Is my Dell XPS 8300 hard drive failing? Intel Rapid Storage detects error.

My computer (dell xps 8300) recently froze and upon restarting it it marked one of my RAID 0 hard drives as having an error. Surprisingly my computer still works same as always and after some investigating i traced the freezing to vuze trying to verify a file after it had already down. I deleted the files causing the freezing and have not encountered anymore freezing issues yet. But i'm still very concerned, so i ran a check disk, which quickly says the drive is clean and i've also run the dell support center HD tests (Long & Short) several time and they always say the drives are working fine. Today i ran a another windows checkdisk which took alot longer but seem to come up clean. But when the computer restarted afterwards the disk was again marked as having an error . So i ran the dell support center short and long hard drive tests yet again and its still saying everything is working properly. I then decided to try running some other hard drive diagnostics namely seagate seatools and Western Digital lifeguard. The drive passed the Seatool's tests, but almost immediately failed the WD Lifeguard tests giving the error that there are too many bad sectors. Any advice on how to proceed would be much appreciated!

 

Forlorn112 what version of IRSM (Intel Rapid Storage Manager) are you using first of all? If it's an older version like 8 or 9 they are known to throw drives in to a failed status, and you may want to update it to IRST (Intel Rapid Storage Technology. Depending on what OS your running you my not be able to update to IRST,I know XP only goes to version 8.9.0.1023,but if you have Win 7 you can update to version 12.5.0.1066. This would be the first step that would take with issue, but after the update if the drive is still showing as failed, then yes I would suspect that there would be an issue with it and have it replaced. Seeing that you are running a RAID 0, before the drive goes out completely, I would back your data up on it seeing that with a RAID 0 if one drive craps out the entire array is gone. Unlike a RAID 1 you would be able to throw a replacement drive in to the array and rebuild it.

 

Here's a link to update Intel Storage Manager if you needed it: StorageManagehttps://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Software+Products&ProductLine=Chipset+Software&ProductProduct=Intel%C2%AE+Rapid+Storage+Technology+(Intel%C2%AE+RST)if you needed it: