RAID-0 with Bad Sector Problem

[s0l1d 0]

I've been having this problem since earlier this year. I'm gonna tell the entire story, it can be a bit long, but at least people who try help me can get a better idea of my situation.

 

I have Asus A7V333 Mobo with a built-in Promise 20276 ATA133 RAID controller. I have two (2) DiamondMax Plus D740X 80GB harddrives [6L080J4] and are setup as RAID-0.

 

I've partitioned the now combined 160GB RAID-0 Drive into C = 10GB, D = 10GB, and E = 140GB. I installed Windows XP (with C in NTFS) with the RAID driver given on Asus's website. At first, everything was fine. However, earlier this year, after a proper shutdown, then next time I turn on the computer, it wouldn't boot into Windows at all, not even Safe Mode. After doing some diagnostics, I found that the registry files (at least some of them) in "C:\WINDOWS\system32\config" are corrupted.

 

I backed up some necessary stuff, then try to re-install WinXP. During WinXP installation, I chose to reformat C:\ with NTFS, and it says cannot format. It seems that in the C:\ 's partition, there is a bad sector. This was reveiled when I formatted the partition with FAT32 with Partition Magic's bootdisk. It shows there's 8kb of bad sector. Although WinXP can work with FAT32, it's not as fast as NTFS and it has some reliability issues.

 

I have tried taking each drive out, connect to regular Primary IDE, and do a zero-write (or write-zero, or whatever) to clear both drives, then run a disk scan again but found no bad sector at all.

 

If no solution is found, I might just connect my drives back to regular IDE and disable RAID. However, I would like to keep my drives in RAID-0 as I do a photo and video stuff (and some games on the side 8) ). Does anyone know a solution to my problem. Any one has any experience similar situation before?

 

Solid

[Immortal 0]

ive heard that a low level format may be able to fix the bad sectors, however i am not sure....

[sapiens74 0]

Make sure you apply SP1 for support for drives over 137GB

 

I have heard can issues arise

[duhmez 0]

the 137 gig barrier does not apply here. it only pplies to a single disk that is larger than 137 gig. 2 80 gigs striped is fine. Don't forget, yuo can use your raid controller as regular ide channels, not in raid mode, so you need not disable them if you dont wanna run raid. If youd o run raid 0 i must say have a god backup. i just had a 160 gig raid 0 die on me, one drive failed, and uckily i got them back online just long enough to get the data off. there was about 24 hours of captured video on there that I am going to make dvd's of.

[Tomay 0]

I have a similar situation here with a 20Gb WD. About half a year ago a few bad sectors apeared on the disk so I chose to do a low level format (write zeros to drive) but a few weeks ago when booting scandisk insisted to do a complete test of my drives including media surface and foun d bad sector (8kb). On this computer I run win98 with fat 32.

 

I belive the drive is faulty so I'll back up more often and start looking for a replacement.

[CyberGenX 0]

Quote:

I have tried taking each drive out, connect to regular Primary IDE, and do a zero-write (or write-zero, or whatever) to clear both drives, then run a disk scan again but found no bad sector at all.

So after you found no bad sectors at all did you then try to reinstall WinXP? If so, did you then receive an new bad sector?

Have you the latest MB AND RAID BIOS updates, RAID drivers from website?

RAID shouldn't be wasted if you are able to take advantage, pinpoint this puppy before you go downgrading yourself.

[s0l1d 0]

Thanks for all your replies.

 

CyberGenX:

After I found no bad sectors, I tried to reinstall WinXP and choose format NTFS during WinXP installation. It ran into the problem saying it cannot be formatted because of damaged disk or something. However, if I choose format FAT32 instead, it formatted and installed ok, but the 8kb of bad sector still exists.

 

I did update all BIOS and drivers. And it'll still the same.

 

A while back, I actually had a chance to replace the Maxtor drives with two (2) Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 80GB drives with 8MB buffer [WD800JB]. I thought, Maxtor's have 2MB buffer while WD's have 8MB buffer, and from the reviews I've read on the web, they looked like perfect replacements. However this was not the case.

 

I installed the WD drives just as I did with the Maxtor drives before. Same BIOS cofiguration and everything, but the performance was terrible. Actually "unbearable" would be a better word for it. With Maxtor's drives, WinXP installation went by with flying colours. However, the WD's were painfully slow during copying files, in DOS part of the installation and under Windows. I search all of the net looking for answers. But because the two WD drives were purchased for two other computers and they had to be installed right away, I tried few more settings, same slowness, and I finally gave up.

 

I know that RAID should not be wasted. But after all this, I don't want to blindly buy two harddrives, costing me over $200, and ending having the same problem/issue as the WD drives. I have no need for extra harddrive space, and not much extra cash to spend if I cannot get the RAID to work.