Puter question...

[cd34]

If your bios has SmartD support, reboot and go into that and see if it reports errors. XP may also let you see the SmartD log if you have it enabled -- I haven't used XP for more than running Windows Update, so, I don't know if the utilities are built in or need to be installed.

To me, it sounds like you are having sector read/write problems and that whichever drive is there is left to fail.

To me, for a computer that you rely on for business, Raid-1 is a very inexpensive way to help protect from some disasters. If both drives are in a Raid-1 Group, and one drive fails for whatever reason, with Raid-1 you've got your data mirrored on the other drive. Case in point though, as my wife found out, a boot sector virus is faithfully mirrored on the second drive in the set. Raid is not a substitute for backups though -- a stolen or burned computer with Raid-1 drives provides you no protection.

Make a backup. It is possible that it is only a problem with some of the media on the disk and if you can figure out which files are the problem, make a copy, leave the files there, rename the directory and don't delete it. Or, buy Spinrite which will go through and test the drive and move things around if it deems it so.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by cd34

To me, for a computer that you rely on for business, Raid-1 is a very inexpensive way to help protect from some disasters. If both drives are in a Raid-1 Group, and one drive fails for whatever reason, with Raid-1 you've got your data mirrored on the other drive.

I saw how impressed you were with my professionally done Raids for Angel.

I really need to take a pic of her setup. lol

[MrYum]

Originally Posted by cd34

If your bios has SmartD support, reboot and go into that and see if it reports errors. XP may also let you see the SmartD log if you have it enabled -- I haven't used XP for more than running Windows Update, so, I don't know if the utilities are built in or need to be installed.

To me, it sounds like you are having sector read/write problems and that whichever drive is there is left to fail.

To me, for a computer that you rely on for business, Raid-1 is a very inexpensive way to help protect from some disasters. If both drives are in a Raid-1 Group, and one drive fails for whatever reason, with Raid-1 you've got your data mirrored on the other drive. Case in point though, as my wife found out, a boot sector virus is faithfully mirrored on the second drive in the set. Raid is not a substitute for backups though -- a stolen or burned computer with Raid-1 drives provides you no protection.

Make a backup. It is possible that it is only a problem with some of the media on the disk and if you can figure out which files are the problem, make a copy, leave the files there, rename the directory and don't delete it. Or, buy Spinrite which will go through and test the drive and move things around if it deems it so.

Excellent advice Sparky

I run a raid 1 here for the sake of redundancy. Once in a while on boot, the bios reports something is out of whack and it has to resync the drives...no biggie. And I also ghost an image to an external drive...as you said, there is no substitute for backups.

Hadn't even thought about the boot sector issue, but it makes perfect sense. Again, gotta make sure to have backups.

[Useless]

Well, I took Jugg's advice and checked the event viewer for System and there are errors. Nothing really important though, just this:

The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume I:.

I've unplugged the drive for now.

Anyway, I use the raid control card just so I can have more than two drives. I like having multiple drives because I store different types of 'things' or 'stuff' on different drives. Also, my pc boots a whole fuck of a lot faster with it.

I purchased a 200G drive the other day and I'm waiting for my new ultra 100 card to show up so that this damned pc will register the new drive's full luscious girth. I may go back and get another 200G drive just because the first one was so damned cheap. I'm also considering dumping windows completey and moving over to Linux, but that's a whole other topic.

[spookyx]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

I'm also considering dumping windows completey and moving over to Linux, but that's a whole other topic.

If I did not have to have the few windows tools I use daily I would switch back to linux full time