Via Raid software reports device fault

Hi,

I have two 80GB Western Digital SATA drives in a RAID 1 mirror with a VIA RAID controller on an MSI motherboard, 3/4 GB of RAM, Athlon XP 3000+, Windows XP Pro, and a third IDE drive, a Seagate 120GB.


When I boot up, I get this error from the RAID Bios:

Critical RAID 1, Fault HDD found, Channel 1, Device 0 Fault.
Raid array needs to be duplicated to ensure(sic) consistency.

Then i have two options: Duplicate Now or Continue to Boot.

Now, I am hesitant to "duplicate now", because the last time this happened I did duplicate and that was followed by the Windows splash screen which then kicked into CheckDisk and I watched in horror as tens of thousands of files were reindexed or repaired in some way and ended up with a totally hosed Windows installation.

Now being the honest fellow I am, I thought at the time that I might have downloaded a file from a newsgroup that I shouldn't have and therefore deserved everything I got.

But older and wiser now and having reformatted and started over here I am again.

I have also installed the Windows VIA RAID drivers and utilities and I am getting this message:

Array 0: Some Source-Mirror disk pair(s) need to be synchronized. Synchronize now?

Before I hose my system again I thought I would ask some advice.

Thanks.

Luciano

 

QUOTING InYearsToCome.

RAID is combining 2 or more hard drives in either a Striped or Mirrored Array (raid 0 and raid 1). Striping (0) makes an array across 2 or more hard drives and reads/writes to them both at once, thoretically doubling read/write speed.--however it puts great stress on the hard drives and they are more prone to failure, and if one drive dies, all data is lost.

Raid 1 (mirroring) maintains a mirror image of a hard drive on a 2nd hard drive, and it used for data security.

End of Quote

 

I do not know much about RAID.

This guy was trying to teach me and I have quoted him earlier.
Listen to some other guys as well.

Two error messages right?

1.Array 0: Some Source-Mirror disk pair(s) need to be synchronized. Synchronize now?

2.Critical RAID 1, Fault HDD found, Channel 1, Device 0 Fault.
Raid array needs to be duplicated to ensure(sic) consistency.

The idea of the raid is to synchronise drives,maybe thats what you should do.

You have mirrored array (Raid 1) right?

 

If the second message is indicating HDD fault then as InYearsToCome says all data will be lost.
Is it your opinion that the Raid is at fault?

 

If you read my original post i have specified a RAID1 mirrored array. RAID 0 performs better but is not fault tolerant and i wanted fault tolerant. you only lose data if you break the array. the idea is that if one disk fails the other keeps going and you just replace the failed drive. that is not the case here.

looking for more replies

luciano

 

So I too have gotten the Fault Hdd Found: Channel 0 Device 0 Fault. Of course I differ in channel.

I am also running 2 Seagate SATA 120 GB, ASUS MB, VIA RAID Controller on XP. All set up as RAID 1, 1-GB RAM on Athlon 2600

A week ago I get this message on reboot after running fine for about 6 weeks on RAID 1. I can't figure out what to make of it because both my drives have switched to RAID 0 which should only happen if a drive dies. I only have 2 drives and they are both showing as being fine in the area below the error "Remaining Memers of the Failed Array". For lack of a better option I choose "Duplicate Now" and hope for the best. Guess what? It works again. Great.

So everything is just ducky right? Wrong. I update XP last night and get the same exact problem on reboot. Now I am really wondering, did I forget to test it and reboot last time or what? So I duplicate in again and all is fine, reboot and it is all good. Getting more confused.

This morning I realize that last time I did this I updated Java, this time XP......then was forced to reboot. Not sure this is relevant or not but I would love to hear if anyone else has this experience as I am quite sure I am not done with this problem yet.