Where can I find RAID diagnostics?

[thad3]

I had a RAID1 (2 disks, mirrored) installed in my home desktop after a crash. The shop put in a CompUSA RAID controller boards and 2 WD IDE drives. When I looked at the doc on the CD, there was no information about diagnostics or replacing a faulty drive. The web site had nothing more.

The point of the redundancy is to improve reliability. That requires that I can get information on individual drive flakiness and failures as they occur. I would expect to have diagnostics that finds problems with the component drives in the array, but so far haven't found anything on the network with diagnostics for simple IDE drive RAID controllers.

The best thing would be to find software that runs with the card in my system. I would also consider going to a different brand controller if it came with good diagnostics.

Does anyone know of diagnostic software for the inexpensive RAID1 systems used in desktops?

 

[rvnguy]

Part of RAID X, is self diag.

Check in disk management (XP), located in control panel.

Your array should be listed and indicate a 'healthy' status. When and if there is a problem, you should get a msg about it, and DM will indicate a 'degraded' array.

This should cover array health.

S.M.A.R.T. is part of most newer drives, possibly NCQ on some, and for individual drive health the drive mfg utils are suficient and can be run from a bootable CD.

Hope This Helps

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[Freestone]

I hate to disagree here, but in part I must.

Since Disk Management is not managing the array itself, it will only see the RAID array as another disk drive, and will not present any array status.

Did your RAID controller come with any software? If it did, chances are there is some kind of array management tool included that can be installed and used to monitor array health much as rvnguy described.

 

[thad3]

Thanks for the responses.

I didn't find aything labelled Disk Management, but found info on system hardware. It indicated an array and gave the capacity, but did not give the model of the drives. In terms of diagnostics, I didn't find anything specific to RAID analysis.

To answer Freestone's question, it only came with drivers and an installaion manual -- no utilies and no maintenance procedures. Does ANY company provide those for RAID control? Is there a software RAID1 driver (as opposed to HW) that would provide individual drive diagnostics and maintenance? I'm really perplexed by the apparent lack of such support for controller boards.

 

[Freestone]

Disk Management is located by Start, right-clicking on My Computer, then Manage, or by Start, Run..., diskmgmt.msc

Adaptec RAID controllers certainly come with management software.

If you can locate the name of the manufacturer of your controller, perhaps we could assist you in locating software for it. Or perhaps you can ask the shop that installed your card for it.

 

[thad3]

The card I have has a CompUSA private label, model PCI ATA 133 RAID Card, SKU: 329470. I sent a query to CompUSA Saturday on their tech support web site and am waiting a response. The only downloads I saw were what came on the CD: drivers and installation manual.

Regarding Adaptec, I looked a little on their web site and did not find reference to RAID diagnostics. I would swap boards if I knew I would be getting some good diagnostics.

 

[Freestone]

I am not recommending this card in particular, but providing the link to show that Adaptec does indeed provide management software for their RAID controllers:

http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/su...uct/AAR-1200A&filekey=aar_1200a_mgmt_soft.exe

The point of management software is to provide the user with, among other things, the status of the RAID array, also known as its health. If an array is marked as degraded, the management software will provide insight as to what drive failed and why, and perhaps other diagnostic options. It all depends on what is included with the management software. The only other diagnostics available would be what is available to any end-user, i.e., the diagnostics downloaded from the drive's manufacturer's site, which is run on a drive-by-drive basis.

 

[rvnguy]

As you initially stated that you had raid 1 prior to installing a cusa controller board, I assumed you were using the soft raid in xp and therefore DM would provide a look.

Don't know what the 'crash' you refferenced was, but highly unlikely that both drives in raid1 would fail at same time. If an electrical spike of some type then maybe yes on both.

I think that you should be coming to the conclusion that there is not actually a util to diag drives while in an array.

There are utils to look at individual drives if you begin having array faults. And there are utils to monitor array status(monitor & not diag the drives), and manage the array i.e. add drives subtract drives etc.

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[thad3]

Thanks, rvnguy, for your followup.

The crash was on a prior drive, causing weeping and gnashing of teeth. That's when I decided to install a RAID.

Yesterday I talked with a more senior guy at the shop that did the replacement and he explained about the current "Raid management" software and philosophy. I am currently planning on replacing the CompUSA controller with an Adaptec. The tech who did the job couldn't configure to boot off the CUSA RAID, so installed a separate disk as bootable. Since then I see the advantage of having a bootable RAID: lots of software have cute places where they put your configuration data -- program folder, Windows\Application Data, etc., which are normally on the bootable drive. I'm sure some of it could be reconfigured, but it makes more sense (to me) to have the whole storage system RAID. The biggest problem is that we will have to reinstall SW after having done hours of that already on the interim system. Wife not happy about that (its her computer).

 

[Prydonian]

For the uninitiated, it can be real perplexing to make a bootable RAID. First thing to do is go into the CMOS and disable INT 19. This will allow the BIOS to boot devices on an aboveboard card instead of the MB controllers. Without this, you haven't got a prayer. I'm surprised the CUSA guy didn't know this....

Mike, The IT Guy.



Life is too short to drink warm beer....