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My Intel RAID controller hates me

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  • 06-11-2015 6:09pm
    #1
    Spear
    Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators, Help & Feedback Category Moderators Posts: 25,313 CMod ✭✭✭✭


    I've spent a few days going slowly nuts with this, so any advice is welcome.

    I have an Asus X99 Deluxe board, this has the integrated Intel Rapid Storage Technology controller.

    I have three brand new WD Black 3TB disks.

    I've set the controller to RAID mode in the BIOS, the Intel ROM comes up, I set the three disks to RAID 5.

    I've installed Windows 10, and all seems happy.

    But after a few restarts, the RST controller drops the volume and marks all three disks as "incompatible", not merely being a non-RAID member disk.

    I can't seem to correlate it to any driver or other event. There's no options in the RST ROM beyond deleting the lot and starting again, and I seem to have no other info available.

    So any suggestions or ideas are welcome.


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    #2
    challengemaster
    Registered Users Posts: 16,930 ✭✭✭✭challengemaster


    Running the latest BIOS version? If not it could be a bug that was fixed in a later update maybe.


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    #3
    Spear
    Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators, Help & Feedback Category Moderators Posts: 25,313 CMod ✭✭✭✭Spear


    The board itself has the latest version at least, rev. 1901.


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    #4
    Riesen_Meal
    Registered Users Posts: 10,577 ✭✭✭✭Riesen_Meal


    Spear wrote: »
    The board itself has the latest version at least, rev. 1901.

    Have you got the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver software itself installed?


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    #5
    Spear
    Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators, Help & Feedback Category Moderators Posts: 25,313 CMod ✭✭✭✭Spear


    Fieldog wrote: »
    Have you got the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver software itself installed?

    Yes, and that reports all the drives and their status just fine.


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    #6
    Riesen_Meal
    Registered Users Posts: 10,577 ✭✭✭✭Riesen_Meal


    Spear wrote: »
    Yes, and that reports all the drives and their status just fine.

    Very strange, I'd be looking at the BIOS next if that's the case...


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    #7
    Spear
    Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators, Help & Feedback Category Moderators Posts: 25,313 CMod ✭✭✭✭Spear


    There's an irritating lack of info with what happens. It's all fine and dandy, and then it's simply gone. I don't see any symptoms or signs of anything amiss, and then *poof*, the RAID volume is dropped. I've no logs, or console output, or anything to examine.


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    #8
    ED E
    Registered Users Posts: 36,167 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    RAID controllers will drop a volume if they encounter a point a which the drive takes too long to respond. This usually happens when a drive hits a sector where it cant be sure if its reading correctly, so it does a retry, sometimes several. This is good normally as the OS will just wait say 15ms instead of 10ms and the user won't be any wiser. But not with RAID.

    RED drives are used for arrays for this very reason, they don't do retry multiple times instead passing the error to the RAID controller correct for the error and keep going, meaning no dropped volumes. So your blacks are a bad starting point, but not fatal.


    Because these are brand new I'd start by conditioning the disks. If there are any sectors that are a little "borderline" this might solve it. Spinrite is good here, or run something that will write every sector multiple times(DBAN say). Do this individually on all disks. Then rebuild the array.

    Secondly. Do not use RAID5 if you care about the data stored on the array. It was good on older disks that relied less on error correction but with modern large disks (like your 3TBs) data density is high and OEMs rely on clever firmware to correct. With RAID5 you won't have a problem until you try a recovery. Drive fails, fine, use the parity to rebuild, start the rebuild.... oh URE -> everything gone.


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    #9
    Spear
    Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators, Help & Feedback Category Moderators Posts: 25,313 CMod ✭✭✭✭Spear


    The drive spin up speed is fine, and once they're in use there's no sign of any issues.

    My suspicion is that something is hosing the RAID descriptors, and I'm begining to wonder if it's being caused by the presence of a non-RAID member drive, which also has a bootable partition. It's also the same dodgy drive that lead to these replacement being used, and from which I'm pulling old data.


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    #10
    bluferbl
    Registered Users Posts: 171 ✭✭bluferbl


    This won't fix your problem but might be worth a go just to get some more background info...try just using two of the disks in a mirror and see how things go. If all is good, disconnect one of the mirrored disks and then rebuild the mirror with your third disk and see if it continues to work OK. Might help to identify a disk that isn't quite right. Just a thought.


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