'a drive in a raid 0 volume is failing' ? Help

[Searcher73]

Tonight after my system crashed I received a message/window with the following:
‘a drive in a raid 0 volume is failing’

Basically the system rebooted itself whilst my 5 year son was playing Spiderman, after the reboot
I was asked to boot in safe mode etc.
After normal reboot I was then presented with a window I have never seen before:

'Intel'(R) Matrix Storage Console' which has a green and a red 3d type circular button(s) with a yellow cross flashing within the red one,

Detail: a hard drive has reported that a read or write to it has failed.

Warning: Backup your Data.

My PC is only 2/3 months old and is decent enough spec , dual core, DELL PC running VISTA with an overall VISTA score of 5.

When this happened my son said urgh not again and confirmed this had happened to him earlier today.

I can't really find much after google'ing it and really need some guidance with this, is my drive about to die? Does it mean something? Is it time to look out my receipts ?

Thanks

[GarryF]

firstly, backup your data, fast.

Raid 0 is great for performance but can be a lot more unreliable, I've lost an array on my main machine about a year ago, finally figured out in my case that the bios had reset but by then I'd messed with the array :/

You may be looking at a HD failure or maybe raid controler or the array might just be corrupted and a reinstall would cure it. Or you might never see the message again, in any event raid 0 can be very unreliable so make sure you back up regularly

[Searcher73]

I can't find much on google regarding this, however through the help section of the 'Intel Matrix Storage Console' it states the following:-

Failed Member
Make sure the system is powered off.
Replace the failed hard drive with a new one that is of equal or greater capacity.
Power on the system. During the system startup, the Intel Matrix Storage Manager option ROM user interface will display the RAID 0 volume status as 'Failed', prompting you to press Ctrl-I to enter the user interface.
Press Ctrl-I to enter the 'MAIN MENU'.
Select option 2 in the main menu to 'Delete RAID Volume'.
In the 'DELETE VOLUME MENU', select the failed RAID 0 volume, using the up and down arrow keys.
Press the 'Delete' key to delete the volume.
Press 'Y' to confirm the deletion.
Create a new RAID 0 volume. If the failed hard drive was a part of the system volume, you will also need to reinstall the operating system.

Ok, the way I would read this is my hard drive is guffed? My PC is only 2/3 mths old and I am totally confused why it would have a problem with the hard drives.

My system appears fine, same amount of space is available, all programs appear to working fine so nothing has really changed apart from this message which appears when the PC is switched on.

Another forum I found had some reference to this, suggested clicking on the failed drive and selecting fix/repair but I am unable to do this due to being a restricted user? confused, because I am the admin or what ever it's called.

Can anyone offer any further advice, or is it a case of contact DELL for a repair.

Thanks

[mjn]

One of your physical HDD's is failing and needs to be replaced. Should the HDD fail, you will lose everything on the RAID 0 array. RAID 0 has no redundancy, so if one drive fails, you'll lose your data, whether that is your OS, data, games, photos depends on what you have stored where.

[Searcher73]

So, no if's or but's. Phone DELL for replacement?

Dam, this is all I need.

[mjn]

Originally Posted by Searcher73

So, no if's or but's. Phone DELL for replacement?

Yes, and don't forget to backup your data first! Even if the failing HDD is replaced, you'll still lose everything on it.

[GarryF]

The raid array can get courrupted too without a HDD failing, since it's under warranty I'd go ahead and call them to get it fixed. If it was out of warranty first step would be a rebuild of the array and see if fault reoccurs.

[Searcher73]

UPDATE

Just been speakimg to Dell who asked me to run some tests before the pc booted up, these test checked the hard drives and confirmed ok.

I was then asked to d/l intel matrix console again via the dell website, install and rebooted but still same problem.

Next I was told they could wipe the 'array' and reinstall again but he had to check with his supervisor who had left for the evening and will not be back until Monday, and that he doesn want to do this without checking with him first as this would wipe my hard drive and everything with it.

Frustrating or what, in the end I will end up with a new drive I know but really annoyed at the experience.

[GarryF]

Yeah, they'll argue that it's only corrupted and only swap hardware after a clean install and then the re-occurance of the fault

[mjn]

Originally Posted by Searcher73

Next I was told they could wipe the 'array' and reinstall again but he had to check with his supervisor who had left for the evening and will not be back until Monday, and that he doesn want to do this without checking with him first as this would wipe my hard drive and everything with it.

Wiping the array, WILL erase all data on the array.

[Wonka]

Replacing 1 hard drive will also wipe all the data off the array !!!

backup quick

[Stiggy]

Originally Posted by Searcher73

Frustrating or what, in the end I will end up with a new drive I know but really annoyed at the experience.

Sorry, but hard disks do fail occasionally. You can blame Dell or Western Digital (or whoever made the disk) but it's nobody's fault really.

If you had just one disk the problem would be the same, it's just that using RAID 0 with 2 disks gives you twice the chance of a disk failing. At least the system warned you there was a problem - most of them don't!

[Searcher73]

Originally Posted by Stiggy

Sorry, but hard disks do fail occasionally. You can blame Dell or Western Digital (or whoever made the disk) but it's nobody's fault really.

If you had just one disk the problem would be the same, it's just that using RAID 0 with 2 disks gives you twice the chance of a disk failing. At least the system warned you there was a problem - most of them don't!

Ye agree totally with you, and thankfully I have had the warning too, but it still totally hacks you though.