Any Velociraptor or Raptor Owners having issues?

[Stilletto]

I wonder if I am alone here...Since recieving my velociraptor drive I have been experiencing random cursor freezes for around 5 to 10sec, then the system returns to normal. This has happened on my x38 and p45 board. I wonder if it has to do with drivers from intel? The P45 (ichr10)driver and the latest Ichr9 drivers have both been similar factors in this problem for me...
I also noticed that a review site also had this issue,
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTUxMyw2LCwyMA==
It's in the conclusion section there. Anyone having this issue?

[Ashura]

No problems here, it sounds like you got a dud board. The guys in the review had to get a replacement board before the issue was resolved.

[Stilletto]

No problems here, it sounds like you got a dud board. The guys in the review had to get a replacement board before the issue was resolved.

Actually, the replacements boards they got let them install an OS..it was that bad in the begginning for them:beer:.
It was the replacement boards that gave them the trouble. I dunno, it's really annoying:(

[theELVISCERATOR]

I have had 4 raptors with no issues on two diff abit boards..

the cursor issue is normally a pci bus issue with bandwidth or IRQ issues.

[Stilletto]

I have had several raptors as well, but this new one is suspect. The system freezing is only temporary, then the system returns to normal. It doesn't crash, just pauses while the IDE light goes wild. An IRQ issue will likely crash the system.

I can't be alone...two different Mobos?:confused:

[Ashura]

Do you have a non-intel board lying around to try it on?

[Stilletto]

Do you have a non-intel board lying around to try it on?

That's a good idea, but unfortunately I do not...I think I may end up RMA'ng the drive soon if I can't get it resolved.:(

[dhc0329]

I had two velociraptors in raid 0 using Intel Matrix iCH9R (using the latest driver) on ASUS Rampage Formula. I've experienced the similar "a brief" system freeze with mouse pointer either gone or standstill. I hear a "click" from hard drive before being restored.

This happens ramdomly and rather frequent so I couldn't just ignore. Kinda annoying. I have a feeling this has to do with Intel Matrix Raid which completely occupies the entire cpu process for a brief moment.

I had to solve this problem by using hardware raid card (areca arc 1210). I no longer have the problem.

[Stilletto]

I had two velociraptors in raid 0 using Intel Matrix iCH9R (using the latest driver) on ASUS Rampage Formula. I've experienced the similar "a brief" system freeze with mouse pointer either gone or standstill. I hear a "click" from hard drive before being restored.

This happens ramdomly and rather frequent so I couldn't just ignore. Kinda annoying. I have a feeling this has to do with Intel Matrix Raid which completely occupies the entire cpu process for a brief moment.

I had to solve this problem by using hardware raid card (areca arc 1210). I no longer have the problem.

Interesting...come to think of it, I believe I also installed the Intel Matrx utility...this may be an important clue for me. Thanks!

[grunjee]

I read a thread (think it was on AT) last week about the new Raptors, that a fair amount of them shipped out with bad sectors. If you haven't done so already, I'd run WD's diagnostic test on it, or even just chkdsk /r.

[MadMan007]

I had two velociraptors in raid 0 using Intel Matrix iCH9R (using the latest driver) on ASUS Rampage Formula. I've experienced the similar "a brief" system freeze with mouse pointer either gone or standstill. I hear a "click" from hard drive before being restored.

This happens ramdomly and rather frequent so I couldn't just ignore. Kinda annoying. I have a feeling this has to do with Intel Matrix Raid which completely occupies the entire cpu process for a brief moment.

I had to solve this problem by using hardware raid card (areca arc 1210). I no longer have the problem.

That's strange if it's the same problem because Stilletto is using one drive. Stiletto are you running it in AHCI mode, set in BIOS and drivers loaded during OS install?

[Stilletto]

That's strange if it's the same problem because Stilletto is using one drive. Stiletto are you running it in AHCI mode, set in BIOS and drivers loaded during OS install?

Yep, ACHI and drivers installed. I am wondering if it has to do with installing the Intel Matrix thingy...

I have now talked with WD and am in the process of talking to Intel.
According to WD's USELESS tech support, I should run a defrag.:beer:
They also wanted me to run Datalifeguard tools, which, is actually a good idea, but I have already done that twice, along with a sector scan. THe drive is functioning great, other than the brief but very ANNOYING pauses....
Since I am not the only one to have had this issue so far, I bet we hear allot about this in the coming weeks.

[Krypto]

I have had several raptors as well, but this new one is suspect. The system freezing is only temporary, then the system returns to normal. It doesn't crash, just pauses while the IDE light goes wild. An IRQ issue will likely crash the system.

I can't be alone...two different Mobos?:confused:

An IRQ issue is VERY unlikely. I know you said you were encountering "cursor freezes"... is you Num Lock funtional during that time?

[dhc0329]

Could this be a compatibility issue between new Velociraptors and Intel Matrix iCH9R/10R driver? As for my case, not many people have two velociraptors to do raid 0 right now, so the problem is not well known but then again this is just a speculation.

I had 3ware 9560Se-2lp before installing the areca arc 1210 hardware raid card. 3ware told me velociraptor users reported issue with Velociraptors + 3ware cards.

[Wildweasel]

hello all, i'm having the same problem. Though my machine will bluescreen once in a blue moon. I have 2 RAID 0 sets on the ICH9R controller, P35 Asus board. P5K deluxe. (Vista 64bit, Ultimate)

Raid set 1. Compromised of 2 x 36GB 10k Raptors, ADFD. Boot
Raid set 2. Compromised of 2 x 300GB Velociraptors. Scratch drive.

RAID Matrix Manager does indicate a failed drive on the Velociraptor set once this happens. Either a slight freeze or a bluescreen. Of the times it happened only once did the RAID controller bios reported a failed drive also. Upon reboot, everything seems fine.

What i've done now is broken up the Velociraptor set and are using them as stand alone drives, running WD diagnostics. I tried using WD diagnotics before breaking them up, meaning on the drives as a raid set and it immediately reported a failed drive within the set.

Is anyone running a Velociraptor RAID 0 set without any issues? if yes, which RAID controller is being used? I throw a lot of I/O's on my scratch drive both random and sustained transfers, i need something rock solid. I'm considering buying a RAID card but i want something stable.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

[dhc0329]

As stated, I use Areca ARC 1210 for raid 0 (velociraptors) on Vista Ultimate x64(8GB 1066 Ram, 3.84Ghz CPU). It's a definite improvement over iCH9R, in terms of speed, responsiveness but best of all, statbility is the key. Make the raid system very stable. You won't like the price of this hw raid card tho..

[Stilletto]

Could this be a compatibility issue between new Velociraptors and Intel Matrix iCH9R/10R driver? As for my case, not many people have two velociraptors to do raid 0 right now, so the problem is not well known but then again this is just a speculation.

I had 3ware 9560Se-2lp before installing the areca arc 1210 hardware raid card. 3ware told me velociraptor users reported issue with Velociraptors + 3ware cards.

This could be very well possible, since it is just becoming a popular pair, and the reports seem to be coming in....the only thing that scares me is I believe it may be a hardware problem, and not addressable by a driver update, but that is speculation. I would bet you 1 million dollars that if we used these velociraptors as IDE instead of AHCI or RAID that this issue may not occir:bang head

[MadMan007]

Stilletto I was just thinking while reading the post that you should try them as IDE. Since you don't have RAID there's no risk to your data and really, although I use AHCI in my systems, I don't believe it would have any noticable impact. I just use it because it's there :shrug:

[dhc0329]

I don't recall ever experiencing this "short freeze" issue while I was running single velociraptor as IDE. I clearly remember this issue started when I went to raid 0.

[Stilletto]

Intel denies an issue. WD denies an issue. Asus denies an issue. Somebody is either lying or uninformed....:screwy:

I just do not feel like reformatting both partitions and OS's to switch back to IDE. I will just keep making noise until I get some answers from one of the manufacturers:beer:

[MadMan007]

Are you sure there would be a problem switching from AHCI to IDE in the BIOS? I know Windows might load the driver but if the devide isn't on AHCI on the mobo it just shouldn't use it. Otherwise you could try removing or uninstalling the AHCI device and driver in Windows then change it to IDE in BIOS upon reboot.

[Mcklain]

Hello everyone,

I am glad I have found this thread as I have already started one over at hardforums:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1321611&highlight=velociraptor

Interested blog here as well
http://www.pdsys.org/blog/2007/04/10/DellAndIntelScrewUpBigTimeIaStorAndWindowsVista.as px

And intels response:
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-025783.htm

I called both Intel and asus and both of them couldnt help me. Intel was saying it was Asus fault and vice versa.

When I first say my Iastor event problem I was sure that updating my ich9r driver from 7.5 (thats the driver vista is using by default) to 8.2 would correct my problem but it hasnt. I tried reinstalling vista and loading the 8.2 at the begining but I am still getting pauses in windows.

The next thing I did was deleting 2 registry keys in relation to Iastor. For that part I am still testing to see if the problem will come back.

Keep in mind I am using vista 64 and 2 velociraptor in raid 0.

We need to keep thins thread alive cause it seems lots of people are having this major issue!!

[MadMan007]

Asus was having issues with many HD brands and RAID or AHCI on the P5K Premium as well. I wonder if they do something screwy in their BIOS for the SB. Is this problem known to occur with other motherboard brands?

[Audioaficionado]

Hmmm... I was thinking of Matrix RAID 0 for my two 8MB 74GB Raptors or running them both AHCI for the hot swap capability but now I think I'll just leave 'em IDE. They're fast enough already.

When I get 4 WD 640GB drives, then perhaps I'll try slicing them and running 4xRAID 0 boot/os/app partition plus a nested 1+0 data partition.

[Mcklain]

Well I just came back from work tonight and booted my machine and not even after 5 min I got the Iastor event with a pause.

Seems that deleting those 2 registry keys didnt work.

I am completly at lost. I dont wanna spend money over a raid controller as I always used the intel ones and never had a problem before.

Guess I am gonna use them as ide for now and see how this thread evolves...

[Stilletto]

Asus was having issues with many HD brands and RAID or AHCI on the P5K Premium as well. I wonder if they do something screwy in their BIOS for the SB. Is this problem known to occur with other motherboard brands?

I have seen this same problem also reported with MSI motherboards as well.:(

[Stilletto]

UPDATE

This is not what we want to hear. Good news and Bad news.

Good news first: I no longer have the problem.
Bad news: I didn't do anything to solve it.


Let me explain. This also occured with my older x38 board. About the time I had had it and was fed up, it stopped. Now, after 2 weeks, with this board, I was about to scream and pull my hair out and make more phone calls that led no where.....and then, again, it went away. This is bad news because there was no reason for it to occur in the first place, and no solution is still no solution. It may not go away for some people....I am going to stay on this because many people are still suffering, and I too when I reformat will also have to deal with it for 2 weeks or better again.

This is just stupid. I would almost rather still have the issue....and I feel bad because I can't seem to nail down any answers for anybody....:bang head

[Mcklain]

UPDATE

This is not what we want to hear. Good news and Bad news.

Good news first: I no longer have the problem.
Bad news: I didn't do anything to solve it.


Let me explain. This also occured with my older x38 board. About the time I had had it and was fed up, it stopped. Now, after 2 weeks, with this board, I was about to scream and pull my hair out and make more phone calls that led no where.....and then, again, it went away. This is bad news because there was no reason for it to occur in the first place, and no solution is still no solution. It may not go away for some people....I am going to stay on this because many people are still suffering, and I too when I reformat will also have to deal with it for 2 weeks or better again.

This is just stupid. I would almost rather still have the issue....and I feel bad because I can't seem to nail down any answers for anybody....:bang head


This is pretty bizarre. A problem like this shouldnt go away like this. In my case the problem is pretty random so sometimes I could use my pc for 1 hour and the problem wouldnt show up. I would suggest maybe using youre pc for at least 2 days before concluding that the problem is over.

Have you checked youre windows system event log to see if there is a Iastor problem?? Are you using raid?? If not then Iastor shoudnt be there.

I for myself have put my velociraptors in ide mode for the time being and didnt get any pauses since then. The problem happens only in raid mode!!!

[Stilletto]

It has been some time since the last event. I have not had the pause for at least a week now and with heavy usage everyday. Mcklain, how long was were you in raid before going back to IDE?

[Mcklain]

It has been some time since the last event. I have not had the pause for at least a week now and with heavy usage everyday. Mcklain, how long was were you in raid before going back to IDE?

I tried my raid for maybe 1 week. But during that time I reinstalled vista at leat 3-4 times trying different things to try to make it work. And everytime I had Iastor event poping up.

[Gunlance]

I had raptor issues on both my p965 abit quad gt and my asus maximus formula. Both times the raid of 74gb adfd raptors would "break" on its own and stop working. Went through 4 different raptors(all rma), 2 abit boards, and 1 asus board. I finally called it quits and moved to Seagate single platter 250gb drives for a raid 0 and I have not had any errors yet. Were you getting any iostor errors in the event logs?

[Stilletto]

No, no errors in the event log...only annoying, 5 to 10 sec pauses that drove me insane...mouse cursor freezes, etc...but the delay could be wrecking your raid array? Either way, there is an issue and SOMEONE needs to take responsibility and fix it. My fears are that it is a hardware issue with the velociraptor in particular, and there would be no fix for those who aready pwn the equipment:bang head

[Svingen]

Sound clutter and mouse lag with 2 velociraptors in Raid0 on Abit AB9pro with Intel ICH8 chipset - Never any problem with 150GB Raptors in Raid0 or IDE on this board.

Problem starts after a little while downloading and persists until restart, sometimes a couple of restarts..

Thought a bios update had fixed the problem yesterday, but problem appeared again after using a bittorrent-client overnight

Cloning whole partition onto single disk on Jmicron kontroller and system works okay, it is the Velociraptors causing the trouble..unfortunately:(

Any suggestions would be nice..

[freeagent]

i had problems running raid with ich8r and 2 wd 250s, but ive been running these raptors in raid for a couple of months now, thru vista and xp, and back again probably about 15-20 times, and my array is still peachy.. these drives are faasst. i should mention 1 of my raptors is a year older then the other, with diff firmware.. still runs great!

[Dragonprince]

Hmmm is this only with Raid ? Im seeing this with a single SATA Raptor 74gig drive when loading games...I get 5 second pause...and then all is normal. Running a Gigabyte EX38-DS4 and Vista 64 Premium...

[MadMan007]

Maybe it's a driver issue with the OS. Are all the people who had the problem running Vista?

Hmmm is this only with Raid ? Im seeing this with a single SATA Raptor 74gig drive when loading games...I get 5 second pause...and then all is normal. Running a Gigabyte EX38-DS4 and Vista 64 Premium...

Looks like it happens with AHCI too, again that points to a driver or software issue imo because AHCI requires drivers as well.

[Stilletto]

Maybe it's a driver issue with the OS. Are all the people who had the problem running Vista?



Looks like it happens with AHCI too, again that points to a driver or software issue imo because AHCI requires drivers as well.

I believe this is an accurate assessment. I have some more info. I recently picked up an X48 Mobo (P5E Deluxe) and using the supplied achi drivers I have NOT had the problem at all, not once from the very begginning. I am using the driver on the CD, Gosh I can't remember the exact number but it is from dec of 2007. In device manager it says driver version 7.8.0.1012. This is the FIRST TIME that I have been able to avoid this problem completely, and I believe that it's all in the drivers.

Those of you who are having trouble, try that driver out. Let me know what happens.

[Mcklain]

Update:

Since there isnt really a clear solution out there yet I have decided to return my 2 velociraptor drives.

I will be orderding 2 new ocz core series ssd drives (64gb models). It's gonna be cheaper and I will get more performance (hoping raid 0 will work with those). Space is not an issue on my gaming pc so 128gb will be enought.

[Stilletto]

Just a bump to see if anyone has tried the older drivers instead of the release for the updated ich10r southbridge....we need to keep this thing alive for those who are still suffering:)

[MadMan007]

Update:

Since there isnt really a clear solution out there yet I have decided to return my 2 velociraptor drives.

I will be orderding 2 new ocz core series ssd drives (64gb models). It's gonna be cheaper and I will get more performance (hoping raid 0 will work with those). Space is not an issue on my gaming pc so 128gb will be enought.

Please tell us where you're getting 64GB SSDs for less than V-raptors :D

[Stilletto]

Please tell us where you're getting 64GB SSDs for less than V-raptors :D

Actually, you can get them at newegg for like 220 after rebate. It's tempting, but there are ALLOT of corruption issues (most of which are due to people enabling ahci...OCZ says you can't enable ahci with those drives). Also, they are a bit faster, but not allot faster than the vraptor, and in certain things, the vraptor wins...I still do not trust SSD, not yet.

[Mcklain]

Go on Youtube and type: SSD xp boot and let me know what you think!!

Also when enabling raid, AHCI is automaticly disabled, so no problems there!!

Access time is so intense!!

[MadMan007]

Actually, you can get them at newegg for like 220 after rebate. It's tempting, but there are ALLOT of corruption issues (most of which are due to people enabling ahci...OCZ says you can't enable ahci with those drives). Also, they are a bit faster, but not allot faster than the vraptor, and in certain things, the vraptor wins...I still do not trust SSD, not yet.

I don't see any 64GB SSDs for that price from OCZ.

[Stilletto]

I don't see any 64GB SSDs for that price from OCZ.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227344

[Stilletto]

Go on Youtube and type: SSD xp boot and let me know what you think!!

Also when enabling raid, AHCI is automaticly disabled, so no problems there!!

Access time is so intense!!

No, when you select RAID, AHCI is automatically ENABLED. This is important for you to remember when making your decision.
Beware of youtube videos, they can mislead you. Trust the benchmarks and reviews...they usually don't.;)

[kazi]

I have exactly the same problem here with my ASUS P5E3 Premium Wifi and 2 velociraptors in raid0. I also boot vista 64bit from this raid0 device.

-system freezes or pauses, in Explorer an IE
-sound clutter in games, sometimes followed by a system crash
-game freezes/pauses

After a 1-2 weeks of use, one of the the drives gives a error at device status screen at bootup. Weird thing is that the raid device will still boot, with one of the disks showing a error.

[Gunlance]

I would still say to cut your loses and move on from WD drives on the intel chipsets. It's just not worth the headache to try and rma everything just to realize that it (probably is at this point) some engineering compatibility problem with the drives and the intel southbridge.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Warning, probably a bad HDD! You should back up!

I had that problem with a Maxtor 6E030L0 HDD, but the pauses usually only showed up outside of Windows, when running a wiping tool. I would see it pause real briefly on a random LBA than go on when wiping the HDD.

Then days later, gave the dreaded click of death.

Lesson learned!

[kazi]

I have no important data on the raid array only games so no need for backing up.
The ASUS P5E3 Premium Wifi has been one BIG headache so i am getting used to have one :P.
Anyway i am realy fed up with ASUS products and will stop buying them in the future.

Can someone tell me how to check if one of the disks is going bad?

If it aint a bad disk the one logical explanation would be a IRQ issue. On a other site someone said its the Yukon network chip in conflict. And on a nother site someone was opting the possiblility of a power management conflict caused by the "iastor" thingy.

Bad drive would make the most sence, because in the other cases much more people would have been complaining.

[Surfrider77]

Considering this thread was dead for a month and a half before yesterday's post, I have to ask if this was ever resolved? Or perhaps just some isolated cases?

I have two 150G Velociraptors that are in the mail and will arrive any day. I will try them on my Intel ICH9R southbridge first.

I will report back my findings.

[kazi]

According to this thread no solution found still.
Could still be:
-the velociraptors
-vista 64 bit
-or the ich9r

[madhatR]

well ive had my 300gb raptor for about a week .. was running perfectly .. waaaay faster than my 150gb raptor .. then last night my pc froze after gaming .. so i hard shut down .. restarted it and then u know the starting screen for vista .. where the bar slides .. well it would just freeze there .. and then start to move then freeze .. did this all night and nothing .. so i tried the usual things and no go .. still same problem .. so i swapped out my 300gb raptor for my old 150gb which stil had my stuff on it and it booted right up .. gotta call wd as soon as they open up .. are they gonna send me a refurb now ?

[BranNutz]

I just setup my new system with 2x150GB Velociraptors in Raid0 running Vista Ultimate 64bit. Using the onboard NVRaid on my Evga 790i FTW mobo. It went so smooth and I have had no problems at all, performance of the onboard raid was even better than I expected. Sounds like it could be the intel controller not liking the new raptors?

[kazi]

I am still experiencing problems with the 300GB velociraptors in raid0 on my ASUS P5E3 Premium wifi.

Intel has acknowledged the problem and posted a description and possible workarounds on:

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-025783.htm

Someohow they are not working for me.

Here is thread where i found the link:

http://www.flyingnerd.com/intel-raid-problem-under-windows-vista/

[Surfrider77]

Been running two 150G Velociraptors in RAID0 on my Intel ICH9R chipset without issue.

Runs flawless.

[kazi]

Well for those who still have problem running their 300GB velociraptors in Raid0 on the ICH9R (or ICH8R and ICH10R).

Here is how i got my two 300GB Velociraptors working in Raid0 on my ASUS P5E3 Premium wifi_AP @n (ICH9R) with a Vista 64 Ultimate installation.

1. Make sure you PC is disconnected form the internet.

2. Disconnect any additional devices from the Intel Matrix Controler

2. Delete your current array

3. Plug drives in SATA-ports 3 and 5 (you can try port 4, but mine dint work, if you have more then 2 drives in the array you have a problem)
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-025783.htm

4. Use the Free Dos version of killdisk on both drives for atleat 30 mins (it will kill all little partitions on the drives and zero most of the sectors)

5. Rebuild the raid0 array (CTRL+I).

6. Launch Vista instal from dvd. At the device selection screen, load the latest driver for the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager (current v8.5.0.1032). Delete any current partition (if there is any), then make new partion and format it. Press next to start installation.

7. First time you get to desktop enter registies. Delete both Parameter folders from the iaStor and iaStorV registry folders in the the Vista registry.
Locations:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlS et\Services\iaStor

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlS et\Services\iaStorV

8. Reboot. Now you shouldnt experience any system freezes/pauzes, lockups or BSOD's

9. Install latest ICH9R drivers from Intel and other device drivers for your system. Shutdown.

10. Connect additional devices to the Intel Matrix Controler and connect your PC to the internet. Reboot and run Vista Update for the first time.



Here is the link were i managed to figure out how to make it work for me.
http://www.flyingnerd.com/intel-raid-problem-under-windows-vista#comment-4426

[GlassPrison]

i am also having the same freezing issues with my 300gb velociraptor. i dont even have an intel board. system specs:

qx9650
evga 790i ultra
4gb ddr3
vista x64 ultimate

i have been running 2 regular WD raptor 150gb in raid 0 since feb/march off the nvidia chipset with absolutely no issues. it has worked flawlessly. i recently got a velociraptor 300gb and copied my OS drive image onto the Vraptor, and i started experiencing the freezing. like the OP, there is no data corruption or anything destructive, it just freezes for some time and then returns to normal. obviously since i dont have an intel chipset i dont have the intel matrix utility installed. any suggestions?

[Endgame124]

I am also experiencing this issue. Brand new system build, x48 chipset, ICH9R, 2x 300GB velicorapters with Matrix Raid. I'm going to try the above solutions, but am looking to see if anyone has comeup with a concrete solution.

[UglyChild]

I had my drive for almost 5 months now, and its running perfectly.

[The Mafia]

I have this exact same problem. The intel fixes described above doesn't fix the problem.

2 x WD VR300gb in a Raid 0 in the intel ICH10r
Asus P5Q Deluxe

Systems hangs, locks up, does all sorts of rubbish. Then the Intel Matrix software reports a delayed write, and fails the raid0. The system will boot again, (if it didn't corrupt windows) but will keep hanging.

This is a known problem without a fix, and is leaving a lot raptor users in the dark. I nearly smashed my whole system out the window, hoping it would land in front of a truck.

If anyone can help me find a fix, I would be greatly appreciative.

Search also, its all over the net... everywhere.

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENZZ261&q=raptor+BSOD+ich10r+intel&meta=

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENZZ261&q=blue+screen+raptor+ich9r&meta=

etc.

[Gunlance]

Seriously dude the only way I fixed my system was to replace the raptors with seagate drives. I'm scared to even try wd drives anymore.

There was one thing I found that worked. If you could try disabling your network adapter in bios and then testing. I found on my ich9r board, that disabling the network adapter made everything work again. Its by no means a good fix, but at least its more tolerable since you can throw in a seperate nic.

[The Mafia]

well, I did just that - Ordered 2 x seagate 640gig drives. I could have ordered a new raid controller, but that was going to cost me more. And why should I? Its another component that will cause me issues.

Also, if the controller dies, I'm stuffed. At least with the intel ICHr I can plug them into another mainboard with it and they'll work fine.

Intel and WD can burn in hell if they don't go out of their way to release a fix for this.

Its bull**** that you can't use Velociraptors with their raid controller.


Its also crap that I have spent over 30 hours trying to fix this problem, that they don't want to acknowledge.

[RJARRRPCGP]

No, no errors in the event log...only annoying, 5 to 10 sec pauses that drove me insane...mouse cursor freezes, etc...but the delay could be wrecking your raid array? Either way, there is an issue and SOMEONE needs to take responsibility and fix it. My fears are that it is a hardware issue with the velociraptor in particular, and there would be no fix for those who aready pwn the equipment:bang head

Updated information:

It's possible for most utilities to NEVER acknowledge a problem, with the below mentioned
problem, especially SeaTools! :mad: (IIRC) (or the software that comes with Seagate HDDs)

May be faulty sector spots. When that occurs real bad, you should be able to notice the graph mark diving with HD Tach
and HD Tune.

If HD Tach and HD Tune always shows slowness in the same area, then probably a faulty HDD. Sorry folks. :(

[The Mafia]

well, I did just that - Ordered 2 x seagate 640gig drives. I could have ordered a new raid controller, but that was going to cost me more. And why should I? Its another component that will cause me issues.

Also, if the controller dies, I'm stuffed. At least with the intel ICHr I can plug them into another mainboard with it and they'll work fine.

Intel and WD can burn in hell if they don't go out of their way to release a fix for this.

Its bull**** that you can't use Velociraptors with their raid controller.


Its also crap that I have spent over 30 hours trying to fix this problem, that they don't want to acknowledge.

I did all of this and got 2 stuffed seagates! What a royal pain in the ass.

This problem NEEDS to be fixed.

[The Mafia]

Tried with the write cache off, and still a failure.

The only way to get this working is to use an aftermarket Raid controller.

[Endgame124]

The cause of my problem seems to be a large number of bad sectors on one of my Velicoraptors. RMA drive should arrive today -- we'll see if that resolves the problem.

[MadMan007]

So is there any consistency to this problem or not? Is it just some bad drives? I'm interested to know if this has been solved or not if it's not random bad drives.

[The Mafia]

Nope, I have been through 5 drives. They are all good, tested 100% and have no issues on other controllers.

I have my own thread here:

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=732464

And after logging a help desk call with intel, I got an email back saying this:

Hello Jonathan,

Thank you for contacting Intel Technical Support.

This is a compatibility issue that may be caused by the hardware design of these drives.

Intel(R) develops chipsets and RAID Controllers according to industry standards. However, Intel(R) cannot guarantee one hundred percent compatibility with all the hardware out in the market.

From our side, we can only recommend that you update the firmware on the drives and contact the drives manufacturer to inquire for any fix or possible workaround.

Sincerely,

Carlos B.
Intel Technical Support

Intel(R) System Software Web Site
http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/index.htm

Intel(R) Graphics Support Web Site
http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/

Intel(R) Viiv(TM) Support Web Site:
http://www.intel.com/support/entertainment/viiv/top_support_topics.htm#ssetup

A representative of Intel may subsequently contact you (via email) in order to obtain your feedback on the quality of the support you received. If you do not wish to participate, simply delete the survey email.

Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Seems to be a fault on WD's side of things. I have logged a call there and are waiting for a response.

I will post here when they get back to me.

[RollingThunder]

I think I'll cross out a 150 Velociraptor for my new build..........:(

[Crazymilk]

Would this be my issues I am having here:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=587495

[Endgame124]

Update:

New Drive came back from RMA. I now have 3 300GB raptors. 2 built in June and 1 in late Sept (sept 23rd). No combination of drives works in Raid (any type) with write back cache enabled. Everything seems to work fine without Write Back Cache, but the performance sucks (189mb /sec w/ 3 drives with WBC disabled, 350+ mb/sec with it enabled).

I've also experimented with different volume sizes. Raid combinations using 3GB or less from each drive work without problem even with WBC enabled. Its fast, but too small to be of use.

With WBC disabled, performance seems to be highly dependant on chuck size. So far 32k seems to be the best size, but I'm still looking into.

Also, my 2x 36GB raptors that are as old as dirt are working great on the same system, even with WBC enabled... go figure.

[The Mafia]

I think I'll cross out a 150 Velociraptor for my new build..........:(

Hey mate, don't write it off, because if you simply set them in the bios as "IDE mode" only, they work fine. You just don't have Raid or AHCI features that allow you to hot plug.

Anoy other modes cause massive problems though.

Would this be my issues I am having here:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=587495

Yeah mate, EXACT same setup and issues at me. Unfortunately, there is no fix. I ordered a Highpoint 2310 Raid card to replace the Intel controller. Its a shame as the intel controller is really good.

The issue is more of a Raptor compatibility issue, and WD needs to release a firmware to fix it.

[The Mafia]

Update:

New Drive came back from RMA. I now have 3 300GB raptors. 2 built in June and 1 in late Sept (sept 23rd). No combination of drives works in Raid (any type) with write back cache enabled. Everything seems to work fine without Write Back Cache, but the performance sucks (189mb /sec w/ 3 drives with WBC disabled, 350+ mb/sec with it enabled).

I've also experimented with different volume sizes. Raid combinations using 3GB or less from each drive work without problem even with WBC enabled. Its fast, but too small to be of use.

With WBC disabled, performance seems to be highly dependant on chuck size. So far 32k seems to be the best size, but I'm still looking into.

Also, my 2x 36GB raptors that are as old as dirt are working great on the same system, even with WBC enabled... go figure.

Mate, I tried the write back cache disabled and it lasted about 4 days until I started to get delayed writes again.

What raid are you trying to use? Raid 0 or 5? I'm using raid 0 with a 128k chunk size.

Smaller chunk sizes are poor for performance reading larger files. But I'd assume you already know that.

We need to hassle WD, log calls etc, and get them to release a new firmware

[Endgame124]

Mate, I tried the write back cache disabled and it lasted about 4 days until I started to get delayed writes again.

What raid are you trying to use? Raid 0 or 5? I'm using raid 0 with a 128k chunk size.

Smaller chunk sizes are poor for performance reading larger files. But I'd assume you already know that.

We need to hassle WD, log calls etc, and get them to release a new firmware

I've already started a "Question" w/ western digital. I'm using raid 0, getting about 300 MB / sec on 16k chunk size with HD tune over 189 mb /sec with 128k. While I know that, in general, the 128k chuck size would be better, my HD tune results are showing much better results at smaller sizes. At this time, I'm thinking that I'll keep the OS on the old 36GB raptors so I can screw with the Velociraptors.

[MadMan007]

Hey mate, don't write it off, because if you simply set them in the bios as "IDE mode" only, they work fine. You just don't have Raid or AHCI features that allow you to hot plug.

Anoy other modes cause massive problems though.

You'd think an ENTERPRISE grade drive could run with AHCI for NCQ and hot swapping :rolleyes: Granted not many, or none at all, enterprise systems would be running off an Intel chipset but still...too bad because this is the next best thing to SSDs most of which are crap atm. Also strange because all of WDs 7200RPM SATA drives work great in AHCI or RAID afaik.

[Theocnoob]

My 150G Velociraptor never exceeds 30 celsius. Averages 29.

I have a fan glued to it which is the same size as the platter and blows directly onto the part of the drive where the platter is.

I only use it for games.

has yet to fail on me.

I had a Hitachi drive and Seagate drive crapp out on me in the summer... Never crapped a WD...
I've crapped a few Quantum Fireballs way back when... but those HD's were crapper than the crappy crapp they make now-- and we all know hard drives are way lower quality than they used to be.

[RollingThunder]

Hey mate, don't write it off, because if you simply set them in the bios as "IDE mode" only, they work fine. You just don't have Raid or AHCI features that allow you to hot plug.

Anoy other modes cause massive problems though.



Yeah mate, EXACT same setup and issues at me. Unfortunately, there is no fix. I ordered a Highpoint 2310 Raid card to replace the Intel controller. Its a shame as the intel controller is really good.

The issue is more of a Raptor compatibility issue, and WD needs to release a firmware to fix it.

Mafia,

I don't plan to RAID anything. If that will make a difference I may reconsider.

[The Mafia]

Mafia,

I don't plan to RAID anything. If that will make a difference I may reconsider.

I currently have 2 x Velociraptor 300gig drives running in IDE mode on the Intel ICH10r controller, and they've been like that for over a week with no problems at all.

There are 3 modes - AHCI, RAID, and IDE

IDE is the dumbest of modes, pretty much like the old school IDE (master slave etc)

Its just as fast, but doesn't support hot swapping or hot plugging like the others do.

So really its up to you. If you're only going to have one drive, or no raid, then this will do no worries at all.

Just try and find a motherboard that has another controller (like an extra silicon image chip) that supports hot swapping if you plan on using external eSatahdd's a lot.

Hopefully we all can push and get a firmware update for the drive soon anyway.

WD still hasn't emailed me back. Surely that means something..

[RollingThunder]

I currently have 2 x Velociraptor 300gig drives running in IDE mode on the Intel ICH10r controller, and they've been like that for over a week with no problems at all.

There are 3 modes - AHCI, RAID, and IDE

IDE is the dumbest of modes, pretty much like the old school IDE (master slave etc)

Its just as fast, but doesn't support hot swapping or hot plugging like the others do.

So really its up to you. If you're only going to have one drive, or no raid, then this will do no worries at all.

Just try and find a motherboard that has another controller (like an extra silicon image chip) that supports hot swapping if you plan on using external eSatahdd's a lot.

Hopefully we all can push and get a firmware update for the drive soon anyway.

WD still hasn't emailed me back. Surely that means something..

Board will be: DFI LP DK P45-T2RS PLUS LGA 775 Intel P45

Two drives, one will be a 74GB Raptor which I already have, no RAID.

[davidm71]

I have an nvidia based 680i motherboard with Vista 64 and am getting the same BS from the velociraptors not working in raid off of the motherboard. My 74gb raptors work, my new Caviar Blacks work. Wanted to use them as storage space as the reviews I've read advise not to use them in raid if you can help it, but it works better than this VD I mean WDVR 3000GLFS drives!

Going to return them. Not worth the entire loss of my weekend over this BS. Seems like a Vista bug any how. Add that to the stack of Vista problems. ...

Damn shame they don't work. They sound fast...

Dave.

PS: They have VD!

[Crazymilk]

Hey mate, don't write it off, because if you simply set them in the bios as "IDE mode" only, they work fine. You just don't have Raid or AHCI features that allow you to hot plug.

Anoy other modes cause massive problems though.



Yeah mate, EXACT same setup and issues at me. Unfortunately, there is no fix. I ordered a Highpoint 2310 Raid card to replace the Intel controller. Its a shame as the intel controller is really good.

The issue is more of a Raptor compatibility issue, and WD needs to release a firmware to fix it.

Cheers m8. I really cant believe the amount of time rying to sort this issue. I finally went back to my old 74gb Raps after days of trying to resolve the issue and they work like a charm..no probs whatsoever.

Damm WD suck arse not releasing a fix for these yet. Good luck getting an anwser m8 and keep us all posted on developments as I would like to get my VR's working asap.

Cheers m8

[Codeman05]

Sadly I have to chime in on this one as well. Just picked up 2 Velociraptors...completely unaware of the BS of using them on the Intel controller...

I can't install XP to the drives...it fails formatting on setup. Tried installing Vista...it installs but on boot goes to a black screen after the "boot logo" and never recovers.

Just booted each drive individually (no raid) into XP and ran WD Diagnostics and both drives checked out fine, so they are not the problem (hardware wise atleast).

I guess I'm going to try to pickup a raid card now. Since I'm running Raid 0, I don't need a hardware raid card...will anything do the job or should I go for something like the HP 2310?

Thanks guys

[The Mafia]

basically you need a raid card that has more than PCIe 4x, 8x is ideal, but I just grabbed a High point 2310 PCIe 4x card because 2 raptors won't max it.

SSD's are my next upgrade, screw the raptor range. They are small in size and buggy.

[Codeman05]

basically you need a raid card that has more than PCIe 4x, 8x is ideal, but I just grabbed a High point 2310 PCIe 4x card because 2 raptors won't max it.

SSD's are my next upgrade, screw the raptor range. They are small in size and buggy.

Yea I just ordered a 2310...I'm going to lose $100+ if I return the drives to NewEgg thanks to their restocking fee + shipping both ways...so I might as well try the raid card first :rolleyes:

So were you able to run RAID 0 on the 2310 successfully with the VRs?

[Crazymilk]

Anyone got anywhere with using the VR's ona RAID card yet.

I am all out of ideas for these so am going to go down the raid card root as well.

But I like to see what card is good for the job first

[Codeman05]

i will have a highpoint 2310 in tomorrow afternoon so i will try to have some results up by tomorrow night

[Endgame124]

I've heard nothing from Western Digital on my support E-mails either. I don't suppose there is a hardware website that we could get to take up our cause and make a fuss, is there?

[NoodleGTS]

I've got a WD Velociraptor (300GB) in my system. Single drive... best thing ever. My system boots up in maybe 20 seconds now. Vista Ultimate 64 bit here, and running on a dual core.

[Crazymilk]

I've got a WD Velociraptor (300GB) in my system. Single drive... best thing ever. My system boots up in maybe 20 seconds now. Vista Ultimate 64 bit here, and running on a dual core.

Yep Single drive = no issues.

Its the people wanting to run these in RAID0 with ICH9 Intell controller that are having the issues.

And damm annoying it is to:bang head

[Codeman05]

well it looks like my problem is actually that one of the drives is bad.

One of the raptors is only recognized on boot about 50% of the time. When I plug it in by itself it "times out" every minute or so. Was able to duplicate this on the ICH10R, HP 2310, and 780i chipsets.

So, guess I'll RMA this drive and hopefully have better luck with the replacement.

[Endgame124]

Heard back from Western Digital. They recommend exchanging the drive for something different!


Thank you for your reply.

At this moment, no ETA for a resolution has been advised from our side. This is an incompatibility with the motherboard manufacturer, that they have to sort as our product follows the industry standards and matches any other circuits. I would certainly recommend having your product exchanged for another that does not encounter this issue, as the ICH9R chipset will not fully manage the advanced performance from our product.

Sincerely,
Western Digital Service and Support

[The Mafia]

well thats a knee to the nuts isn't it?

WD have just proved to me that they are a bunch of ******** and I won't be buying anymore of their gear. I might just sell up and Buy 2 x SSDs.

In the meantime, I'll use the Highpoint 2310 raid card. I can't believe they have cost me another $325.

[RollingThunder]

So lemme understand this correctly:

1. Both Raptor series are included.

2. No RAID with any ICH9R chipset.

3. No fix for it from WD.

4. It's allegedly Intel's fault.

5. Return Raptors for something else.

Am I correct?

[Codeman05]

well...got my new VR in today. I'm now finally able to run RAID 0 perfectly.
Sorry some of you are still having issues.

[MadMan007]

Yep Single drive = no issues.

Its the people wanting to run these in RAID0 with ICH9 Intell controller that are having the issues.

And damm annoying it is to:bang head

Are you sure it's only RAID configurations that are having a problem? I'll have to go back and read the thread...

[RollingThunder]

well...got my new VR in today. I'm now finally able to run RAID 0 perfectly.
Sorry some of you are still having issues.

Codeman,

Was this your RMA drive?

[Codeman05]

Yes/No. It is a replacement drive, but I went out and paid retail because I didn't want to wait for the 2-week turnaround from newegg. I'm just sending the bad drive back for a refund.

It was most definitely the drive that was causing my problems. Funny how it passed the WD Diagnostics tests, but as it took 6 hours to complete...vs 30 mins for the other drive...something was clearly wrong.

[The Mafia]

UPDATE -

WD support got back to me with a suggested fix. I'm keen to try it, but the fool forgot to attach the utility that he is talking about to the email.

Here is what he said:

Dear Jonathan,

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support.

Attached is the WD TLER Utility. Can you run this utility and tell me if you continue to have dropout issues afterwards? You’ll need to rename the file from “WDTLER.ZIPFILE” to “WDTLER.ZIP” before you can extract its contents. Perform the following steps to enable TLER on our SATA drives.

1. Create a DOS-bootable floppy

Title: Create an MS-DOS Startup Disk

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/tips/renken1.mspx

1. Unzip the contents of “WDTLER.zip” to the boot floppy
2. Insert the boot floppy into the computer with the WD SATA drives
3. Boot the computer off the floppy
4. At the DOS prompt, type “TLER-ON” and press ENTER
5. Wait for the program to finish and then remove the boot floppy
6. Restart the computer with the WD SATA drives

Note: This utility will change every drive attached.

If the utility does not detect your drives, you may need to temporarily install them in another computer without the RAID array.

Sincerely,
Jeremy H.
Western Digital Service and Support
http://support.wdc.com


As soon as I get the utility I will test again tonight. Lets pray that the fix is this simple.

Jono

[MadMan007]

ooo enabling TLER, could it be that simple? That's the timeout setting that WD touts for it's RAID edition drives so that the RAID controller handles long or failed I/O requests rather than the drive, when the latter happens the drive can be marked bad in an array.

[Crazymilk]

Looking forward to the outcome of this m8.

Atleast you got a reply. I have has nothing back form Wd for weeks

[willysp]

Hi all - first time poster. I ran into this forum as I was researching my RAID0 problem with 300GB Raptors and ICH10R (Asus P5Q Dlx mbo). I've been following this thread, and literally have my system opened up on the table with an unopened HP2310 sitting next to it right now. But now I think I'll wait a bit...

Just saw the WDTLER post and did a quick google:

The zip file (dated early '06, but perhaps still the latest knowing WD):
http://rapidshare.com/files/2821776/WDTLER.zip.html

A Wikipedia article linking to a WD TLER doc, and describing how to use the utilities in the zip file:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLER#Western_Digital_Time_Limit_Error_Recovery_Uti lity_-_WDTLER.EXE

"The WDTLER utility comes with three batch files, TLERSCAN.BAT to get the current state of the TLER setting on all the hard drives, TLER-ON.BAT to Enable TLER, and TLER-OFF.BAT to Disable TLER. The included TLER-ON.BAT will set the Read & Write TLER time to 7 seconds. If you wish to use a custom timeout value, you can use the WDTLER.EXE utility directly with the -r# -w# parameters to specify how many seconds the Time Limit value should be."

And another relevant article wrt to Raptors and TLER:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=38385

Thanks for pushing and posting this issue! Hopefully this will work.

[willysp]

After some more googling, have seen some folks with different WD drives that say it works.

I'm skeptical in this situation, though. My first hard failure was the second drive in the array. I hadn't seen any posting wrt the ICHxR problem, so assumed the drive was bad and replaced it. Within 2 days, exact same problem - again the second drive in the array (the new one). That would mean that I had 2 new drives that each had significant enough error processing time to cause them to timeout from the controller's point of view. Unlikely, I think.

Also, not obvious to me how TLER applies in a RAID0 environment, since the controller does not have another drive to get the data from.

[Crazymilk]

Any update on this utility?

[Endgame124]

After some more googling, have seen some folks with different WD drives that say it works.

I'm skeptical in this situation, though. My first hard failure was the second drive in the array. I hadn't seen any posting wrt the ICHxR problem, so assumed the drive was bad and replaced it. Within 2 days, exact same problem - again the second drive in the array (the new one). That would mean that I had 2 new drives that each had significant enough error processing time to cause them to timeout from the controller's point of view. Unlikely, I think.



It doesn't matter what order the drives are in or which one it is -- the Array always fails the last drive in the Array (In other words, the drive plugged into the highest numbered SATA Port). I tried this with many combinations of 4 V. Raptors -- tried with something like 16 combinations. No matter what order the drives were plugged in, the array always faulted on the last drive in the array.

[mvulcan]

Mafia,
I'm having the same issue, just opened a case with WD as well.
Hopefully if enough cases are opened, they may issue a firmware fix.

2 300GB Velociraptors on a Asus Rampage II Extreme ICH10R
Vista 64

Only seeing the timeout/drop during high utilization, game loading areas during transitions - other than that they are running without issue, but this is a pretty new build and haven't done much else yet.

[bramo]

I just came across this thread and cant believe what i had to read.
I also got this combo (2x 300GB Velociraptors + Asus Rampage II Extreme ICH10R), but only bought the parts and didn't have enough time to install everything yet.

Looks like there is no fix at all for this problem, and no official word either, but I'd like to know if this problem is 100% reproducible with this combo (Asus board + ICHxR + velociraptor raid) or if chances are good that it may just work fine.
Anybody able to tell if some people don't have this Problem? Is it a Vista only thing, or is the same on XP too?

I'm asking mainly because I need to decide if i should directly return the drives (still sealed) and get something else, or try it out and then possibly have troubles with getting my money back.

[Codeman05]

i think you,ll be fine. most issues seem to effect the ich9r.

my board is similar ro yours and also has the ich10r...im running fine under vista64 and xp64.

i did have some problems at first, but it was due to a faulty drive

[willysp]

I just came across this thread and cant believe what i had to read.
I also got this combo (2x 300GB Velociraptors + Asus Rampage II Extreme ICH10R), but only bought the parts and didn't have enough time to install everything yet.

Looks like there is no fix at all for this problem, and no official word either, but I'd like to know if this problem is 100% reproducible with this combo (Asus board + ICHxR + velociraptor raid) or if chances are good that it may just work fine.
Anybody able to tell if some people don't have this Problem? Is it a Vista only thing, or is the same on XP too?

I'm asking mainly because I need to decide if i should directly return the drives (still sealed) and get something else, or try it out and then possibly have troubles with getting my money back.

I am very definitely having the problem with an Asus P5Q Deluxe, ICH10R and 300 GB Velicociraptors in RADI0. I'm running Vista 64, but the RAID0 array problem is reported in the Intel RAID Option ROM at boot, so I don't believe it's OS-specific. (Also see Linux issues below)

If I were you (and if I knew then what I know now), I wouldn't touch the Velicociraptors in RAID0 with ICHxR. (There are plenty of ICH10R users having the same problem as ICH9R).

I have a current theory that it may be due to a flawed NCQ implementation on the WD side. Have seen several Linux reports of same errors - when they 'blacklist' the Velociraptor wrt NCQ in their drivers (i.e. disable NCQ), they work fine in RAID0. I'm curently trying to find a way to disable NCQ in the Intel drivers (and, probably won't be able to do so.)

[Crazymilk]

Well I finally got a reply from WD

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support.

We have escalated your issue to our main Technical office in America for more information, we will respond as soon as we have a answer for you.
Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Sincerely,
Simon D.
081210-003328
Western Digital Service and Support

great!!!! I still only using one of the Vr's I purchased and still no fix

[davidm71]

Guys,

Have you had any luck getting these drives to work in Raid? I just submitted my RMA request to Newegg. WD graciously said they would cover my restocking fees. Was considering a pci-e 8x raid adaptec 2405 drive but at that price point I might as well just get an Intel SSD 160gb drive when they come out next month!

Also wondering if the TLER trick did any good? I got my system running two Caviar black 1Tb drives in raid 0 instead but I've read benches that say that this drive does better without the raid controller slowing it down. Have to take my raid apart to be certain...

Thanks...

[davidm71]

Great news! I am so excited to report that running the TLER utility has solved my data corruption problem! Early indications are that while copying files on to the Velociraptor array I no longer see parity errors in the error console or on the task bar I no longer get 'raid access failure'!


Unbelievable!

WoW!

I still need to do more testing and will get back to you all!

[Crazymilk]

Thanks m8. Please do keep us informed.

Did you use the TLER software from the link provided in the above post? Also do I need to disable or enable it??

[davidm71]

I got mine from this link here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/2821776/WDTLER.zip.html

I can confirm a successful boot up of vista 64 without errors...

I enabled TLER as I first ran a scan which showed it was disabled on all drives. Then I ran the Tler-on batch file which turned it on. You have to boot to a dos prompt and make sure that you disconnect your other drives when you run the batch file.

I am so psyched by this its not funny!

Dave.

[Surfrider77]

Can someone sum up the problem and how to replicate it?

I have had my two 150G Velociraptors on my ICH9R chipset in RAID0 since September and havent noticed anything strange. What am I looking for exactly?

[Crazymilk]

Can someone sum up the problem and how to replicate it?

I have had my two 150G Velociraptors on my ICH9R chipset in RAID0 since September and havent noticed anything strange. What am I looking for exactly?


Well m8 you will normally notice a sudden non repsonse from you PC or more serioulsy you will drop one of your HD's from the RAID array you have set up- which has been my issue. Having to rebuild the array and re install everything.
So you WILL notice if you have any issues, if you hav'nt then I would say all is good :) (lucky bugger)

I have just tried the enabling TLER using the WD utility on my VR's so lets see what happens and if I drop one from the array again

[Kayden]

Now I don't feel crazy.

I have 3 Raptors. I have 2 80GB raptors and a 74. I've had the 74 for about 3 years and it's been my system volume for my last two PCs and the 80s are new.

I recently build a new PC and I figured I'd use the matching 80s for a RAID 0 OS volume and the 74 for games and such.

Contrary to whats happening here, the RAID 0 is working fine, it's the solo 74 that's having a melt down. At first, the drive worked fine. I installed all my games and got everything running and could play them just fine. However, over time, it started to take more and more time to detect the drive. Then it started shooting me SMART errors on boot. I figured it was just time taking it's toll and it was time to cash in on the warranty. I went to make an image of the drive, but every utility said the drive was empty.

When I got my new drive, I brought them both into work and tried to ghost it one more time for the hell of it... and it worked. :confused: I thought luck just may be on my side. I brought the drive home and, what do you know, SMART ERRORS! :bang head:

I tried every sata and power cable I have on every sata port and power port (modular PSU) I had and 9/10 of the time, the PC took 2 minutes to find the drive and give me a SMART failure. I tried it with other drives and alone... I tried it as IDE, enhanced and ACHI...
DOA, right?

I brought it back into work and plugged it into one of our none ICHxR boards and it works...

I have another RMA set up for this drive and they're sending me a new new drive and waybill... but now I'm thinking I'll just be in the same boat.

[Surfrider77]

^^ What motherboard do you have? ^^

I know on my Gigabyte that 6 of the SATA ports are on the Intel ICH9R controller, while 2 additional ports are located on the Gigabyte controller. Perhaps see if you have a similar setup and try bringing the drive up on the non-Intel controller?

Gigabyte SATA ports are colored purple in the pic below. You can actually see the Gigabyte chip directly above it.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/images/articles/1190686061TzithWjrp6_1_14_l.jpg

[Kayden]

I have the Asus P6T Deluxe. It has 6 ICH10R ports and 2 Marvell SAS ports. I really don't want to turn on the Marvell controller as it takes adds about a minute to my boot. =( On top of that, the drive should just work... =\

However, I will keep that in mind if I experience the same issue with the new new drive.

Yet, the more reading I do, the more I think it may not be the same issue. It seems most people have no problem having the drive detected, it's just an error with Vista, raptors and ICHxR drivers. I am indeed using Vista with a raptor on an ICH10R, but POST has nothing to do with drivers.

[willysp]

I have the Asus P6T Deluxe. It has 6 ICH10R ports and 2 Marvell SAS ports. I really don't want to turn on the Marvell controller as it takes adds about a minute to my boot. =( On top of that, the drive should just work... =\

However, I will keep that in mind if I experience the same issue with the new new drive.

Yet, the more reading I do, the more I think it may not be the same issue. It seems most people have no problem having the drive detected, it's just an error with Vista, raptors and ICHxR drivers. I am indeed using Vista with a raptor on an ICH10R, but POST has nothing to do with drivers.

Yes - I agree with your last thought. You appear to have a different problem here. The problem we're facing is specific to (1) new model Velociraptors (150 or 300) in (2) Raid on (3) ICH9/10R.

I've been running 2 old 74's in RAID0 on another (ICH8R) system for 2 years with no issues.

I'm currently running my pair of 300's as solo drives (C: and E:; D: is Seagate Raid1) on my ICH10R system - no issues at all if not in Raid. Never a problem POSTing whether single, Raid0 or Raid1.

[willysp]

Can someone sum up the problem and how to replicate it?

I have had my two 150G Velociraptors on my ICH9R chipset in RAID0 since September and havent noticed anything strange. What am I looking for exactly?

Look in the Vista Event Log for iastor errors.

My symptoms have been:
- frequent 1 or 2 second freezes (I'll see iastor errors in the event log following these), but system stays up and the array doesn't report errors.
- infrequent, but much more serious, 30 second or longer freezes. If the system comes back from these freezes, I'll get a "volume failing" report from IMSM. (But, usually have to manually reboot.)
- occasional BSOD's (never the same info twice)
- after either of the last 2 issues, on next boot, will get a raid error reported in the Intel option ROM during BIOS boot process (and always the second drive in the Raid0 array). Usually Vista will flag the array as 'dirty' and will run CHKDSK before booting - and errors will be found and corrected. And, once Vista is up, will get the "volume failing" report from IMSM.

[Crazymilk]

Just a note that I have been trying XP32 as well. Samething. I keep dropping one of the drives from the array after a short freeze and on POSt screen I get the RAID Failed message (always the second drive).

If Im lucky I can manual reboot back in to windows (still with the failed message) but normally the array is screwed and I have to re install my OS

Its sucks so hard that Wd are a complete load of tosspots who have done nothing to address the issue. It is a definate issue with thier drives and the intel controller and nothing is getting done

[Xaero_toast]

Its sucks so hard that Wd are a complete load of tosspots who have done nothing to address the issue. It is a definate issue with thier drives and the intel controller and nothing is getting done
+1

WD!! If you are listening! You've lost least two sales right here!

I'm glad I read this thread. I was about to buy 2x new 300GB raptors. :(

[freeagent]

i had problems running raid with ich8r and 2 wd 250s, but ive been running these raptors in raid for a couple of months now, thru vista and xp, and back again probably about 15-20 times, and my array is still peachy.. these drives are faasst. i should mention 1 of my raptors is a year older then the other, with diff firmware.. still runs great!


still no problems running my array, both with my rampage formula, and p5k deluxe. if it does drop out, its not gone, just go to your bios and exit out, and voila, there it is. i cant say the same for velociraptors tho, as i dont have any.

[willysp]

still no problems running my array, both with my rampage formula, and p5k deluxe. if it does drop out, its not gone, just go to your bios and exit out, and voila, there it is. i cant say the same for velociraptors tho, as i dont have any.

That's nice and as expected. The problem is with the new Velociraptors, not the older Raptors.

[Gunlance]

That's nice and as expected. The problem is with the new Velociraptors, not the older Raptors.


Tell that to my abit quad gt with ich8r and my asus maximus with ich9r. Both did not like the older 16mb 74 gb raptors I had in a raid 0.

The ones without the problem are extremely lucky, but I have to say it could be a ticking time bomb with a much larger fuse.

[freeagent]

That's nice and as expected. The problem is with the new Velociraptors, not the older Raptors.


yeah, the only reason why i quoted my post was because i saw someone mention that it was an issue with adfd raptors too. becuase sometimes a drive does drop out. but its not really gone, just go to your bios and exit out and voila its there. it only really happens to me when i switch from 1:1 cas4 to 4:5 cas5 or vice versa on this board, and sometimes with my rampage too. but i think its because it could be a lil hard on the board pushing 4x1gb stix at fsb's between 425 and 475mhz with my quad.

[mvulcan]

Look in the Vista Event Log for iastor errors.

In addition to IASTOR errors, you can see IAANTmon errors as the one I copied below.
Of'course (as in my case) if your event logs are on the array having the issue, if the array doesn't recover while the system is still running, the events won't be written.

Log Name: Application
Source: IAANTmon
Date: 1/2/2009 6:27:17 PM
Event ID: 7003
Task Category: None
Level: Warning
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: Desktop
Description:
Status for hard drive 'WD-WXJ608A20022' changed from 'Normal' to 'Error occurred'.
System Report:-
Intel RAID Controller: Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R SATA RAID Controller
Number of Serial ATA ports: 6

RAID Option ROM Version: 8.0.0.1038
Driver Version: 8.6.0.1007
RAID Plug-In Version: 8.6.0.1007
Language Resource Version of the RAID Plug-In: File not found
Create Volume Wizard Version: 8.6.0.1007
Language Resource Version of the Create Volume Wizard: File not found
Create Volume from Existing Hard Drive Wizard Version: 8.6.0.1007
Language Resource Version of the Create Volume from Existing Hard Drive Wizard: File not found
Modify Volume Wizard Version: 8.6.0.1007
Language Resource Version of the Modify Volume Wizard: File not found
Delete Volume Wizard Version: 8.6.0.1007
Language Resource Version of the Delete Volume Wizard: File not found
ISDI Library Version: 8.6.0.1007
Event Monitor User Notification Tool Version: 8.6.0.1007
Language Resource Version of the Event Monitor User Notification Tool: File not found
Event Monitor Version: 8.6.0.1007

Array_0000
Status: No active migrations
Hard Drive Data Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 558.9 GB
Free Space: 0 GB
Number of Hard Drives: 2
Hard Drive Member 1: WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U0
Hard Drive Member 2: WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U0
Number of Volumes: 1
Volume Member 1: SYSTEM

SYSTEM
Status: Normal
System Volume: Yes
Volume Write-Back Cache Enabled: Yes
RAID Level: RAID 0 (striping)
Strip Size: 128 KB
Size: 558.9 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Hard Drives: 2
Hard Drive Member 1: WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U0
Hard Drive Member 2: WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U0
Parent Array: Array_0000

Hard Drive 0
Usage: Array member
Status: Normal
Device Port: 4
Device Port Location: Internal
Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode: Generation 2
Model: WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U0
Serial Number: WD-WXL808017102
Firmware: 04.04V01
Native Command Queuing Support: Yes
Hard Drive Data Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 279.4 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Volumes: 1
Volume Member 1: SYSTEM
Parent Array: Array_0000

Hard Drive 1
Usage: Array member
Status: Error occurred
Device Port: 5
Device Port Location: Internal
Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode: Generation 2
Model: WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U0
Serial Number: WD-WXJ608A20022
Firmware: 04.04V01
Native Command Queuing Support: Yes
Hard Drive Data Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 279.4 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Volumes: 1
Volume Member 1: SYSTEM
Parent Array: Array_0000

Unused Port 0
Device Port: 0
Device Port Location: Internal

Unused Port 1
Device Port: 1
Device Port Location: Internal

Unused Port 2
Device Port: 2
Device Port Location: Internal

Unused Port 3
Device Port: 3
Device Port Location: Internal

[Crazymilk]

I have still not heard F'all back from WD.

I have got to the stage now where I just want to go down a different road and get away from the crappy Intel controller.

What about if I go for a Nvidia based mobo using the Nvidia RAID controller. ie the 780i/790i Ultra chipset. Im not interested in running X-fire so I have no real reason to stick with an Intel chipset

I have had a look around and I cant really seem to find any issues with people using the VR's in RAID0 on that chip????

What do you rekon

[wingman99]

sell a raptor and enjoy life with one, a PC can't use the power of two anyway.:soda:

[The Mafia]

******** just abandoned me too.

Some of us have applications that require 2 x velociraptors, and definately the CPU processing power to handle it.. a QUad core 9450 at 3.8ghz will certainly require fast ass hdds..

[Codeman05]

I have still not heard F'all back from WD.

I have got to the stage now where I just want to go down a different road and get away from the crappy Intel controller.

What about if I go for a Nvidia based mobo using the Nvidia RAID controller. ie the 780i/790i Ultra chipset. Im not interested in running X-fire so I have no real reason to stick with an Intel chipset

I have had a look around and I cant really seem to find any issues with people using the VR's in RAID0 on that chip????

What do you rekon

I've had them working fine on the 780i and P45 (ICH10R) chipsets without a problem...maybe worth a shot. I haven't seen problems with NV or ICH10R chipsets and these drives.

[Tanquen]

I’ve been suffering with this for over 6 months. I started with a DFI LANPARTY UT X48-T2R board and went through three for them before trying a GIGABYTE GA-X48-DS5. The Gigabyte board behaves much better so I can see how this can be a difficult issue as it looks to be affecting some more than others. With the DFI board I would get crashes and even lost the data on one non raid drive. The Matrix Storage Console would get errors for both of the RAID volumes. The Gigabyte board I’m using now was trouble free for a few weeks but now is acting up and only (thus far) causing RAID errors on the VR RAID volume. So…

Any updates or light at the end of the tunnel? Did everyone just get a dedicated controller or different hard drives?

http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/1050/image1lg2.jpg
[img=http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/1050/image1lg2.th.jpg] (http://img113.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image1lg2.jpg)

[Crazymilk]

I’ve been suffering with this for over 6 months. I started with a DFI LANPARTY UT X48-T2R board and went through three for them before trying a GIGABYTE GA-X48-DS5. The Gigabyte board behaves much better so I can see how this can be a difficult issue as it looks to be affecting some more than others. With the DFI board I would get crashes and even lost the data on one non raid drive. The Matrix Storage Console would get errors for both of the RAID volumes. The Gigabyte board I’m using now was trouble free for a few weeks but now is acting up and only (thus far) causing RAID errors on the VR RAID volume. So…

Any updates or light at the end of the tunnel? Did everyone just get a dedicated controller or different hard drives?

http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/1050/image1lg2.jpg
[img=http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/1050/image1lg2.th.jpg] (http://img113.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image1lg2.jpg)

Yep that screenie shows the excact same issue as me.

Well I think I am going to go down the RAID controller card to see what happens

[willysp]

sell a raptor and enjoy life with one, a PC can't use the power of two anyway.:soda:

Au contraire! :=) I've benchmarked RAID0 as 1.6x the avg transfer rate of single drives.

I have a 500MB uncompressed TIFF image I'm working on in Photoshop - the speed difference is noticeable! (The master source file is on a local RAID1 volume, with the final copy destined for a RAID5 NAS)

[willysp]

<snip> ...Any updates or light at the end of the tunnel? Did everyone just get a dedicated controller or different hard drives?


I'm still on the fence - currently running a single 300 VR drive while I see where this issue goes. I am surprised not to have seen significant additional people report this over the last month. Not sure what that means. Perhaps it is an extreme boundary condition affecting only a small number of us.

Since I get UltraDMA CRC Errors reported in SMART from the failing second drive in the array (and I've had 2 different drives in that slot), this weekend I'm going to:
- Boost memory voltage a bit and run MemTest overnite - done last night
- Boost SB voltage a bit, and maybe PCI/SATA voltage a very little bit
- Replace SATA cables with better quality cables than those in MBO box
- Not bundle the SATA cables with cable ties in order to eliminate cable crosstalk/EMI as a possible error source
- Turn off Spread Spectrum Clocking (CPU and PCIE/SATA) to tighten up the signal

Another reason for doing the above is that I realized a couple weeks ago that my Seagate D: RAID1 array was slow because I'd never removed the SATA I jumpers (duh!). But after removing the jumpers, I saw NO increase in speed. And, Sandra reports all SATA ports as "G1 SATA150", so perhaps something else going on.

I don't expect the above to fix it, but you never know. I still think it's something like NCQ incompatibility between ICHxR and VR. And since I don't see an increasing number of new error reports, and WD isn't responding, I don't expect it to be fixed.

[Tanquen]

Speed wise it is faster than the other drives not by much, my 2TB Samsung RAID is just about as fast. HD Tune showed them to be really slow compared to what others where posting until I set the block size in HD Tune to match my 128k strip size. I used that size because the guide suggested it.

From Matrix manual:

TABLE 3. USAGE SCENARIOS FOR SUPPORTED STRIP SIZES
Strip Size Description RAID Levels
4 KB Best for specialized usage models requiring 4 KB strips RAID 0, 10
8 KB Best for specialized usage models requiring 8 KB strips RAID 0, 10
16 KB Best for sequential transfers RAID 0, 5, 10
32 KB Good for sequential transfers RAID 0, 5, 10
64 KB Good general purpose strip size (default for RAID 5, 10) RAID 0, 5, 10
128 KB Best performance for most desktops and workstations (default for RAID 0) RAID 0, 5

How can I see my NTFS block sizes?

[Tanquen]

Any one use the Verify Volume Data option in the Matrix Storage Manager. It said my volume was ok but found some 89 bad blocks and removed them from use. Is it possible that those of us with this issue just have a bad drive? This is the 4th motherboard and different power supply and different SATA cables and the problem keeps coming back. I so disappointed, this is my worst build by far. It’s got to be the drives or the Intel chipset or maybe my CPU or RAM ( :) ) but it never fails any RAM test or Prime95 tests. I’m tempted to get two more Samsung 1TB drive and swap these out. The DFI and GB board have both killed a single 1TB drive I have. It did it just last night while running the HD Tune and copying files. Now shows as unknown in drive manager. :( The DFI board was much worse and I’d get the RAID errors on both RIAD volumes. Maybe it was just the OS reinstall after getting the new MB. Maybe as the OS data get more and more corrupted you get more RAID errors. My system was error free for about a month after the new MB and OS install. ???? This sucks.

[willysp]

Anyone else getting UltraDMA CRC Errors in the SMART data for the second drive when the array fails? I've had 2 different arrays with 2 sets of drives, and when the array fails, the 2nd drive generates these errors in its SMART data. These SMART errors get incremented only when I get an error reported from the Intel Option ROM on boot and/or IMSM after boot; usually after a BSOD or a hard freeze. The second drive from the first array ended up at 7 errors; the current second drive is at 5. The 'normal' iastor timeout errors don't increment the SMART count.

-----------------------

Attribute Name:
UltraDMA CRC Error Count

Attribute ID:
199

Attribute meaning:
The total quantity of CRC errors during UltraDMA mode. The raw value of this attribute indicates the number of errors found during data transfer in UltraDMA mode by ICRC (Interface CRC).

[The Mafia]

Since I get UltraDMA CRC Errors reported in SMART from the failing second drive in the array (and I've had 2 different drives in that slot), this weekend I'm going to:
- Boost memory voltage a bit and run MemTest overnite - done last night
- Boost SB voltage a bit, and maybe PCI/SATA voltage a very little bit
- Replace SATA cables with better quality cables than those in MBO box
- Not bundle the SATA cables with cable ties in order to eliminate cable crosstalk/EMI as a possible error source
- Turn off Spread Spectrum Clocking (CPU and PCIE/SATA) to tighten up the signal


This is really interesting.

I did same thing - Increased SB voltages and disabled the Spread spectrum, and re-created a new raid with the Vraptors on the raid0. For some reason, the raid array seemed to be nearly twice as fast with these new settings, and less hangs. But, it failed just as soon as it did before.

I think this might be an issue with firmware, meaning there is something that needs to be tweaked - like latencies, voltages etc.

WD should be able to fix this with no problems!

I might email this thread to the guy supporting me again, and see what he says.

Will keep you updated.

Jono

[willysp]

I rebuilt the array last night after doing the things I mentioned above - new cables (not tied), DRAM +V, SB +V, PCIE/SATA +V, SSC disabled.

Also did one other thing. I've always had the 2 VR on ports 0 & 1, and my Seagate RAID1 drives on 2 & 3. For the last 3 weeks, I've been running the 2 VR as single drives. I noticed when I installed Vista, it said it could not install to the second VR drive. Also, in BIOS when I have RAID off, it's treating port 0 as IDE primary master, 1 as primary slave, 3 as secondary master and 4 as secondary slave. So, I changed the VR to ports 0 & 2, and the Seagates to 1 & 3. Wouldn't think it should matter, but who knows.

Have never done the TLER switch, so may also do that. But since I've already built the array, WDTLER can't see the physical drives. So, will do this if/when the array fails; or maybe will backup the partition now, break the array, run WDTLER, then rebuild array and restore partition.

This is very much a shotgun approach - if it now works (and, again, I don't expect that), I'll have changed so many variables I won't know what fixed it.

[willysp]

This is really interesting.

I did same thing - Increased SB voltages and disabled the Spread spectrum, and re-created a new raid with the Vraptors on the raid0. For some reason, the raid array seemed to be nearly twice as fast with these new settings, and less hangs. But, it failed just as soon as it did before.

I think this might be an issue with firmware, meaning there is something that needs to be tweaked - like latencies, voltages etc.

WD should be able to fix this with no problems!

My array has been going 12 hours now, so too soon to draw any conclusions. My last RAID0 build a few weeks ago, I tended to get a clump of iastor timeouts about every 24 hours, and a RAID error reported after about 2 days (but it kept running just fine).

I would agree that WD should be able to fix this - we're all reporting very similar errors (always second drive, iastor timeouts in log, etc.).

I might email this thread to the guy supporting me again, and see what he says.

Will keep you updated.

Jono

Please do! That would be great.

[mvulcan]

Just as an FYI, I've put an RMA in for my drive on Jan 3, model WD3000HLFS-01G6U0 - and WD has yet to ship a replacement. Now their site says their is an inventory shortage for this model, and it may take an additional 2 weeks before a drive is shipped. I did pay for advance replacement, which turn-around time should be 5-7 days as per their website: http://support.wdc.com/warranty/rmapost.asp?custtype=end&lang=en

[wingman99]

I did pay for advance replacement, which turn-around time should be 5-7 days as per their website: http://support.wdc.com/warranty/rmapost.asp?custtype=end&lang=enAt least you get your money back when you send in your drive.:beer:

[willysp]

Just as an FYI, I've put an RMA in for my drive on Jan 3, model WD3000HLFS-01G6U0 - and WD has yet to ship a replacement. Now their site says their is an inventory shortage for this model, and it may take an additional 2 weeks before a drive is shipped. I did pay for advance replacement, which turn-around time should be 5-7 days as per their website: http://support.wdc.com/warranty/rmapost.asp?custtype=end&lang=en

Just out of curiousity, and a friendly question - Do you have reason to believe that your drive is bad, and that it needs replaced?

Your error report shows that (1) Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IAANTmon) reported (2) "Error Occurred" status on (3) the 2nd drive in the array. Those 3 are all standard symptoms of this error, and in my and others' experience, don't mean the drive is bad.

The first time this happened to me, I thought "bad drive, needs RMA" and put a brand new drive in the 2nd position and got exactly the same error within a few days. I then looked at the SMART data in both the 2nd drives, and saw UDMA CRC Errors in both. I then swapped positions of the 1st and 2nd drives, rebuilt the array, and got the same error with the drive that had been in the 1st position and was now 2nd. So -- same experience with 3 physical drives. Then I ran my system for 1 month with 2 of those drives as single drives, and no problems at all.

There is some kind of issue with VR and RAID0 and Intel ICHxR - from what I've seen from your posts, you're seeing this issue. Unless you're having other specific problems, I wonder if your RMA will do anything except exchange your drive for someone else's returned drive.

[Crazymilk]

Just out of curiousity, and a friendly question - Do you have reason to believe that your drive is bad, and that it needs replaced?

Your error report shows that (1) Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IAANTmon) reported (2) "Error Occurred" status on (3) the 2nd drive in the array. Those 3 are all standard symptoms of this error, and in my and others' experience, don't mean the drive is bad.

The first time this happened to me, I thought "bad drive, needs RMA" and put a brand new drive in the 2nd position and got exactly the same error within a few days. I then looked at the SMART data in both the 2nd drives, and saw UDMA CRC Errors in both. I then swapped positions of the 1st and 2nd drives, rebuilt the array, and got the same error with the drive that had been in the 1st position and was now 2nd. So -- same experience with 3 physical drives. Then I ran my system for 1 month with 2 of those drives as single drives, and no problems at all.

There is some kind of issue with VR and RAID0 and Intel ICHxR - from what I've seen from your posts, you're seeing this issue. Unless you're having other specific problems, I wonder if your RMA will do anything except exchange your drive for someone else's returned drive.

Agreed m8.

We probably keep getting each others VR's..lol.. The same drives going around and around and around:beer:

[Kayden]

I think I'm back in the running for this problem, my 80's are acting up. I got home last night and tried to boot my PC and it just sat at a black screen after raid bios (where it should be booting Vista). I rebooted and then the Intel raid bios said an error occurred on one of my drives. It started booting Vista and the progress froze for about 20 seconds and then started again and windows kept booting. I played Left 4 Dead for about 2 hours and went to bed.

When I went to turn my PC on this morning, I was greeted with an infinite progress bar while loading Vista. I rebooted and the raid bios said another error occurred. Then when I went to boot Vista it said it was corrupted... =\

So when I get home tonight I'm going to try to copy the data to my single 74 raptor and repair the install, then I'll test the hell out of the 80s (and have them pass -_-).

[mvulcan]

Just out of curiousity, and a friendly question - Do you have reason to believe that your drive is bad, and that it needs replaced?
...
Unless you're having other specific problems, I wonder if your RMA will do anything except exchange your drive for someone else's returned drive.

Yes, good question.
One drive finally reported errors itslef other than the previous error I had posted. These errors now appear in the POST screen as well as the Intel Matrix Storage Manager console. The error follows around the same drive - (not the cable, sata port, etc.) even after rebuilding the array and shuffling everything around. At the very least, it's something to try.

[Kayden]

Broke the raid and checked the disks; as I thought, they both passed every test. Towards the end (before the failure) POST would take 10-20 seconds to find the 80GB raptors on occasion. Once it even gave me a SMART failure.

After testing, I set up another drive with my OS to reboot the PC constantly to see if I would get another SMART error. Every time I watched it, all the drives were detected instantly. I let this test run for about 2-3 hours and didn't have a single issue.

At this point, I rebuilt the RAID 0 and split it in two. I put Vista on one half and Windows 7 on the other (two birds and all that). So I'll just keep it going like this and make regular copies of the drive to a spare...

[willysp]

Broke the raid and checked the disks; as I thought, they both passed every test. Towards the end (before the failure) POST would take 10-20 seconds to find the 80GB raptors on occasion. Once it even gave me a SMART failure.

After testing, I set up another drive with my OS to reboot the PC constantly to see if I would get another SMART error. Every time I watched it, all the drives were detected instantly. I let this test run for about 2-3 hours and didn't have a single issue.

At this point, I rebuilt the RAID 0 and split it in two. I put Vista on one half and Windows 7 on the other (two birds and all that). So I'll just keep it going like this and make regular copies of the drive to a spare...


Which SMART error are you getting?

[toy4x4]

No issues here with two 300gb Velociraptors running striped. Running on a Gigabyte p35-dq6 which is Intel ICH9R. I've run Vista and currently running Windows 7 without issue. I also had these on the Nforce 7 chipset without problems after Nvidia released 15.23 drivers.

[Kayden]

Which SMART error are you getting?

It just says "SMART ERROR on drive 2 hit F1!" While it's doing the smart it says something to the effect of "PORT 2 **DRIVE MODEL** S.M.A.R.T. TEST ... BAD!"

[willysp]

Yes, good question.
One drive finally reported errors itslef other than the previous error I had posted. These errors now appear in the POST screen as well as the Intel Matrix Storage Manager console. The error follows around the same drive - (not the cable, sata port, etc.) even after rebuilding the array and shuffling everything around. At the very least, it's something to try.

Yes, if you have an error that follows the drive regardless of its position in the array, that's different than what I've seen.

Something I probably didn't make clear enough in my posts - whenever I get a POST error (i.e. reported by the Intel Option Rom during POST), I always get an error reported by IMSM console (like your iaantmon error), and vice versa. They always occur together, and never one without the other. These are the errors I consider "hard" because they will cause Vista to flag the boot volume as 'dirty', causing a CHKDSK on next boot, and cause NTFS file system errors. The 'iastor timeout' errors I consider 'soft' because they cause a short 'stutter' in Vista reponding, but nothing else.

[willysp]

No issues here with two 300gb Velociraptors running striped. Running on a Gigabyte p35-dq6 which is Intel ICH9R. I've run Vista and currently running Windows 7 without issue...

Thanks for the data point. How long have they been running?

...I also had these on the Nforce 7 chipset without problems after Nvidia released 15.23 drivers.

Did you have problems prior to 15.23?

Anything special you've done like upping SB or PCIE/SATA voltage?

Thanks

[Crazymilk]

Just a quick question. As I was bored I thought I would run windows disk check/ Wd diag and then HDtune heath check and both drives (separatley ie not in RIAD)come back clean.

Am I safe to assume that neither of the drives are bad??

[willysp]

It just says "SMART ERROR on drive 2 hit F1!" While it's doing the smart it says something to the effect of "PORT 2 **DRIVE MODEL** S.M.A.R.T. TEST ... BAD!"

The specific SMART error I get that concerns/puzzles me is the UltraDMA CRC Error Count (below):

SMART ATTRIBUTES:
ID Description Raw Value
---------------------------------------------------------
1 Raw Read Error Rate 0
3 Spin Up Time 3058ms
4 Start/Stop Count 12
5 Reallocated Sector Count 0
7 Seek Error Rate 0
9 Power On Time 345
A Spin Retry Count 0
B Calibration Retry Count 0
C Power Cycle Count 5
C0 Power off Retract Count 2
C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 12
C2 Temperature 27 C
C4 Reallocation Event Count 0
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0
C6 Uncorrectable Sector Count 0
C7 UltraDMA CRC Error Count 11
C8 Write Error Count 0

[willysp]

Just a quick question. As I was bored I thought I would run windows disk check/ Wd diag and then HDtune heath check and both drives (separatley ie not in RIAD)come back clean.

Am I safe to assume that neither of the drives are bad??

IMO - yes.

I did the same thing - (1) had numerous RAID0 errors, (2) deleted the array, (3) ran WD diags on both drives with no errors reported, (4) ran them as single drives in Vista for 1 month, (5) ran HDTach and HDTune with no issues.

I consider my drives to be fine mechanically - i.e. with regard to motor, heads, surface. No concerns at all about their health in a non-RAID0 setup. Of course, still concerned about possible firmware issue affecting only RAID0.

[Crazymilk]

IMO - yes.

I did the same thing - (1) had numerous RAID0 errors, (2) deleted the array, (3) ran WD diags on both drives with no errors reported, (4) ran them as single drives in Vista for 1 month, (5) ran HDTach and HDTune with no issues.

I consider my drives to be fine with regard to motor, heads, surface. No concerns at all about their health in a non-RAID0 setup.

Yep thanks.. Thats what I thought. I have still heard sod all from WD. I have sent them loads of info regarding the problems we are having but still no news.

I am really beginning to loose hope of WD every resolving this issue. I have a Gigabyte EP45T- UD3R thats I might try to see if that is any better.
It also has GSATA (Gigabytes own RAID controller) on it so I might even try that instead of the Intel ICH10.
I dont know what that controller is like regarding performance but atm I am willing to scarifice a small amount of speed for some stability

[Endgame124]

An update on my system. I've been running on 3 vraptors in a matrix array with a 60GB raid 0, and the rest as raid 5. I have NOT turned on write back cache and haven't had any problems.

System layout:

OS: 40GB partition on 150GB raptor, write back cache on, using Vista Ultimate 64
Pagefile:8GB Raid 0 Matrix across 2x 36GB raptors, write back cache on
Games: 60GB Raid 0 Matirx across 3x 300GB vRaptors, 8k block size, write back cache off
Raid 5: 560GB Raid 5 Matrix across 3x 300GB vRaptors, 8k block size. write back cache off. Large things I want to keep go here.
Mirror: Raid 1 Matrix across 2x 36GB raptors, write back cache on. Currently Empty.
Temp: 110GB partition on 150GB raptor.

I've been using this system fairly heavily over the last month and a half or so, mainly for gaming, video processing, music, and web development.

[willysp]

FYI - there are new Intel Matrix Storage Manager drivers on Intel's site. Version 8.7.0.1007, dated Jan 9.

However (no surprise), I see nothing in the release notes regarding this problem. Either as a Resolved issue - or, disappointingly, as a Known issue.

[Crazymilk]

Does this look about right for one of my VR's . I am worried about that down spike. Is that normal?

http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s246/crazymilk_01/HDTune_Benchmark_WDC_WD3000GLFS-01F.png

[willysp]

Does this look about right for one of my VR's . I am worried about that down spike. Is that normal?

Unfortunately, no. I've not seen that spike on either of my drives in multiple runs. With the exception of Minimum (which is your spike), the numbers are similar to my drives. Minimum should be around 75.

Is that repeatable on multiple runs?

[willysp]

I rebuilt the array last night after doing the things I mentioned above - new cables (not tied), DRAM +V, SB +V, PCIE/SATA +V, SSC disabled

Also did one other thing. I've always had the 2 VR on ports 0 & 1, and my Seagate RAID1 drives on 2 & 3. For the last 3 weeks, I've been running the 2 VR as single drives. I noticed when I installed Vista, it said it could not install to the second VR drive. Also, in BIOS when I have RAID off, it's treating port 0 as IDE primary master, 1 as primary slave, 3 as secondary master and 4 as secondary slave. So, I changed the VR to ports 0 & 2, and the Seagates to 1 & 3. ...

An update. I did the above 4 days ago, and have have no errors reported yet. I did not expect to have a "hard" error (POST, IMSM) this soon, but I would have expected a "soft" error (iastor timeout) by now since I typically got 6 or so every 24 hours. I'm not drawing any conclusions yet, and certainly not declaring it fixed (it will probably crash right after I submit this post!).

Since I did not do the TLER change yet, I plan to delete the array tonight, run WDTLER, then do a fresh install with the new Intel drivers, then see how long it lasts.

I'm going to start doing daily boot disk image backups using Paragon HDM 2009 Pro so that I have a reliable recovery point if/when it happens again.

[Crazymilk]

Unfortunately, no. I've not seen that spike on either of my drives in multiple runs. With the exception of Minimum (which is your spike), the numbers are similar to my drives. Minimum should be around 75.

Is that repeatable on multiple runs?

No its not every run. Its only now and then when i run the benchie.

Although on the HD Tune FAQ it says:

A few downward spikes in the graph are not a problem. It means that another application or Windows was accessing the hard disk during the test.

So I hope thats ok

[willysp]

No its not every run. Its only now and then when i run the benchie.

Although on the HD Tune FAQ it says:

A few downward spikes in the graph are not a problem. It means that another application or Windows was accessing the hard disk during the test.

So I hope thats ok

Yes, that makes sense - probably OK.

[freeagent]

i get the same 2 spikes in my raid array no matter waht os i use, and always in the same place, so i know how you feel.. they are still there even when i change slice sizes, cluster size.. now i dont even care anymore.

[Crazymilk]

Well I have installed a new mobo (not because of this issue) which uses the ICH10 instead of my old mobo which used the ICH9 and I thought I would see if there was any improvement.

Sure after 2 days of use I get the same 'Error Occured' on the second drive.

So it seesm this issue is most definatley both ICH9R and ICH10R.

The new Gigabyte board I am using has the GSATA controller on it so I will try to install them on that next to see if that is better

[nunez1980]

Guys,

are JMicron's controllers affected too?

right now have GIGABYTE's GA-EP45-UD3P, which has the JMicron two port controller and was wondering if any had better luck with it than intel's ones, thats what I will be trying tonight if I get a chance, thx

by the way this mobo has ICH10R chipset

sam

[wingman99]

Well I have installed a new mobo (not because of this issue) which uses the ICH10 instead of my old mobo which used the ICH9 and I thought I would see if there was any improvement.

Sure after 2 days of use I get the same 'Error Occured' on the second drive.

So it seesm this issue is most definatley both ICH9R and ICH10R.

The new Gigabyte board I am using has the GSATA controller on it so I will try to install them on that next to see if that is betterHave you all ever thought it might be the drive and maybe a RMA is needed.:eek:

[nunez1980]

Have you all ever thought it might be the drive and maybe a RMA is needed.:eek:

thats possible, with either drives and new mobo too, sad but true

very hard to pint point this stuff at times

sam

[wingman99]

thats possible, with either drives and new mobo too, sad but true

very hard to pint point this stuff at times

samWell look at it this way is everyone having problem with both ICH9R and ICH10R and a 1 Raptor

Also do all raptors fail with both ICH9R and ICH10R

[willysp]

Have you all ever thought it might be the drive and maybe a RMA is needed.:eek:

It's been pretty well established here and at other sites that there is a repeatable issue with the Velociraptors in RAID0 on an ICHxR controller. And not just Windows, the Linux forums are also discussing it.

FYI - my response on the previous page to someone who was considering RMA:

Just out of curiousity, and a friendly question - Do you have reason to believe that your drive is bad, and that it needs replaced?

Your error report shows that (1) Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IAANTmon) reported (2) "Error Occurred" status on (3) the 2nd drive in the array. Those 3 are all standard symptoms of this error, and in my and others' experience, don't mean the drive is bad.

The first time this happened to me, I thought "bad drive, needs RMA" and put a brand new drive in the 2nd position and got exactly the same error within a few days. I then looked at the SMART data in both the 2nd drives, and saw UDMA CRC Errors in both. I then swapped positions of the 1st and 2nd drives, rebuilt the array, and got the same error with the drive that had been in the 1st position and was now 2nd. So -- same experience with 3 physical drives. Then I ran my system for 1 month with 2 of those drives as single drives, and no problems at all.

There is some kind of issue with VR and RAID0 and Intel ICHxR - from what I've seen from your posts, you're seeing this issue. Unless you're having other specific problems, I wonder if your RMA will do anything except exchange your drive for someone else's returned drive.

[The Mafia]

I've pointed the Western Digital Technician I have been dealing with to this thread a number of times, I doubt he's read it. I am going to stress the issues a little more.

[willysp]

I rebuilt the array last night after doing the things I mentioned above - new cables (not tied), DRAM +V, SB +V, PCIE/SATA +V, SSC disabled.

Also did one other thing. I've always had the 2 VR on ports 0 & 1, and my Seagate RAID1 drives on 2 & 3. For the last 3 weeks, I've been running the 2 VR as single drives. I noticed when I installed Vista, it said it could not install to the second VR drive. Also, in BIOS when I have RAID off, it's treating port 0 as IDE primary master, 1 as primary slave, 3 as secondary master and 4 as secondary slave. So, I changed the VR to ports 0 & 2, and the Seagates to 1 & 3. Wouldn't think it should matter, but who knows.

Have never done the TLER switch, so may also do that. But since I've already built the array, WDTLER can't see the physical drives. So, will do this if/when the array fails; or maybe will backup the partition now, break the array, run WDTLER, then rebuild array and restore partition.

This is very much a shotgun approach - if it now works (and, again, I don't expect that), I'll have changed so many variables I won't know what fixed it.


FYI to all. After doing the mishmash of changes described above (including an image backup & restore in order to break the array so I could run WDTLER), I've had no hard (POST/IMSM) or soft (iastor timeout) errors in about 10 days. Prior to the changes, would get at least a few iastor timeout errors every day. I've written a custom query in the system event log and added it to the Vista task scheduler so I'll know immediately if/when an iastor timeout occurs.

I hesitate to even post this, because as I posted earlier - as soon as I post this, it'll probably crash! I'm not declaring victory... I continue to do daily image backups to my NAS... :)

And ... WD still needs to fix this!

[willysp]

I've pointed the Western Digital Technician I have been dealing with to this thread a number of times, I doubt he's read it. I am going to stress the issues a little more.

Please let him know that people are doing unusual and unnatural things (like boosting SATA voltages) in attempting to find a workaround!

[Tanquen]

FYI to all. After doing the mishmash of changes described above (including an image backup & restore in order to break the array so I could run WDTLER)...

Messing with the TLER setting sounds a bit scary as the default setting is for single disks and RAID 0 setups. From what I understand you are cutting the error correction of the drive short and letting the RAID controller take care of it but there is no fault tolerance for single disks or RAID 0.

Someone received this reply from WD regarding TLER settings.

Hello,

The integrated controllers that you are referring to (Silicon,Intel etc) are predominantly used in a RAID 0 (desktop) environment.

This to enhance performance (Games, Video Editing, Workstation, Database)
The TLER does not operate under single HDD or RAID 0 setup.

Regards,

WD

Others have also suggested:

Seems that Vista has an extra setting within the Hardware settings for hard drives and RAID arrays. Go to COMPUTER...right click on your hard drive (s) ...Hardware tab...Double click your HDD or ARRAY and you will see a policies tab. On the policies tab...there is a setting to Enable Enhanced Performance (which is really a way of telling Windows to very aggressively cache writes. When In RAID...DO NOT ENABLE THIS! RAID is fast as it is...by enabling...the VelociRaptors will do weird things...and then blue screen.


?????????????

[willysp]

Messing with the TLER setting sounds a bit scary as the default setting is for single disks and RAID 0 setups. From what I understand you are cutting the error correction of the drive short and letting the RAID controller take care of it but there is no fault tolerance for single disks or RAID 0.

Someone received this reply from WD regarding TLER settings.

Hello,

The integrated controllers that you are referring to (Silicon,Intel etc) are predominantly used in a RAID 0 (desktop) environment.

This to enhance performance (Games, Video Editing, Workstation, Database)
The TLER does not operate under single HDD or RAID 0 setup.

Regards,

WD

Others have also suggested:

Seems that Vista has an extra setting within the Hardware settings for hard drives and RAID arrays. Go to COMPUTER...right click on your hard drive (s) ...Hardware tab...Double click your HDD or ARRAY and you will see a policies tab. On the policies tab...there is a setting to Enable Enhanced Performance (which is really a way of telling Windows to very aggressively cache writes. When In RAID...DO NOT ENABLE THIS! RAID is fast as it is...by enabling...the VelociRaptors will do weird things...and then blue screen.


?????????????

Yes, I agree with you re TLER. When I first saw it mentioned, I had the same thought as you - it makes no sense for a drive to "give up" on error recovery early and ask the controller to fix it in a RAID0 environment since there is no other drive for the controller to get the info from. But, running WDTLER still gives the drive 7 seconds to recover by itself before throwing the problem at the controller - seems to me that if it can't recover in 7 seconds, it probably won't if given longer. Still - I'll probably revert TLER in a week or so and see what happens. I don't think changing TLER has contributed to my lack of errors so far.

And, regarding the Vista Advanced Performance checkbox - it's unchecked by default on both my arrays. (And was unchecked when I had earlier errors, so it wasn't the cause)

[nunez1980]

well,

tried, but looks like on my board, only intel raid, so far everything running ok,

oh by the way which strip size everyone is using, thx

sam

[Crazymilk]

Well I have just been trying my 2 VR's using the Gigabyte onboard Jmicron controller and OMFG!! That thing is slow. Slower than a single VR:clap:

Looks like its back to one drive and having a very expensive door stop:-/

[willysp]

well,

tried, but looks like on my board, only intel raid, so far everything running ok,

oh by the way which strip size everyone is using, thx

sam

I'm using 128K.

[Endgame124]

I'm using 8k, but thats only because I have write back cache disabled (performance at 128k without the WBC is horrible). Everything is still working fine with it disabled as well, think I'm around 40-50 days or so.

[flippin-eck]

Hi, I have been having these problems on an ICH6 and ICH9 intel raid chipset.


I have 3 of these drives in a raid0. I was considering using raid5 - to see if the same problem occurs.... Does anyone know if ppl have had these problems in raid 5?

I have tried the TLER settings, and I can go 3 or 4 days with out error and then suddenly i get 3 or 4 - and Vista gradually dies with display adapter recovered from a serious error and other errors. I never had these errors wth my old seagate drives.

I have had a drive actually drop out of the array once, and it is usually the 2 or 3 drive that reports the error. only once has the first drive errored.

When they occur, there is no real pattern to what I am doing..

1: It has happened whilst vista is booting - and caused me not to be able to login in
2: once playing left 4 dead
3: many times trying hdtune, but not recently after tler-on setting
4: having visual studio open, and skype and vlc player watching a tv episode (source avi on network drive)
5: many times with skype and virtual machine running..

I guess a few of the examples are hitting the drive quite hard, but many times i am sitting in visual studio watching a tv program and editing code.



I sent an email to WD and got the following reply

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support.

Basically, only the drive RE are good for the raid configuration. You should have some problem with the desktop edition because of technical reason (different answer time).

Answer Title: What is the difference between Desktop edition and RAID (Enterprise) edition hard drives?
Answer Link: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1397&p_created=1131638613

This error is due to the specification of the drives. So if you keep this drives, sometime you will experience
this kind of issue.

Great!

I doubt my email was given very much time. When i got the drives from DABS, nowwhere on any websites did it say "Not for RAID". I wish I had seen these forums before shelling out £500 on 3 drives.

[nunez1980]

I used the default 128k at first and now using 32k and it seems to be faster, might try 8k to see

hdtune sees at 32k max about 220mb, min 180mb and seek 7

flippin-eck,

thx for the info, right now have two and I really want to keep them, but really don't know yet, as I like to spend money to get trouble free experience and it looks like that might not be the case, but one is not enough space, oh well thats life

sam

[nunez1980]

well,

it started to run too slow, so back to, two single drives :(

sam

[willysp]

Hi, I have been having these problems on an ICH6 and ICH9 intel raid chipset.


I have 3 of these drives in a raid0. I was considering using raid5 - to see if the same problem occurs.... Does anyone know if ppl have had these problems in raid 5?

....


Which drives do you have - Raptors or Velociraptors? I have a pair of 74GB Raptors that have been in RAID0 on 2 different computers on ICHxR controllers for 4 or 5 years with zero errors. I also have a pair of 300GB VR on a new system that's had the standard RAID0 / ICH10R problems. As you'll see from my earlier posts, I've tried numerous things and am currently at about 2 weeks from last error.

I don't recall any RAID5 or RAID1 errors reported - most, if not all, are RAID0. I tried RAID1 for awhile and had no problems. But, RAID1 performance was really no better than other drives, and I suspect RAID5 would be similar.

I agree with your reaction to the WD email - someone glanced at your email, and sent you a standard 'blow-off' response.

[flippin-eck]

Hi,
I have 3 Western Digital 300GB 10,000RPM SATA-300 VELOCI RAPTOR drives.

I may try the raid5 - in a couple of weeks when I have got some projects out of the way - and can have some downtime.

I have downloaded and installed the latest Intel Matrix drivers realeased this Jan - and had no errors for a couple of days, but they have started again - same as before - with no real pattern. I find it crazy that I can have 4 days with no errors - and then a crazy error mad day!

I really don't want to play around with voltages - so I will try raid5...and if that fails then I may keep one drive and ebay the other 2..

I am usually quite carefull buying hardware - and have only made one or two slipups in the 20+years I have been "rolling my own" pcs, but I honestly thought a drive is a drive...what could go wrong.



My PC is a "work pc" as well as my games machine - and I can't be doing with raid errors.

[guylj]

Came across this very interesting thread and wondered if anyone could advise me.

I have an ASUS P5Q Mobo and for (good historical) reasons I have my XP system HDD (Velociraptor 150GB single non-RAID) on the Marvell 61xx controller. To get the second SATA port operational on this controller I had to install the Marvell driver and I think (not sure) that may have changed the controller from IDE to AHCI mode - the BIOS gives no clue.

Anyway I've been monitoring the SMART status on the Velociraptor and I've been averaging about 3 UDMA CRC Errors a month - 12 in total. A couple of times I've had an XP BSOD during load and on reboot found the UDMA CRC Error count incremented by one. But nothing helpful in the Event Log. Ran the WD Diagnostics Full Test and no errors found - didn't expect any.

I had intended to change the SATA cable and also to move the Velociraptor to the ICH10R controller (changing 2 things at once I know).

My questions are:-

Would I be best to have the ICH10R running in IDE mode rather than AHCI? Would that likely fix the issue?

If I also move one of the other (non Velociraptor) HDDs from the ICH10R to the Marvell 61xx is that likely to work OK - ie is this only a Velociraptor issue?

TIA if anyone can help.

[willysp]

.....
I really don't want to play around with voltages - so I will try raid5...and if that fails then I may keep one drive and ebay the other 2..

I am usually quite carefull buying hardware - and have only made one or two slipups in the 20+years I have been "rolling my own" pcs, but I honestly thought a drive is a drive...what could go wrong.

My PC is a "work pc" as well as my games machine - and I can't be doing with raid errors.

Yes, since your PC is a work PC, I wouldn't try RAID0 again until (if) someone finds a real fix.

I also just assumed the VR would work fine in RAID0 since I've had the 74GB Raptors running in RAID0 on ICHxR for years...

And to make things more interesting, my RAID1 array is a pair of Seagate 500GB, which are included in Seagate's current firmware fiasco - so at some point soon, to avoid them dying on me, I'll have to upgrade their firmware.

I guess drives aren't just drives anymore! :) I'm being very careful to keep both arrays backed up up on my RAID5 NAS.

[willysp]

....I had intended to change the SATA cable and also to move the Velociraptor to the ICH10R controller (changing 2 things at once I know).

My questions are:-

Would I be best to have the ICH10R running in IDE mode rather than AHCI? Would that likely fix the issue?

If I also move one of the other (non Velociraptor) HDDs from the ICH10R to the Marvell 61xx is that likely to work OK - ie is this only a Velociraptor issue?

TIA if anyone can help.

I don't have answers, just some thoughts.

I ran 2 VR as single drives on my P5Q Dlx ICH10R at the same time as a pair of Seagates in RAID1 (also ICH10R) for a month with no errors, so the VR were in AHCI mode. I don't think IDE vs. AHCI for single drives is an issue.

I've never used the Marvell ports on my mbo, but I think moving a non-VR drive there would be OK. I've not seen reports of errors on those ports.

I find it very interesting you had UDMA CRC errors in single drive mode on the Marvell. I had those errors with the VR when on the ICH10R in RAID0. So I thought - maybe an electrical signaling problem, leading me to install new, untied cables, and juicing the voltage a bit (and, so far, so good).

[guylj]

[QUOTE=willysp;5957062]I don't have answers, just some thoughts....

Thanks for that - interesting that you had no issues as a single drive in AHCI mode.

Thinking back ISTRM that initially I could only recognise an HDD on the first Marvell SATA port - installing the Marvell driver was not sufficient to see a HDD on the second. To achieve that I had to install the Drive Xpert utility. As I didn't want to actually use Drive Xpert I just set it to use single HDDs and then uninstalled it. I'm not impressed with the Marvell although it may be that the Asus BIOS has hobbled it. However I need the connectivity long term. Hopefully a less critical HDD won't stress the Marvell.

I think if I can find some time next week I'll just change the SATA cable and move the Velociraptor to the ICH10R and set IDE mode to start with.

Because the CRC problem is relatively rare it's going to need quite some time with no errors to be confident it's gone away. At least a month and maybe a couple to be sure.

[Badbonji]

I need some help; I can't even install an OS on two 150Gb Raptors in raid 0. Using them ins raid 0 will cause my DVD rom to fail (what???), so I have to use a flash drive to install an OS which I tried with windows 7. I tried native IDE, AHCI, using the Intel matrix drivers ICH10 for bootup, using the Gigabyte Raid controller etc etc.

But whenever I try to install windows 7 on the partition, it says it isn't able to create a partition or something similar. If it isn't moaning about that, it is BSoD all over the place whilst booting from the flash drive at random. Even sitting on the main menu screen it will BSoD for no apparant reason. I need some help, as I needed some more space for my OS driver and wanted to try this out. If this doesn't work, I guess I will consider SSD's.

It looks as though even if I do manage to install it, it won't run perfectly without running into issue after issue.

[Badbonji]

After many frustrating hours, I unplugged the USB hard drive and bingo, windows finally installed just like that.

[willysp]

Well, after all my contortions, and 2 weeks error-free, finally got a RAID error today.

Took system down last night for a disk image backup. When I booted it this morning, got the "Error Occurred" message during POST (2nd drive in array, of course), and then the "Volume Failing" message from IMSM after boot. Nothing in Vista event log. I ran CHKDSK, and no errors.

Not sure what I'll do next - single drives, RAID1, RAID card ...

Edit: Actually, did get an IAANTMON warning in the log before the backup (I'd been looking only for errors).

[Shiggity]

Over 1 year with my 150GB raptor ADFD, 0 issues. (Has had active air cooling 24/7)

Keep going strong mr raptor!

[willysp]

Over 1 year with my 150GB raptor ADFD, 0 issues. (Has had active air cooling 24/7)

Keep going strong mr raptor!

And I've got a pair of 74GB (GD) raptors running error free for over 4 years.

The new VR's just aren't right in RAID0.

[swede1]

Well, after all my contortions, and 2 weeks error-free, finally got a RAID error today.

Took system down last night for a disk image backup. When I booted it this morning, got the "Error Occurred" message during POST (2nd drive in array, of course), and then the "Volume Failing" message from IMSM after boot. Nothing in Vista event log. I ran CHKDSK, and no errors.

Not sure what I'll do next - single drives, RAID1, RAID card ...

Edit: Actually, did get an IAANTMON warning in the log before the backup (I'd been looking only for errors).
Nice thread (in that it offered some things to try, to no avail though, for me).

Like most all here I've been trying to get 2 Velociraptors to function stable in RAID0 under Vista on an Intel ICH8R controller since last summer.

Two threads where the excursions are detailed:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-223751_12_0.html
http://www.flyingnerd.com/intel-raid-problem-under-windows-vista/

I have followed all remedies I've been able to find and all software/drivers are the latest and I'm still seeing "iastor" timeouts in the Event log and now (seemingly after upgrading the Intel Matrix manager software in January) I am getting random BSOD with no apparent pattern.

Of all the things I've tried, moving the drives off ports 0-2 on the ICH8R controller seemed to have the biggest stability increase, though never completetly error free.

I will probably donate my Velociraptors to needing friends this coming summer and re-build a new system all together.

[willysp]

Well - got up this morning and system was basically semi-frozen and unusable. Had to do a hard re-boot. During POST, saw "Error Occurred" on 2nd drive. Once up, IMSM reported an error. Looked in Vista event log - saw a message like "Too many NTFS structure errors - postponing recovery". Ran CHKDSK after a reboot - significant number and types of errors.

Fortunately have an image backup that's a day old. So, I'll probably either RAID1 the drives on the current system (what a waste!), or keep one on current system and move one of them to an older system that has a pair of 4 or 5 year-old 74GB raptors that I may as well replace before they fail from old age.

I think I give up on RAID0 with these drives.

[mvulcan]

I've been having no luck either, even after replacing a drive. I ordered an adaptec 5405 yesterday and plan to move the Velociraptors there to test. I know everyone is blaming the drive here rather than the raid controller, but just wondering if anyone has had any issues with these drives on any other controller other than the ICH8/9/10R?

[willysp]

...I know everyone is blaming the drive here rather than the raid controller, ...

I don't think that's quite accurate - some people (e.g. me) think it's an incompatibility between VR and ICHxR. Could be on either side. Intel and WD are blaming each other. Who knows?

... but just wondering if anyone has had any issues with these drives on any other controller other than the ICH8/9/10R?

Yes, problems reported with nVidia also. From what I've read, seems like people are having some success with a RAID card. But, IMO, that's too much $ to spend an a RAID0 set - pushing $1K.

[mvulcan]

I don't think that's quite accurate - some people (e.g. me) think it's an incompatibility between VR and ICHxR. Could be on either side. Intel and WD are blaming each other. Who knows?

Sorry, what I wrote came out sounding wrong - what I meant to say is it seems like most were waiting for a solution from WD rather than from Intel which made my next move pointless.
I had pressed my motherboard maker for a fix as well, and that led nowhere.
I even tried moving to a 'slower' drive to fix the issue and still had the problem. ( Event log copied below showing my "data" raid 0 array also fail - yet both member drives showing normal you can see by the model numbers that array consists of 2 WD RE3 1TB drives. This was proceeded with the usual timeout issues. )

I really did not want to throw even more money at this problem. I wish I had found these threads before I made my purchases - I may have opted for a less expensive motherboard to recoup the cost of the add-on raid controller - but it's too late for that now...


Event Log Warning:
Status for volume 'DATA' changed from 'Normal' to 'Failed'.
System Report:-
Intel RAID Controller: Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R SATA RAID Controller
Number of Serial ATA ports: 6

RAID Option ROM Version: 8.0.0.1038
Driver Version: 8.7.0.1007
RAID Plug-In Version: 8.7.0.1007
Language Resource Version of the RAID Plug-In: File not found
Create Volume Wizard Version: 8.7.0.1007
Language Resource Version of the Create Volume Wizard: File not found
Create Volume from Existing Hard Drive Wizard Version: 8.7.0.1007
Language Resource Version of the Create Volume from Existing Hard Drive Wizard: File not found
Modify Volume Wizard Version: 8.7.0.1007
Language Resource Version of the Modify Volume Wizard: File not found
Delete Volume Wizard Version: 8.7.0.1007
Language Resource Version of the Delete Volume Wizard: File not found
ISDI Library Version: 8.7.0.1007
Event Monitor User Notification Tool Version: 8.7.0.1007
Language Resource Version of the Event Monitor User Notification Tool: File not found
Event Monitor Version: 8.7.0.1007

Array_0000
Status: No active migrations
Hard Drive Data Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 558.9 GB
Free Space: 0 GB
Number of Hard Drives: 2
Hard Drive Member 1: WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U0
Hard Drive Member 2: WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U0
Number of Volumes: 1
Volume Member 1: SYSTEM

Array_0001
Status: No active migrations
Hard Drive Data Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 1863 GB
Free Space: 0 GB
Number of Hard Drives: 2
Hard Drive Member 1: WDC WD1002FBYS-01A6B0
Hard Drive Member 2: WDC WD1002FBYS-01A6B0
Number of Volumes: 1
Volume Member 1: DATA

SYSTEM
Status: Normal
System Volume: Yes
Volume Write-Back Cache Enabled: Yes
RAID Level: RAID 0 (striping)
Strip Size: 128 KB
Size: 558.9 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Hard Drives: 2
Hard Drive Member 1: WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U0
Hard Drive Member 2: WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U0
Parent Array: Array_0000

DATA
Status: Failed
System Volume: No
Volume Write-Back Cache Enabled: Yes
RAID Level: RAID 0 (striping)
Strip Size: 128 KB
Size: 1863 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Hard Drives: 2
Hard Drive Member 1: WDC WD1002FBYS-01A6B0
Hard Drive Member 2: WDC WD1002FBYS-01A6B0
Parent Array: Array_0001

Hard Drive 0
Usage: Array member
Status: Normal
Device Port: 0
Device Port Location: Internal
Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode: Generation 2
Model: WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U0
Serial Number: xxxx
Firmware: 04.04V01
Native Command Queuing Support: Yes
Hard Drive Data Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 279.4 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Volumes: 1
Volume Member 1: SYSTEM
Parent Array: Array_0000

Hard Drive 1
Usage: Array member
Status: Normal
Device Port: 1
Device Port Location: Internal
Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode: Generation 2
Model: WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U0
Serial Number: xxxx
Firmware: 04.04V01
Native Command Queuing Support: Yes
Hard Drive Data Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 279.4 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Volumes: 1
Volume Member 1: SYSTEM
Parent Array: Array_0000

Hard Drive 2
Usage: Array member
Status: Normal
Device Port: 2
Device Port Location: Internal
Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode: Generation 2
Model: WDC WD1002FBYS-01A6B0
Serial Number: xxxx
Firmware: 03.00C05
Native Command Queuing Support: Yes
Hard Drive Data Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 931.5 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Volumes: 1
Volume Member 1: DATA
Parent Array: Array_0001

Hard Drive 3
Usage: Array member
Status: Normal
Device Port: 3
Device Port Location: Internal
Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode: Generation 2
Model: WDC WD1002FBYS-01A6B0
Serial Number: xxxx
Firmware: 03.00C05
Native Command Queuing Support: Yes
Hard Drive Data Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 931.5 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Volumes: 1
Volume Member 1: DATA
Parent Array: Array_0001

Unused Port 0
Device Port: 4
Device Port Location: Internal

Unused Port 1
Device Port: 5
Device Port Location: Internal

[Lvcoyote]

Just to let you guys know, I have two WD1600YD drives in a Raid0 configuration and this morning got an "Error Occurred" message on the 2nd drive in the array. It appears this problem is not VR specific, but more WD specific. I have two raid arrays on this machine and the array that uses two Hitachi HDD's has never seen this issue.

I ran a hard drive diagnostic on both the WD drives and they came up clean. After reading through this thread, I'm just going to pull the WD drives and get something different, that'll fix 'er...... LOL

[willysp]

Just to let you guys know, I have two WD1600YD drives in a Raid0 configuration and this morning got an "Error Occurred" message on the 2nd drive in the array. It appears this problem is not VR specific, but more WD specific. I have two raid arrays on this machine and the array that uses two Hitachi HDD's has never seen this issue.

I ran a hard drive diagnostic on both the WD drives and they came up clean. After reading through this thread, I'm just going to pull the WD drives and get something different, that'll fix 'er...... LOL

That's interesting - thanks for the info. Would be interested if you got UDMA CRC Errors in the Smart data for the 2nd drive.

[Lvcoyote]

Well, I made an image of my WD raid0 array, then deleted the array, rebuilt it, then restored the image. We'll see if the issue pops back up.....

[mwillman]

I think it has more to do with the code running the raid zero and less to do with the drives themselves. I run a raid zero on my EVGA 790i FTW digital and it has run very well for me so far (knock on wood).

[The Mafia]

Hi everyone, me again.

Just letting you know that I just built 2 x Brand new i7 Systems, Gigabyte X58 DS4. 6 gig of Ram, and 74gig Velociraptors, etc.

Standard IDE Mode - Work Perfectly.
AHCI - FAIL. Truckloads of FAIL.
RAID - 2 x 74s - Fine for 3 days then FAIL. Truck loads of it.


Don't blame the ICH10\9\8\R, I have had Seagate drives running off these controllers for years and NEVER had a problem.

WD has stuffed something up in their firmware \ Logical Hardware and now they won't work.

So no AHCI or raid at all. I've logged a call, and contacted them about this so many times and have failed. They say my call was the only case too.

********.

I hope SSD's come out and kill WD, because they have just robbed me of my $1000 that I bought to put into a raid.

****, I can't even run hot plugging because AHCI doesn't work. And without AHCI, there is no NCQ for that extra bit of performance etc.


How hard is it for their engineers to get 1 or 2 boards, and a couple of their own drives and setup some systems to test?


*Smashes hole in wall*


Oh, and another thing - When trying to install windows Vista, the initial screens take FOREVER. Not on other drive brands, only WD.

I have noticed that Spread Spectrum turned off makes things faster. WD - THERE IS A HINT THERE....

[willysp]

Hi everyone, me again.

Just letting you know that I just built 2 x Brand new i7 Systems, Gigabyte X58 DS4. 6 gig of Ram, and 74gig Velociraptors, etc.

Standard IDE Mode - Work Perfectly.
AHCI - FAIL. Truckloads of FAIL.
RAID - 2 x 74s - Fine for 3 days then FAIL. Truck loads of it.

Don't blame the ICH10\9\8\R, I have had Seagate drives running off these controllers for years and NEVER had a problem.

.........

Well - that's an interesting data point. Most of us are having problems with the new Velociraptors, not the older 74GB Raptors. I have a pair of the 74GB Raptors in RAID0 that have run on two different MBOs (both ICH8R) for 4+ years now, and zero problems.

Also, although my 300GB Velociraptors won't last much longer than 2 weeks in RAID0 mode, they run just fine in AHCI mode as single drives on ICH10R.

[The Mafia]

Well - that's an interesting data point. Most of us are having problems with the new Velociraptors, not the older 74GB Raptors. I have a pair of the 74GB Raptors in RAID0 that have run on two different MBOs (both ICH8R) for 4+ years now, and zero problems.

Also, although my 300GB Velociraptors won't last much longer than 2 weeks in RAID0 mode, they run just fine in AHCI mode as single drives on ICH10R.

Hey mate - There are 3 versions of the new Velociraptors now:

74gig
150gig
300gig

I tried 2 x 74gig Velociraptors in a raid 0 and they failed. They also started blue screening the **** out of everything when left in AHCI mode.

Its a ICH8\9\10R and Velociraptor issue. But I think its more the Velociraptors, because every other drive works fine on the ICHR. (Seagates etc)

[mvulcan]

Just to post my initial findings..
I rebuilt the system on 2/10 with an Adaptec 5405 Raid adapter.

Moved (2) 300GB WD Velociraptors and (2) 1TB WD RE3 drives, creating 2 RAID 0 arrays.

Been runnig for 7 days without issue.
These same drives (both models) were giving me timeout issues on the ICH10R. 1 week is too soon to tell if the problem is resolved for sure - but so far it looks promising.

On a side note - there was no perfomance benefit in using the Adaptec 5405 vs. the onboard ICH10R for these drives in RAID 0.

[The Mafia]

Just to post my initial findings..
I rebuilt the system on 2/10 with an Adaptec 5405 Raid adapter.

Moved (2) 300GB WD Velociraptors and (2) 1TB WD RE3 drives, creating 2 RAID 0 arrays.

Been runnig for 7 days without issue.
These same drives (both models) were giving me timeout issues on the ICH10R. 1 week is too soon to tell if the problem is resolved for sure - but so far it looks promising.

On a side note - there was no perfomance benefit in using the Adaptec 5405 vs. the onboard ICH10R for these drives in RAID 0.

I also did this - Put two 300gig Velociraptors on a Raid 0 with an adaptec 2405 SAS raid card.

Been running for 4 months now without problems.

I still think its a Firmware issue \ Logics issue, not conforming to Intel Controller specifications.

[Aynjell]

Hey mate - There are 3 versions of the new Velociraptors now:

74gig
150gig
300gig

I tried 2 x 74gig Velociraptors in a raid 0 and they failed. They also started blue screening the **** out of everything when left in AHCI mode.

Its a ICH8\9\10R and Velociraptor issue. But I think its more the Velociraptors, because every other drive works fine on the ICHR. (Seagates etc)
Google found the 74 gig one to my surprise. I didn't realize they made them and WD doesn't seem to acknowledge them on the site.

As for problems, on an nforce 4 I get erratic performance.

[tuskenraider]

Google found the 74 gig one to my surprise. I didn't realize they made them and WD doesn't seem to acknowledge them on the site.

As for problems, on an nforce 4 I get erratic performance.
Well they are actually 80GB Models and there are 160GB models as well. Both Dell exclusive models. So 5, total. I have a pair of the 80's in RAID0 on my ICH9R board. Only been day, so we'll see what happens. I ran 36GB 16MB cache Raptors for over a year without problems on the same board.

[Aynjell]

After replacing my first vr300 with a new one, I'm getting consistenty performance, but my nforce 4 board can't freaking boot vista without some special CD.

[willysp]

Hey mate - There are 3 versions of the new Velociraptors now:

74gig
150gig
300gig

I tried 2 x 74gig Velociraptors in a raid 0 and they failed. They also started blue screening the **** out of everything when left in AHCI mode.

Its a ICH8\9\10R and Velociraptor issue. But I think its more the Velociraptors, because every other drive works fine on the ICHR. (Seagates etc)

That's interesting - haven't seen 74GB VR on WD's or Newegg's sites yet. But I do see that Wikipedia shows them in the Raptor/VR list.

[Aynjell]

After replacing my first vr300 with a new one, I'm getting consistenty performance, but my nforce 4 board can't freaking boot vista without some special CD.

Got my issue fixed, solid performance all around now.

[The Mafia]

That's interesting - haven't seen 74GB VR on WD's or Newegg's sites yet. But I do see that Wikipedia shows them in the Raptor/VR list.


thats strange. I'm in Australia - We ordered 3 of them and got all three. One was dead.........

Anyway yeah, the heatsink grooves go east to west, not North to South on this new revision (Also has the Sata power and Data in the same position as a normal drive so they can be used in Hard disk caddys)

[mvulcan]

The VelociRaptors came in the following formats:

74GB: WD740****
150GB: WD1500****
300GB: WD3000****

Replace the **** with the following:
GLFS - Sata Cable Connect (Heat Fins ran lengthwise)
HLFS - Sata Backplane Ready (Heat Fins ran widthwise, SATA and Power in 3.5" position)
BLFS - 2.5" drive only (no 3.5" mounting/heatsink)

Some seem to have been discontinued, as they are no longer listed on the product pages at WDC.com

[Aynjell]

I want to say that the GLFS is going out soon. Seems like the HLFS is going out of stock everywhere. I nicknamed it "good luck finding ****". I found my pair at best buy at what I'd call a good deal. 200 for the first one, newegg price for teh second one. Total price of it all was about equivelent to 10$ less than if I ordered both at newegg. And these were retail versions so I got free cables... plus, I had a bad one. Replacing it was a store drive away.

[The Mafia]

I wonder if it will be a crap incompatible drive like the previous models?

Whats the point making a drive this fast if you can't raid it?

[tuskenraider]

The VelociRaptors came in the following formats:

74GB: WD740****
150GB: WD1500****
300GB: WD3000****

Replace the **** with the following:
GLFS - Sata Cable Connect (Heat Fins ran lengthwise)
HLFS - Sata Backplane Ready (Heat Fins ran widthwise, SATA and Power in 3.5" position)
BLFS - 2.5" drive only (no 3.5" mounting/heatsink)

Some seem to have been discontinued, as they are no longer listed on the product pages at WDC.com
As I posted on the previous page, there is no WD740****, it is WD800HLFS as well as a WD1600HLFS. 5 sizes total in the line, the two I mention being Dell exclusives and won't be found on WD's site.

[crosshairs]

maybe I'm just lucky, but I have a pair of WD800HLFS running in RAID 0 on an ICH9R X-48 board....fast and furious, with no troubles at all..

[END]

Having same problems with my
2 WD300HLFS drives RAID0
pt6 deluxe.
Under loads it stalls then i get the warning in the intel matrix starage manager. just like the picture here.
the manager marks the drive as bad or w/e then at boot i get RAID error.
So I tried my 2 WD300GLFS same issues after real loads on drives in RAID0

[mvulcan]

As I posted on the previous page, there is no WD740****,
yes, there is:
http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digital-velociraptor-hard-drive-74gb-10000rpm-serial-ata-300/q/loc/101/209114585.html
Though the 74GB drives are currently gone from WD's site.
I don't think the WD800****, WD1600**** are sold as retail drives?? I've only seen those on eBay.
Maybe they will be replacing the 74 & the 150 GB models.

[The Mafia]

As I posted on the previous page, there is no WD740****, it is WD800HLFS as well as a WD1600HLFS. 5 sizes total in the line, the two I mention being Dell exclusives and won't be found on WD's site.


I installed 3 x 74gig velociraptors.... I can take pictures if you really want..

[tuskenraider]

yes, there is:
http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digital-velociraptor-hard-drive-74gb-10000rpm-serial-ata-300/q/loc/101/209114585.html
Though the 74GB drives are currently gone from WD's site.
I don't think the WD800****, WD1600**** are sold as retail drives?? I've only seen those on eBay.
Maybe they will be replacing the 74 & the 150 GB models.Egg on my face...... Every time I searched I never got a retail link of anyone selling those as I was intently hoping there would be some 74GB models. I found the 80GB drives on eBay a couple months ago, waiting for a decent price. At $152 retail, I would have balked. $95 for my 80GB models was very palatable.

[willysp]

Having same problems with my
2 WD300HLFS drives RAID0
pt6 deluxe.
Under loads it stalls then i get the warning in the intel matrix starage manager. just like the picture here.
the manager marks the drive as bad or w/e then at boot i get RAID error.
So I tried my 2 WD300GLFS same issues after real loads on drives in RAID0

Sorry to hear. Welcome to the (expanding) club, at least :)

[END]

Hey thanks. and yes they were typo's they are all WD3000XXXX drives.
I should add this is ran fine with 2 WD1500HLFS drives RAID0 and never had any problem at all. Just not enough space. so for me it was the 300 gigs giving problems.

[mvulcan]

Been runnig for 7 days without issue.
These same drives (both models) were giving me timeout issues on the ICH10R. 1 week is too soon to tell if the problem is resolved for sure - but so far it looks promising.

Well... doesn't look good.
Day 16, drives timed out on the Adaptec controller as well. They were more reliable under the adaptec than the ICH10R, but eventually I did get a failure. I was able to record a dump on a seperate non-raid volume in the system for which the analysis confirms the array failure was the cause. The nice thing about the adaptec controller, it will beep if a drive errors, so you know right away what the issue is. So looks like the only solution for now is to stay away from WD drives if you plan to do RAID until WD fixes the issue.

Dump:
KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR (77)
The requested page of kernel data could not be read in. Caused by
bad block in paging file or disk controller error.
In the case when the first arguments is 0 or 1, the stack signature
in the kernel stack was not found. Again, bad hardware.
An I/O status of c000009c (STATUS_DEVICE_DATA_ERROR) or
C000016AL (STATUS_DISK_OPERATION_FAILED) normally indicates
the data could not be read from the disk due to a bad
block. Upon reboot autocheck will run and attempt to map out the bad
sector. If the status is C0000185 (STATUS_IO_DEVICE_ERROR) and the paging
file is on a SCSI disk device, then the cabling and termination should be
checked. See the knowledge base article on SCSI termination.
Arguments:
Arg1: ffffffffc0000185, status code
Arg2: ffffffffc0000185, i/o status code
Arg3: 0000000000000000, page file number
Arg4: 0000000018969000, offset into page file

edit:
I did just notice there is a newer Adaptec Firmware released since my last rebuild,
http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/speed/raid/asr/fw_bios/5405_fw_b16501_exe.htm
I will give that a try for now.

[freeagent]

still no problems :thup:

:D

http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/2328/hdtune.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Aynjell]

still no problems :thup:

:D

http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/2328/hdtune.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

A 31GB raid 0 volume?

[freeagent]

heheh, well its actually 29gb :)

but thats my old school raptor 150s

edit:

i should have posted the other side too, so here it is:


http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/9062/hdtunestorage.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[hank123]

Running good for me.
3x36 gig raptors in raid 0 on a Abit IP35 pro.

Without cashe enabled

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o11/4runninghank/HDTune_Benchmark_Intel___Raid_0_-1.png

With cashe enabled

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o11/4runninghank/HDTune_Benchmark_Intel___Raid_0_Vol.png

[The Mafia]

I keep telling all of you that are posting standard raptors - The problem ONLY exists with velociraptors....

[willysp]

I keep telling all of you that are posting standard raptors - The problem ONLY exists with velociraptors....

Amen to that. As I've also said several times, the older raptors work fine with ICHxR in RAID0. I have a pair of the older 74GB drives that have been running 24x7 on 2 different motherboards for over 4 years with zero issues.

The VR's, though, if I boost voltages & use new cables & baby them & hold my breath, will go only 2 or 3 weeks between major RAID errors.

[Crazymilk]

Amen to that. As I've also said several times, the older raptors work fine with ICHxR in RAID0. I have a pair of the older 74GB drives that have been running 24x7 on 2 different motherboards for over 4 years with zero issues.

The VR's, though, if I boost voltages & use new cables & baby them & hold my breath, will go only 2 or 3 weeks between major RAID errors.

Lucky you..I cant even get that long with mine.

Basically I have 2 very expensive door stops that are a load of crap.

Want really jacks me of is WD's attitude. I have never dealt with such a buuch of retards.

I for one will NEVER buy WD products again.

And please stop banging on about how stable your old 36/74 Raptors are. WE KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[willysp]

.....And please stop banging on about how stable your old 36/74 Raptors are. WE KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I mention that the old drives are stable only to show that the issue is VR's, not Raptors. No reason to shout at me.... :(

[Gunlance]

I mention that the old drives are stable only to show that the issue is VR's, not Raptors. No reason to shout at me.... :(

Care to put some money where your mouth is on old raptors not having the problem? I'm happy to wager that my old 16mb cache 74gb raptors suffer from the exact same thing.

That is of course, there was SOME OTHER bug that caused raid 0 to fail and randomly stutter that only affected my raptor drives and not my seagate ones on 2 different ichxr boards.

[Audioaficionado]

Play nice or else...

[willysp]

Attention: The Mafia

Hi,

IIRC, you posted a month or longer ago that you had pointed a WD tech to this thread more than once, but weren't getting much response from WD. Any followup or recent contact from WD?

TIA

[Crazymilk]

I mention that the old drives are stable only to show that the issue is VR's, not Raptors. No reason to shout at me.... :(

No sorry dude that was not aimed at you:( I was supporting what you said

[willysp]

No sorry dude that was not aimed at you:( I was supporting what you said

OK - thanks for clarifying

peace :)

[The Mafia]

Attention: The Mafia

Hi,

IIRC, you posted a month or longer ago that you had pointed a WD tech to this thread more than once, but weren't getting much response from WD. Any followup or recent contact from WD?

TIA


Nope, the idiots STILL think \ say that I am the only one having the problem, even though I have pointed them at this thread.

Its like that do not want to know....

Frustrating. And you know, in the end there is probably nothing we can do because they are big and we are small.

[Aynjell]

Nope, the idiots STILL think \ say that I am the only one having the problem, even though I have pointed them at this thread.

Its like that do not want to know....

Frustrating. And you know, in the end there is probably nothing we can do because they are big and we are small.

I did have a drive that was irregularly erratic. I took it back. I think that was just a bad drive though. if there's an issue it needs to be addressed. An overwhelming majority of the enthusiast community is on this chipset. I bet an even higher majority of those that own the VR's are on this chipset as well. they really need to step up and offer us some firmware. I know in about 2.5 months I'll have an intel chipset too... I'll probably be running my raptors on the built in jmicron controller to avoid this issue if it presents itself.

[freeagent]

well a problem does exist with the older adfd raptors too, i dont know if its "thee" problem.. my array blinks in and out from time to time, im not sure if its from overclocking, or somekind of bug.. but to get around it i either go into the asus bios and exit, or hit ctrl i and press 1, then it says i cant, then i exit and bam raid is working again :thup:

so i guess i fibbed when i said i had no problem, i guess i just learned to work around it for it not to be a problem :D

edit:

i forgot to quote the mafia and willsp

[The Mafia]

I just sent another emila to WD with this thread attached.

I'm going to keep hassling them until they do something.

[willysp]

I just sent another emila to WD with this thread attached.

I'm going to keep hassling them until they do something.

If you want me to chime in with my issues & attempted fixes, PM me the WD email address.

Since I made all my changes (SB and PCI/SATA voltages, cables, SSC), I went 2 weeks till my 1st RAID error, 2 weeks till 2nd, and it's been almost a month now since the 2nd. Errors were much more frequent before I made the changes. I know I didn't fix it, but the changes did (I think) improve MTBF. May try to boost the voltages one more increment. (And will revert TLER to default)

[The Mafia]

one other thing - I noticed with spread spectrum off, things moved faster too. No more lag.

I'm pretty sure the drive support this on the drive? Can we jumper it off?

[guylj]

I don't have answers, just some thoughts.

I ran 2 VR as single drives on my P5Q Dlx ICH10R at the same time as a pair of Seagates in RAID1 (also ICH10R) for a month with no errors, so the VR were in AHCI mode. I don't think IDE vs. AHCI for single drives is an issue.

I've never used the Marvell ports on my mbo, but I think moving a non-VR drive there would be OK. I've not seen reports of errors on those ports.

I find it very interesting you had UDMA CRC errors in single drive mode on the Marvell. I had those errors with the VR when on the ICH10R in RAID0. So I thought - maybe an electrical signaling problem, leading me to install new, untied cables, and juicing the voltage a bit (and, so far, so good).

Over five weeks ago I changed the VR from the Marvell to the ICH10. I also changed the SATA cable - used a yellow cable with the locking clips (I think it came with a Gigabyte Mobo but not sure). Also changed ICH10 into AHCI mode. So three things altered in total!

Since then no more UDMA CRC errors on the VR. And none on the Samsung HDD which took its place on the Marvell.

Would be nice to know exactly what the problem was caused by but it's too time consuming to change just one variable at a time when it takes weeks to be even half confident that the change has made a difference.

[lubetek]

Hey guys. I've recently built a new PC and have been having this very same problem with one difference; I'm only using one 300gb Velociraptor. I have it split into two partitions; one for the OS and one for my games.

I get very random freezing for 5 seconds or so and then everything goes back to normal.
It mainly happens at my desktop and when I click on something. I can be accessing another storage drive, or clicking intenet explorer, opening any application. Then other times I don't get this freeze at all. its just random. Its driving me crazy though.

This is on a Gigabyte EP45 UD3P Rev 1.1 and Vista HP 64 bit

Reading through this thread has given me a couple ideas to try so I thank you. I've already formatted several times now.

I should add that I installed my WD 300GB raptor on my HTPC which uses an EVGA 680i SLI A1 and used it as the OS drive with ZERO problems. It never froze. I've only been experiencing this on my P45 board.

If I find a fix for this I will post.

[willysp]

Hey guys. I've recently built a new PC and have been having this very same problem with one difference; I'm only using one 300gb Velociraptor. I have it split into two partitions; one for the OS and one for my games.

I get very random freezing for 5 seconds or so and then everything goes back to normal.
It mainly happens at my desktop and when I click on something. I can be accessing another storage drive, or clicking intenet explorer, opening any application. Then other times I don't get this freeze at all. its just random. Its driving me crazy though.

This is on a Gigabyte EP45 UD3P Rev 1.1 and Vista HP 64 bit

Reading through this thread has given me a couple ideas to try so I thank you. I've already formatted several times now.

I should add that I installed my WD 300GB raptor on my HTPC which uses an EVGA 680i SLI A1 and used it as the OS drive with ZERO problems. It never froze. I've only been experiencing this on my P45 board.

If I find a fix for this I will post.

Hi,

Have you looked in Computer Management -- Event Viewer? If not, suggest you look for any events with a source of 'iaStor' (the driver) or 'IAANTmon' (Intel Matrix Storage Manager, if you have it installed).

Especially look for iaStor Event ID 9 - "The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.".

[The Mafia]

if you're running a single drive, switch the bios to "IDE mode" instead of AHCI mode. They crash and hang like little bitches when even in single AHCI mode.

You're going to lose hot swap ability though.

Had this same problem with 150gig VRs on gigabyte DS4 boards, in AHCI mode. Change to native IDE and no problems.

Stupid WD.

[lubetek]

Well I switched to IDE mode in the BIOS and installed the chipset SATA2 drivers and selected IDE. So far so good. I had a couple slight pauses while playing CoD5 last night but that was only after playing several hours straight with no issues at all.

Also I should add that I experienced only one pause while at my desktop and that was when I selected the CPU bench test in Sisoft Sandra. Running any other test and I had no issues at all but as soon as I selected the CPU test my mouse froze BUT when it un-froze the test had completed. So maybe this is normal.

So far when accessing files, and other hard drives it has not paused at all. I think my problem might be solved. Of course now that I've stated that I'll go home and experience lock up galore tonight.