SOLVED 16 TB RAID 5 No Longer Recognized [SOLVED]

[Sugam]

SOLVED: Using the array in USB mode was hiding a NTFS problem

RAID: Standalone Hardware Raid Enclosure
http://www.sansdigital.com/towerraid-/tr5utplusb.html

Raid Level: 5

Drives : 5x Western Digital RE WD3000FYYZ 3TB
Operating System : Windows 7 Pro
Memory : 16 gb 1600mhz
Processor : 3.3 ghz AMD 1100T
Motherboard : Crosshair IV Extreme
GPU : MSI Radeon HD 7970 Lightning Edition
PSU : 1200 Watt Corsair AX1200i 80plus platinum

GPT Type

Symptoms:
After a circuit breaker trip, Windows 7 freezes when attempting to recognize the drive when it is attached.
It locks up until I unplug or power off the drive. Prior to sudden power loss drive was accessible.
When I unplug or power off drive Windows says drive is not formatted

Environment:
No UPS
Drive is connected to a surge protector and a GFI outlet
When power outage occurs GFI outlet will trip disabling power to outlet until reset by hand
(This prevents sudden surges when power is restored)
Drive temp are normal 30c

Trouble shooting steps:
Windows SFC - No change Problem exists
Complete OS reformat - No change Problem exists
BIOS Reset - No change Problem exists
Tried connecting with USB 3 / USB 3 / ESATA - No change Problem exists
Boot to Windows 7 PRO DVD - DVD also freezes when attempting to access drive
CHKDSK /f from Windows 7 PRO boot DVD - Reports drive as RAW
Windows 8.1 PE DVD - Can access drive and files No problem
Terabyte Unlimited Image for Lunix - Can access drive and files No problem
CHKDSK /f using Windows 8.1 PE DVD - NO ERRORS FOUND
Acronis Disk Director 11 - Recognizes drive No problem
Other USB devices work
Other ESATA / SATA devices work
Windows 10 PRO Install DVD Recognizes Drive no problem
CHKDSK /f from windows 10 Pro install DVD NO ERRORS FOUND
Lights on RAID do not indicate any abnormal condition (Array is not rebuilding)
I've tried giving it the finger and I've tried calling it obscene language
Both verbal and gestural persuasions have proven ineffective

Thank you for taking your time to look at this and for any advice that anyone could provide is greatly appreciated

 

[TransformedBG]

was the array on a raid card or mobo?

 

[Sugam]

It is built into the raid enclosure
No card no software
The pc does not see it as a raid
there are dip switches to control it

the magic of this is that it makes it portable

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

It's also possible that one of the HDDs has a bad board.

Possible symptoms:

With MHDD, the sector scan goes OK.

But, Windows gives errors, such as about being unable to format or it not being formatted. Or it reports the HDD being raw.

Or Windows copies files to the HDD without an error, but the files on the HDD are corrupted!



For RAID, if this occurs again, even when you don't use that HDD again, then it looks like a bad RAID controller.

 

[Sugam]

UPDATE:

Apparently Windows 7 does recognize recognizes the drive but it takes a long time.
And only windows 7 has this hang It takes about 5-10 mins for windows to recognize it.

Only windows 7 has this issue. All other OS's are prompt and works ok.
Smart data of the drives are ok

The drive appear to write files and read files correctly

Ive never had this issue before

Speculation:
I am wondering if windows 7 is hanging on something that chkdsk does not detect or scan for?
Perhaps windows 8+ has a faster time out

 

[Xaotic]

This is a strange one indeed.

Let's start with the easier stuff. Run the Windows 8.1 DVD and hit Shift F10 with the array connected. This will bring you to a command prompt. Next type:

diskpart
list disk
select disk x (where x is the array's disk)
detail disk

This will return information on the disk and partitions it holds. Assuming this looks normal, I would normally suspect that you have a corrupt driver, though you did mention a complete OS reformat. I'm not sure how to read this. Did you reinstall the OS?

The GPT partition accessibility is built into the OS and SFC reported no errors. Most of the other methods you listed involve their own drivers in accessing the disk. Try opening devmgmt.msc and show hidden devices. Uninstall and delete the driver for the array. On plugin, this may reinstall correctly and resolve the issue.

If this fails, try contacting tech support for Sansdigital. They may have seen this issue previously.

I'll try to come up with other things to check as well.

Was typing for a awhile and missed the updates.

I'd sill try the driver first.

 

[Xaotic]

Given the OS hangs, I would also expect errors in the Windows > System logs. Take a look at the event viewer as well.

 

[Sugam]

I really appreciate the replies.
I've posted this on many forums and no one wants to touch this with a 40 foot pole
Generally I am "THAT GUY" who when he has a problem has no one to turn to.
I tend to dabble in things that the computer gods consider taboo I think.

RAID 5 over USB? Blasphemy!

Well I think I have found my problem

Connecting ESATA and using windows 8.1 chkdsk says I have a corrupt ntfs header and it needs to use the second one
Drive access using ESATA is painfully slow (it should be running at 200mb/s and its just a snail)

I am really hoping that ReFs makes its way to home version of windows sometime in my lifetime.

I do not trust the integrity of the file system anymore

I think its time for my data to abandon ship! I don't really have enough drives to do this massive data transfer.
So time for more taboo

I'm using 5 tb on the array

What I will do is copy the most important stuff to a 2tb drive
Pop out one of the array drives and run in degraded mode
Attach the 3 tb to the computer format it etc

There are no bad sectors on any of the drives so I'm not worried about that

ZERO out the array. Reinitialize it with GPT, Repartition it, Format, copy the files back to the array

Reattach the 3tb drive rebuild the array

When I copy files I use teracopy which does a checksum of the copied files and verifies the files are exact

So in theory this is going to work

 

[Xaotic]

That sounds feasible, but risky. I'd rather get another disk or two and attach to the mainboard, even on a temporary basis.

When you rebuild, make sure to use RAID5 with a hot spare. I strongly prefer RAID6, but it doesn't seem to be offered.

Good luck.

 

[Sugam]

I just don't have the drives. or the space in the computer to put them. I need to get some hot swap bays as all the HD bays inside my full tower are occupied.

I can come up with another 1 TB
So 3 TB of my most important stuff I can save without worry

I might be able to delete 2 TB of stuff from the array. When you have 16 TB you don't need to delete things as you never know when you might need it.
So I have disk images dating back to 2000 for windows 2000.
I might just go and do some clean up anyway this drive is cluttered with nonsense anyway.

It does not support a hot spare

I do agree about RAID 6 especially with cheaper drives.
Back in my day the I in raid meant inexpensive...cant really trust inexpensive drives in raid anymore

I compensated for the problems of large RAID 5 with REALLY expensive WD RE drives (AKA WD Yellow's)
The error rate of my drives are 10E16 (OR 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) almost no chance of failing to rebuild

Because if I used standard drives 10E14 (OR 1 in 100,000,000,000,000 bytes ) the chance of my 16tb array not rebuilding after a failure is significant (I believe that's a < 10% chance of failure)

At the time I purchased it, it was the only enclosure on the market that offered 5 bays, hardware raid and usb3 support
the sad part is it only operates at sata 2 speed

I have a LSI MEGARAID SAS 9265-8i http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118160
It supports RAID 6

But the point was having something portable

On the LSI card I have 4x 256gb vertex 4 SSD's running in RAID 0
Why? Because I can.
I actually have 6 vertex 4 256 drives highly recommend them

If anyone gets crazy ideas from this please note I'm using an ENTERPRISE grade raid card.

I would not recommend it with entry level RAID cards or onboard RAID or software raid

This is my OS and program drive. If it ever did drop or had an issue I have a 1TB wd black drive which is a clone
Plus I image the drive to the raid array.

Over the past 3 years this has ran like a champ. I do not keep important stuff on it.

Someday I will migrate these 3tb drives into my computer and use the lsi card and a SSD for LSI Cashcade
The performance should double. And ill buy a BBU for the card. (If power goes out the BBU powers the card and retains the cache until the card and drives gets power)
I don't do it now because... im out of physical space to put these drives.

They wont fit in the case without hot swap bays
I don't really care for the idea of an enclosure.

Then get some SATA 2 drives and fill the enclosure and use it as my backup / portable drive.

This is a work in progress.

 

[Xaotic]

No worries.

The LSI is a good card. I've been using the Arecas for around a decade now, though I have worse retention issues.

As long as it works for you, it's all good.

 

[cw823]

I compensated for the problems of large RAID 5 with REALLY expensive WD RE drives (AKA WD Yellow's)
The error rate of my drives are 10E16 (OR 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) almost no chance of failing to rebuild

Because if I used standard drives 10E14 (OR 1 in 100,000,000,000,000 bytes ) the chance of my 16tb array not rebuilding after a failure is significant (I believe that's a < 10% chance of failure)

If anyone gets crazy ideas from this please note I'm using an ENTERPRISE grade raid card.

I would not recommend it with entry level RAID cards or onboard RAID or software raid

Someday I will migrate these 3tb drives into my computer and use the lsi card and a SSD for LSI Cashcade
The performance should double. And ill buy a BBU for the card. (If power goes out the BBU powers the card and retains the cache until the card and drives gets power)

most of the above is nonsense if you're using NTFS, which I'm guessing you are. I wouldn't trust 100Gb of data on NTFS, much less 16tb, which is just asking for trouble. You could get WAY better performance, and lower your chances of unreported write errors, by using a real file system like ZFS.

 

[Sugam]

I am not familiar with the ZFS file system out there

But I do know the hardware limitations of hard drives
There are unrecoverable read error rates (URE) and I don't know how a different file system is going to prevent this
Perhaps you could elaborate is this block duplication?
(I also believe URE's are silent?)

What I do know is with my hard drive a URE is extremely rare

I am also mostly a windows user (I do know my way around Linux though)
I am also afraid of using a different file system because NTFS has countless 3rd party tools available for it in the event of a catastrophic problem. software bug, virus or even user error

Just the other day I had to restore a drive because I either misunderstood the megaraid software or there was a bug but it began to zero the wrong drive
I was able to recover the files I needed. Would i be able to recover from an event like that with ZFS? I have no idea.

Now I am open to the idea of other file systems but I have to weigh the pro's and cons.

Windows support is a big one as i use this drive to directly image bare metal systems

I found out the reason why all this trouble started and this advice might help someone in the future
Come to find out my wall outlet is only producing 99 volts which can cause serious issues and random PC shutdowns
The cause is its the main breaker in the house. Water got into the 100 amp breaker corroding it.
If anyone ever has an issue of unexplainable crashes / shutdowns ETC consider measuring your outlet volts

Never undervolt your computer!

 

[cw823]

I am not familiar with the ZFS file system out there

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS