Do I need a new hard drive?

[Dweezel]

Hi all,

I now very little about computer hardware, but have figured out that I have a single hard drive in a Raid configuration that divides it into 2 virtual drives (not sure if I'm using the right terminology here). I'm running Windows Vista 32bit and recently noticed that there was an icon I didn't recognise in the system tray. It looks like one red and one white metal drum (as in oil drum) side by side. When I mouse over it the following tooltip appears:

A drive in a Raid O configuration is failing. Try to back up data immediately.

So that's exactly what I did and I had no problems with the backup. The computer seems to be running OK if a little slow, and other than this warning nothing is untoward. When the computer boots up, the screens that show up before Windows loads are also saying that there is an error with one of the 2 Raid volumes.

I ran chkdisk (which took hours) and I presume everything was OK because it just rebooted the system when it was done. I read on a forum post somewhere that I could try downloading Intel's Matrix Storage Manager and use it to mark the volume as being OK. I did that and the error disappeared from the system tray and from the computers start up screens, but after another reboot it appeared again.

I was thinking about reformatting my hard drive anyway, so is the best thing to do just to sling another hard drive in and be done with it? I have no experience with fitting hard drives but I've Googled around for info and it looks quite straightforward.

Any advice appreciated.

TIA
Chris

 

[BadBigBen]

There may have been wear and tear on that one partition that was setup in a Software Raid, why this was done on one drive I have no idea, as it does not provide any benefit that I could fathom...

The drive manufacturer has a tool that can check the drive for integrity, e.g. if the HDD is a Seagate then the tool you would need is SeaTools, if it is IBM or Hitachi then FTool is the right tool... these can be found on the websites of the respective manufacturer...

now when the drive does check out ok, I would still get another drive as the System drive, install Vista fresh and clean, add the second drive and reformat it from within Vistas own Drive Managements...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"