RAID 1 array restored!

I was able to restore the 160 GB SATA RAID 1 array on my WIN XP PRO
machine this evening in 1 hour and 15 minutes from the time the restore
started. Thanks to an extremely nice person who had an identical MAXTOR
drive fail in his RAID 1 system, I was able to get detailed
instructions. The Intel ICH5R RAID controller manual provided no
information on how to accomplish the rebuild, and Intel offered no
online assistance. However this kind person somehow 'beat' the process
out of Intel and posted the information to a computer BBS.

The steps to rebuild the array included twice ignoring warnings that all
data on the RAID would be lost if I proceeded. If I wasn't sure that it
had been done successfully before I would have been sure it was crazy to
try it. Of course I had a complete system backup before I attempted it.

Lessons learned:

1. The MAXTOR 160 GB 6Y160 hard drive appears (based upon a small sample
size) to have questionable reliability. Both my drive and the fellow who
assisted me had identical new drives fail in well under a year from the
time we purchased the drives. In my case it was 8 months. Neither one of
us had experienced a drive failure this soon after putting a new drive
into service.

2. MAXTOR's warranty service was speedy. I give them an A+ for
turn-around time. I received a replacement drive less than 48 hours
after I placed the call to their warranty folks, although I had to
'secure' the instant drive shipment by giving them a credit card number.

3. MAXTOR does not guarantee that a warrantied drive will be replaced
with a new unit, and I received a refurbished drive. Although this
satisfies the MAXTOR warranty requirements to the letter, I am not a
happy camper, and would have preferred a new drive. I give then a C on this.

4. Having a RAID 1 configuration allowed a speedy and complete recovery
from a single drive failure once I learned the 'secret' process. I
didn't even have to partition or format the new drive -- Intel's
hardware and software handled everything. Had I opted for a RAID 0 my
data would have been toast without a backup, even if a RAID 0 may
provide nearly double the data rates when it is working. Live fast and
die gloriously. Isn't that the Klingon way?

4. After this experience I will never build a PC without a mass storage
system that utilizes RAID 1 or higher. Having to re-load the OS and
backup software and then PRAY that I can successfully restore everything
is a fairly painful process, and there is simply NO WAY I could have
accomplished this in 1 Hour and 15 Minutes. And I am pretty handy with
computers. Most people would be completely screwed.

5. Having a RAID 1 allowed my computer to remain operational even after
a complete failure of one drive. It didn't miss a beat. Very nifty.

Folks, motherboards with built in RAID support, and expansion card RAID
controllers are very reasonably priced. So are hard drives. We all know
that we should backup our data, but even so, the convenience and speed
with which a RAID 1 or higher mass storage system can be rebuilt
convinces me that anyone with lots of data (i.e. photos) should STRONGLY
consider utilizing this technology in addition to having a 'doomsday'
backup -- preferably stored off site.

Thanks to all who offered advice and moral support, you helped out big time.

And a HUGE KISS to those wonderful people at Intel who created the ICH5R
RAID controller and Intel Application Accelerator RAID Edition software.
Where have you been all my life?

Steve

"steve" wrote in message
...
I was able to restore the 160 GB SATA RAID 1 array on my WIN XP PRO
machine this evening in 1 hour and 15 minutes from the time the restore
started. Thanks to an extremely nice person who had an identical MAXTOR
drive fail in his RAID 1 system, I was able to get detailed
instructions. The Intel ICH5R RAID controller manual provided no
information on how to accomplish the rebuild, and Intel offered no
online assistance. However this kind person somehow 'beat' the process
out of Intel and posted the information to a computer BBS.

The steps to rebuild the array included twice ignoring warnings that all
data on the RAID would be lost if I proceeded. If I wasn't sure that it
had been done successfully before I would have been sure it was crazy to
try it. Of course I had a complete system backup before I attempted it.

Lessons learned:

1. The MAXTOR 160 GB 6Y160 hard drive appears (based upon a small sample
size) to have questionable reliability. Both my drive and the fellow who
assisted me had identical new drives fail in well under a year from the
time we purchased the drives. In my case it was 8 months. Neither one of
us had experienced a drive failure this soon after putting a new drive
into service.

2. MAXTOR's warranty service was speedy. I give them an A+ for
turn-around time. I received a replacement drive less than 48 hours
after I placed the call to their warranty folks, although I had to
'secure' the instant drive shipment by giving them a credit card number.

3. MAXTOR does not guarantee that a warrantied drive will be replaced
with a new unit, and I received a refurbished drive. Although this
satisfies the MAXTOR warranty requirements to the letter, I am not a
happy camper, and would have preferred a new drive. I give then a C on
this.

4. Having a RAID 1 configuration allowed a speedy and complete recovery
from a single drive failure once I learned the 'secret' process. I
didn't even have to partition or format the new drive -- Intel's
hardware and software handled everything. Had I opted for a RAID 0 my
data would have been toast without a backup, even if a RAID 0 may
provide nearly double the data rates when it is working. Live fast and
die gloriously. Isn't that the Klingon way?

4. After this experience I will never build a PC without a mass storage
system that utilizes RAID 1 or higher. Having to re-load the OS and
backup software and then PRAY that I can successfully restore everything
is a fairly painful process, and there is simply NO WAY I could have
accomplished this in 1 Hour and 15 Minutes. And I am pretty handy with
computers. Most people would be completely screwed.

5. Having a RAID 1 allowed my computer to remain operational even after
a complete failure of one drive. It didn't miss a beat. Very nifty.

Folks, motherboards with built in RAID support, and expansion card RAID
controllers are very reasonably priced. So are hard drives. We all know
that we should backup our data, but even so, the convenience and speed
with which a RAID 1 or higher mass storage system can be rebuilt
convinces me that anyone with lots of data (i.e. photos) should STRONGLY
consider utilizing this technology in addition to having a 'doomsday'
backup -- preferably stored off site.

Thanks to all who offered advice and moral support, you helped out big
time.

And a HUGE KISS to those wonderful people at Intel who created the ICH5R
RAID controller and Intel Application Accelerator RAID Edition software.
Where have you been all my life?

Steve



I use RAID -1*. Two disks, partitioned a few times, & image the C partition
to the second drive every now and again. Needs some assistance if the first
drive fails but also doesn't waste 50% of the available disk space, more
like 10%. Also, if something unpleasant like a virus or just some corruption
nukes the C partition or the disk its on, I can effectively 'go back in
time' to the last image, which wont have been affected. With RAID 1 any
corruption or virus (much more likely than a disk crash IME) will be
replicated faithfully and almost instantly to both disks.

--
Tumbleweed

*TM

Remove my socks for email address

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 22:46:01 -0700, steve wrote:

I was able to restore the 160 GB SATA RAID 1 array on my WIN XP PRO
machine this evening in 1 hour and 15 minutes from the time the restore
started.

I am glad to see that you were able to recover successfully from a drive failure.

However, you may wish to re-visit the RAID-1 setup you are using.

5. Having a RAID 1 allowed my computer to remain operational even after
a complete failure of one drive. It didn't miss a beat. Very nifty.

This is a big factor but I suspect that drive failure is less likely than other corruptions - virus,
spyware etc.

I have separate C (executables) and D (data) drives in the machine and identical sized drives
connected as SATA external drives. I use Norton Ghost to write images of the working drives to the
external drives. The process used is:-
a) switch on external drive
b) use Ghost to put image on external drive
c) switch off external drive.

Restoration of a Ghost image takes around 20 minutes. If the drive fails you have to add
formatting time for the new drive to that time - boot up using the XP CD-ROM to do this.

This covers all eventualities but, I admit, you will be off air for a period of time if the drive
fails rather than it being corrupted. If you wish to also cover drive failure then use RAID-1 for
the working drives but make sure that you still backup to external drives to cover other problem
modes.


Cheers . . . JC

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 22:46:01 -0700, steve
wrote:

I was able to restore the 160 GB SATA RAID 1 array on my WIN XP PRO
machine this evening in 1 hour and 15 minutes from the time the restore

Glad it all worked out fine :-)

It might be worth noting a couple of things....

using a major, then incremental backups is a good idea (if you have
enough back up medium) as it a rotating backup system... week day's,
then 4 weekly re-cycled (ie on week 5 you re-use week ones tape) then
monthy backups, which in theory are never replaced, or rotated on a 13
month cycle, and finally yearly backups.

None of which I use, but I did work in IT lol.

I tend to shoot, transfer, backup raw files to CD, work on raws to
tiffs/jpegs, delete raws, backup tiffs/jpegs to CD, and finally delete
the tiffs after a period of time.

There is another factor to concider with any form of raid and large
number of disks (not really relivent with 2 drives) The more drives
that are used, the higher the statistical chance they are that one of
them will fail.....

If a drive is say rated at 5 mean/average (can never remember which)
years, and you have 20 of them then its more likely that one of them
will pop closer to every 2-4 years.

Another thing to remember is that if a drive is on 24-7 and has to be
shut down for a period of time, thats the most likely time it will
fail, also if never de-fragged for say 3 years, then de-fragged that
is a likely fail time... power on/off regularaly and also de-fragg
regularaly and they tend not to fail as often. (on/offs are because
the heads stick, de-frags because they do a total work out that they
have not become acustomed to... all anecdotal ofcause)


--
Jonathan Wilson.
www.somethingerotic.com