Is my Raid1 going bad?

[MockY]

Earlier today, my Terminal Server froze (there was so much hard drive activity that I could not even log on to it) so I hard booted it. Chkdsk launched upon reboot and after 45 minutes I could boot into Windows again. But now I get lots or errors in Event Viewer, and some examples are:

Under application:

Error ESENT Event # 455 ( this is contant all the time and seems to be related to MSN Messenger)

Under System:

Error Category: Disk Event# 55 - The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume [volume number]

I have run chkdsk already but this error pops up all the time anyways. The system seems to be running even with these errors but I am forced now to take drastic measures tonight to make sure the system runs stable.

What would be my best course of action? Would this be hardware issues of is it corrupt Windows?

 

[petrosky]

Hi there,

You don't say what RAID hardware/software you are using, but I would boot into the RAID console and check the Array status from there.

It is also worth looking at the manufacturers of the hard drives as many have full diagnostic programs which you can boot the machine from to check the drives.

Probably goes without saying, make sure you have full known good backups.

Regards,

Peter.

Remember- It's nice to be important,
but it's important to be nice

 

[iolair]

I have seen some virus/malware/spyware programs do this to a server. The fact that there's lots of hard drive activity also points to that. Good luck. I feel your "pain".

Iolair MacWalter
Director of IT

 

[MockY]

I have a replica of the server. I managed after many tries (chkdsk was forced to run multiple times in a row) to run Ghost on the volume and pushed it to the other server. It has now been running in production for 5 hours without any of the previous issues that I had.

So it looks like the issue is hardware related after all. Which is much better than being infected with something that might take a lot of effort to get rid of.
So what would be the best course of action now?
Should I split the array and then check both drives individually for errors or should I leave it as it is and do the troubleshooting with software?

 

[technome]

Mocky, please answer Petrosky's question. If you don't feed the people here you will not get answers.
"You don't say what RAID hardware/software you are using"

It could be massive file corruption due to the Os or due to disks errors; you need to run a surface test on the disks via a diagnostic disk as Petrosky suggest or if no diag disk at least run the Windows disk tool error checking with surface check; if hardware raid you should also run a Consistency Check at the raid card level. Again, if hardware raid you should have raid array monitoring software installed to keep track of disk health.

If it turns out to be caused by the Os, I would do an "over the top repair" Windows repair install, to replace damaged files.


........................................
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http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm

 

[iolair]

If it's an HP server, or IBM, or Dell, usually you'll see a red or orange light on the dead drive. If it's an HP, you can also boot into the Drive Array Diagnostics and test from there. I'm not familiar with IBM or Dell on that count.

If it's just one disk, I'd replace and then use the server again. I've done that before, with success. Or, you could take this opportunity to buy three new, larger capacity disks for the server. How old is the server? If it's not too old, you can do this. If it's over five years old, it's time to replace it. Good luck.

Iolair MacWalter
Director of IT