RAID 0 = Data Corruption?

[CosmoHorizon]

Hi there, I have recently pieced together a new computer, and whilst happy with its performance, i am constantly harassed by some strange problems regarding to file corruption.

System Info
XP Pro Service Pack 2
Opty 165 @ 2.4 (300*8) idle 32 load 48
2x1GB Kingston Value (1T 3/3/3/8)
Asus A8N32-SLI
All drivers up to date

Hard drive...I had a Maxtor Diamon 9 120GB and a Maxtor 10 120GB, both SATA-150 and 8mb cache (not entirely sure tho) arranged into a RAID 0 on SATA port 1 and 2, block size 32k.

Software side, i have RM Clock and Speed Fan to dynamically alter my core clock and fan speed.

Here is the problem, whenever i download something from the internet, it is sometimes corrupted, and some times, pictures on the internet are displayed with stripes of strange colors that should never have been there. But strangely, sometimes it works just fine, even for a 200+mb file, it works without producing a single problem, but even a 2mb video codec installer can be corrupted.

Oddly, i had recently downloaded Half Life 2 and Lost Coast from STEAM for around 5 GB, and while downloading, an accidental power failure and both still runs perfectly fine.

This problem appears to be selective, and the files i find faulty are perfectly fine when downloaded on other computers. What can be causing my problem?

Thanks in advance

Declaration: A fellow forum member reminded me that my post sounds as if i am illegally downlading my games. A big thanks to him, and i would like to say that i own my steam license which was bundled with my ATI 9800XT when i bought it 2 years ago

 

[CosmoHorizon]

Worse still, i just downloaded 2 different files, one is the new Splinter Cell trailer in a RAR file, and the other is the driver for my canon scanner....

I used a downloading agent (flahs get) for these 2 files, both of which were divided into 10 parts and download simultaneously, but the trailer works just fine, while my driver is once again corrupted (bad CRC)

 

[HO]

Are you using the nV Active Armor firewall? If so, turn it off.

 

[CosmoHorizon]

is that the problem with AA firewall? Unblievable, can something like that be so flawed? I'll give it a shot and see how it turns out.

BTW, how do you break an array back into 2 seperate disks? I have removed my drive from the nvidia array manager, but once windows is installed, it shows C drive as having 228 total space (the same when the 2 drives are in RAID) but with only 117 usable space (1 drive) and the other drive does not show up whats or ever! I tried installing with only 1 drive, and plug in the second one later, but still no luck... any ideas?

 

[RebateMonger]

With RAID 0, only half of the data in each file is on a single drive. The other half is on the second drive. Both drives must be working and attached to the RAID controller to access the data.

The way to break up the array is to back up all your data to another drive and then attach the two drives to a controller in non-RAID mode, partitioning and formatting them separately.

 

[CosmoHorizon]

Yep I did that, and I am aware of the fact that raid 0 works that way...however, i have already closed the RAID controller on my motherboard and used the windows installation to re-format my drive. Thanks for the comment tho RebateMonger, is it possible for you or any other member of the forum to direct me to a guide that consists of some instructions on how to do partitioning? Thanks very much

 

[CosmoHorizon]

Just an overview of what's happening with my system right now and what i need help with

I have my Maxtor 10 connected to my mobo's SATA1 port, in the bios i enabled the SATA controller for SATA port 1 and 2 and RAID function disabled. My Maxtor 9 is currently disconnected. I deleted my faulty partition when installing windows, and it is currently running. When windows finish installing, i'll reconnect my Maxtor 9 drive, and hopefully it will work. (When i didn't delete my faulty partition, it showed up as a floppy drive "B" = = )
Wish me luck!

 

[CosmoHorizon]

OK...thw windows is installed and my primary drive functions just fine, but the system is not displaying my secondary drive when i plug it in.....is there some sort of setting that i need to tweak? I have rebooted my windows, and my drive shows up just fine in the device manager and bios, but is not displaying as a physical drive in My Computer...any thoughts? HELP!!!!!

Edit: I seem to have found the solution....
By defakto
2.) Did you install a new harddrive and it shows up in the BIOS but not in windows? Do the following: Start menu, control panel, admin tools, computer management, disk management tab, format, assign drive letter, enjoy.

 

[Madwand1]

Is it a Sata 3.0 Gb/s drive? There's an issue with Nforce4 and Maxtor Sata 3.0 Gb/s drives, for which there is a firmware update that can be downloaded from Maxtor upon request.

http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxt...g/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2685

 

[Jiggz]

I see you already found the solution. Basically it's just a matter of initializing the 2nd hdd in Disk Management. Partitioning it and then formatting.

 

[CosmoHorizon]

Some weird side-effect....I now have a extra floppy drive "B" appearing constantly, even if i uninstall it from the device manager....the only way to stop it from popping up is to disable it from the device manager....weird

Worse still, it now takes a century to boot after i installed the latest chipset driver from Nvidia.....I never ever had this trouble when it was sitting on RAID 0.....help please

BTW, by booting, i mean the windows XP loading screen, the one with a blue bar running accross it

 

[CosmoHorizon]

Worse still, it now sometimes lock up during that loading screen, and if i reboot while it's there, i began losing my hard drives in BIOS, the only way to get them back is by unpluggin their power and then reconnecting them....

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS SATA? NEVER ONCE I HAVE RAN INTO THIS MUCH TROUBLE!

UPDATE: It has just refused to boot, and it restarted after about 5 min locked at the loading screen, and now all my hard disks are "lost", not being found during POST, and the only way i can fix that is by the method i mentioned above (physically disconnecting and reconnecting)
THIS ONLY HAPPENS AFTER I INSTALL THE LATEST NVIDIA DRIVER!

Should I rebuild my RAID 0? Is my file corruption caused by the Active Armor Firewall?

 

[CosmoHorizon]

OK, things got better, i narrowed the problem down to the IDE SW driver bundled in the nvidia chipset driver and if i dont install it, it doesn't create a problem. However, it appears that the magical "B" drive is always there to haunt me, and my windows is extremely vulnerable to boot failure (bluescreen the moment it start loading, and refuses to boot, even into safe mode) This happened twice, once when I was installing my SP2, and the other time after i installed my Creative Audigy 2 driver. I am currently using the windows installation disk to give my drive a FULL NTFS format.

I have never ran into a computer that produces this much problem....I even memorised my XP CD-Key.....
Can anyone help me with what's goin on here?

 

[CosmoHorizon]

Bump...some one please help....

 

[HO]

If you search, you will find that nV IDE drivers are considered taboo by many. Add that to Active Armor on the list of things NOT to install. Also on the list are Cool n Quiet and AMD CPU drivers. Some versions of the nForce chipset drivers are better than others. You may want to research that as well. There may be more, but that's all I can think of for the moment.

Oh, the MS Dual Core hotfix is best left alone unless you KNOW you need it.

 

[RebateMonger]

Can't help wondering...with the Windows installation issues you've reported here and in your other thread. Have you ever tested your memory for errors? It wouldn't hurt to run Memtest86+ or something similar for a few hours, just to be sure....

 

[CosmoHorizon]

I don't know if i have installed the hot fix you mentioned, I simply used windows update to aquire any update listed there. Also, I have primed my memory using the memory intensive torture thingy, and did that for about 12 hours, and works just fine. I'll give it a go tho...hopefully somethign will work again

 

[CosmoHorizon]

Is there anything I can do to stop the computer re-booting and stay at the BSOD? So probably narrow down the problem?

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: CosmoHorizon
Is there anything I can do to stop the computer re-booting and stay at the BSOD? So probably narrow down the problem?

In the "System Properties" panel:
/Advanced/Startup and Recovery/Settings...: uncheck the "Automatically Restart" checkbox and make sure that events are being written to the event log.

 

[CosmoHorizon]

OK, computer has passed RAMtest without a problem, and now my computer is in a clean state, only windows and nothing else. What are my recommendations? Install my drivers? not to install my drivers? Should I rebuild my RAID and not instally the NV firewall and see if the corruption problem is still present?

 

[V00D00]

Haha, another reason NOT to use RAID 0.

32k clusters is pretty damn big. With clusters that size you're just asking for file corruption. The bigger the cluster size the less wasted space and faster theoretical access, but the higher the likelyhood of file corruption due to far less CRC data.

I would suggest you run some hard-core hard drive cleanup utilities like grc.com's spinrite. That will scan the whole surface of the drives and see if there are any defects on the drive platter itself.

Sounds like you SHOULDN'T use RAID 0 again, not just due to the double failure rate.

Are you using the latest drivers for everything and lest bios for your motherboard?

It sounds like at first you forgot to disable the RAID in the BIOS for your RAID controller.

 

[CosmoHorizon]

Thanks man, i'll sure give it a spin and see how that works out. I'm gonna try installing SP2 again, and if it fails, i'll switch my main drive to the Diamon 9 and see if it will produce any more of these craps....wish me luck!

BTW, When I was gonna use RAID for the first time, some dude online recommended me the 64k cluster, and i thought maybe it's a little big, so i jumped to 32 k, guess it's still too big =P

Wish me luck!

 

[CosmoHorizon]

Great! It's all working now, but just one odd problem, after i recalled all my OC settings, my RAM, which was on all AUTO, refuses to give me a correct reading? When I force RAM in bios to 133, which with a HTT of 300 will give me a nice 2:3 divider which equates to DDR400, however, the BIOS says it's 133, the POST displays DDR266, but CUPZ shows not 200MHZ but 187.5, what is going on with it?

BTW, as for disk platter error, scanning now

 

[Snapsteri]

I had very similar problems with my new machine. Thanks to this forum, I solved the corrupted downloads by turning nV Active Armor firewall off and uninstalling it. After reboot there haven't been a single corrupted download this far. hooray!

was testing raid 0 with:
abit KN8 sli with 2* 200GB cavier SE sata II drives