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[benn600]

I'm having serious issues with this new RAID setup.  Theoretically, spending more money on a nice setup would yield less issues and better overall satisfaction.  Unfortunately, I keep having major issues with this.  Hopefully someone can give me some idea what to do:

I'm running XP and really don't want to have to buy 2003 Server (which I've been told would work).  I did purchase Vista for another computer, not going to be using it there, but there are some reasons I don't want to install Vista--could have slow network issue/new interface confuses me a bit/reinstalling OS could be difficult because it's the upgrade version and they make it a big hassle...

I create the RAID 6 array, totaling 7TB or about 6,500 MB in disk manager.  I have tried formatting it quick/full with allocation unit sizes from 64Kb to 512b and default.  I've tried full and fast initialization with various stripe sizes and sector sizes on the controller.

Basically, I've tried all the configurations I can think of.  Here are the symptoms I notice:

1. A system restart sometimes reveals no data on the drive and it asks me if I want to format it (not formatted yet).
2. The drive falsely reports ~50% usage when it was ~95% before restarting.
3. Little bubbles pop up saying files are corrupted.  Please run check disk.
4. Check disks runs upon bootup and makes lots of changes to the drive.
5. When I'm copying data, the hard drive lights will usually be off for about 2 seconds and then light up for less than 1 second.  I'm guessing it buffers a chunk of data and calculates the diagonal parity (RAID 6) to then dump quickly to the drives.  I often notice it start keeping the lights on full time and speeds slow way down--this occurs at various times, often after copying a few hundred GBs.

I've basically been told that XP doesn't support > 2TB drives very well at all.  My question: why does NTFS support well over 2 TB then?  Also, some of you may remember I was running a software RAID 5 4.5TB array for ~6 months and had not a SINGLE problem.  Flawless, fast, file access all the time--even after a few hard reboots.  I'm to the point where I really need to get this moving.  Our whole house is tore apart because I've taken every hard drive I can find to temporarily back data up to it...and we have very limited computer access without all our data readily available.

[johnnyboy]

To trouble shoot it your first step is to work out if it's hardware or software.

To do this you need to test it with either some new hardware or a new OS - OS is easier option.

I'd give promise another call as well and speak to their tech support team to see if they can come up with any more ideas.

I've never had or admin'd anything near a 7TB disk before so I'm not unfortunately aware of the any issues you might get from it.


One other small idea is that if you do test say a Linux OS to try trouble shoot it with, you could always then just run VMWare inside Linux with XP loaded in it and all your window apps running in that.

It'd mean your windows apps and windows itself could all crash burn and BSOD and it wouldn't impact your file server at all, it'd happily keep running as windows died.

[benn600]

I did consider that and it's a good idea.  I just kept running into issues with Linux distributions.  Then when I was installing Suse, I saw the initial screen but then two LCDs said input not supported--oh great, now how do I install?!

I am installing Vista on my server right now (trying to kill some time).  If it doesn't fix it, I may seriously need to start looking at Linux more seriously. ... as a last resort if anything.  All my data is on these older, smaller drives right now.  So far, nothing bad has happened but it's not a good setup.  I'm starting to really run into issues where I truly need my computer/data to continue on some projects--and everyone in this household doesn't like it much, either.  I guess I anticipated being done Tuesday...then I kept running into all these issues.

Now I've been told it's the 2TB limitation.  Have you run more than 2TB successfully on XP?  I did!  Remember I had that 4.5 TB software RAID 5 running great--and as a bonus, I could restart the computer without losing all my data--that came in handy a few times.

I guess I could just never restart...so then if XP crashed--oh well, there goes 3+ TB.  I don't have a question that 3rd party software could recover all the data somewhat easily.

[Mr ChriZ]

I really hope your 7TB array is giving you more than 6500mb 

[benn600]

lol

[benn600]

Now I may have run into a strange issue/problem.  When the computer starts up, it kindly starts about half of the drives at a time.  Unfortunately, yep--you guess it.  When Windows powers down the drives and then something suddenly asks for data...  yep--you guessed it again.  Windows (or the raid card, whatever), doesn't give a hoot.  When I started asking for data and heard all 16 drives starting simultaneously, I lept to the APC backup unit to see the wattage readout.  550 watts!  It's a 400 watt power supply.  And I would say it's nowhere near a milisecond...it could have been a second or three.

And I caught it a bit after the drives started up so it easily could have peaked higher.  My biggest concern, obviously, is that such a power draw could overload the power supply and crash the whole system.  It has handled such a load at least twice that I know of, though.

The simple solution would be to leave the drives on 100% of the time.  This isn't a great solution because I'm keeping my web site on the main drives and therefore, won't have much accessing it a lot of the time.

[benn600]

Same problem.  Even with Vista, it's only a matter of time/restarts before data starts showing up as corrupted and disappearing.  This is starting to become serious and annoying at the same time.  I cannot believe how horrible this experience is compared with my XP hacked RAID5, especially considering the extra cost.

[johnnyboy]

Yeah - but your breaking new grounds - your gonna have a great career as a storage expert for corp's after this - you can make a ton

There'a a NICE salary attached to storage experts cause few people have much experience in the field

[newsposter]

The simple solution would be to spend $150 for a quality-built power supply of 500 watts or more.

You've got more than that invested in time already and will soon have that much invested in failed components.......

And neither XP (hacked or not) or Vista are meant to serve up disk storage.

By the way, corporations don't pay for repeated failure.

[johnnyboy]

They dont but at some point he'll have it down and he'll have a pretty hands on in depth knowledge of it by then.