting someone who knew how to set it everything up and now after months of the same issue I had given up but a friend told me to give the forums a shot.

The issue I am having now is when I install anything that is more then a flash game the system locks up upon the install. The best example I can give is I have Steam on the PC and can download a game like Skyrim and it downloads without any issues at all but when I start the installer after it runs for a short while things rapidly go down hill, like my Facebook says I am off line then web pages stop responding, and last I get a full system freeze and one of two things happens. After one to ten Minuets The system unfreezes or I have to do a hard shut down if it doesn't.

Now in the end the software always works after the issue but the reason this concerns me is the reason we had to reformat a few months back is because a hard restart crashed everything and windows would not boot anymore. I was sent a windows 7 flash drive but in the end after 2 days of working on it with the tech he realized you cant boot windows 7 raid 0 5TB HD off a usb and have it see the whole partition but I am not sure why it did not work.

If anyone here has any clue to what my issue is so maybe I can get this fixed I spent a lot on this as a gift with my girlfriend and she is scared to use it because she doesn't know if we will lose the Data again and have to do a new restore.

If you need any other information let me know I will be checking this often to see if anyone has a clue and thank you in advance if anyone can help.

Also since I wrote this I ran the eSPA Diagnostics on its thorough mode and it said everything was fine so I had downloaded Warhammer and when I clicked the install off steam the whole system froze again I have Photo's and video. Let me know any other info that can help.

Thank you in advance

 

[manofchalk]

Back up all your important data (photo's, family video, whatever you don't want to lose) to some external storage. That way even if your Alienware just completely dies you still have all that.

Your having what seem like drive issues and Dell have advised you to keep them in RAID0? Really?
RAID0 doubles the performance your storage, at double the risk of losing data through drive failure. Basically two drives each receive half the data being written, which doubles the performance since each drive is doing half of the work. However if either drive fails, you lose everything on both of them.

What I would do in your situation would be too lose the RAID0 array, its possible that one of the drives is failing and that's causing your issues. Back up your data, break the RAID0 and install Windows to a single drive. Then run a diagnostic program, something like Crystal Disk Info or ChkDsk.

 

[Phenix234]

Alright I may have to try that. Its killing me having to format the drives this many times, it seems like it is down more then it works but I figure if I can find the problem I might be able to get Dell to do something. SO I will try this when I get home I think but if a drive is failing would the check software you game me work if eSPA and autopsy cant find them now? Is it the Raid 0 hiding the issue? I am just trying to wrap my head around everything thank you for your advice 🙂

 

[manofchalk]

I suspect the RAID0 is hiding the issue, because software can only access what the OS knows and the RAID is mostly likely set up at the BIOS level, to Windows it would appear like one drive.

Once you get Windows up and running with both drives set up (Disk Manager -> find the unformatted drive -> Initialize and format in NTFS), run those programs and see if they find any issues with the drives. Best case scenario, their both fine, in which case I would suspect its the motherboards RAID controller that was the issue.
Worst case scenario, both are having issues and you will have to buy a new HDD and install Windows to that.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148834
No doubt installing your own hardware will lose the warranty on your system, but its not like they can tell.

I suspect at this point Dell wont be much help if you'v been through them before a couple of times before.