hypr004

I have 3 HD's @ 160GB a piece and i'm using RAID 0. When i boot up my computer it says that on the middle HD an error occured and the other 2 are fine. Then windows boots up and the computer runs fine.
Is there ANY way to test the middle HD at all without losing everything i have saved?

My Computer:
Gateway E-6500 3.0 Ghz Pentium D. Dual core.
3 Western digital HD's @ 160GB each. RAID 0.
1 Gig of RAM.

Cleric7x9

if your computer boots up and runs fine, then that drive is fine. RAID 0 will span your information across all three drives, so if one fails, the computer wont even boot up.

__________________
Dell Studio XPS 16 Notebook

p8600 2.4Ghz
4Gb DDR3 1066Mhz RAM
128GB Samsung SSD
ATI Radeon Mobility 3670 512Mb
16" 1920x1080 RGBLED LCD
Backlit keyboard
Windows 7 Professional x64 RTM

seanspotatobiz

You can use Smartmon to read the S.M.A.R.T. data from the drives: http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/

There is also a program called 'Spinrite' that you can load onto a USB disc or a CD and boot from that. You can then select a drive and a level of testing to use. It ought to be able to tell you if the drive is OK. I think it might be more thorough than Smartmon, but Smartmon is free and Spinrite is not.

just a noob

i think it would be smarter to swith over to a raid five configuration if you are worried about losing all the data, and if the drive failed, it would say os corrupted or something along those lines and say please instert install disk

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When the shit hits the fan
cpu: core i7 920@???
gpu: gtx 285 sli
ram: 3 gigs of ddr3
hdd: seagate 500gb
mobo: evga classified
psu: enermax 1050 watt
case: box from classified
cooling: air for now

Quick69GTO

RAID 0 = 2 hard drives only
RAID 5 = 3 or more hard drives

Set the array up as RAID 5 in the RAID BIOS and all will be good.

Cleric7x9

first of all, if he has data he doesnt want to lose, simply "setting the array to raid 5 in BIOS" wont work. also, his factory PC may not even have the option for RAID 5. second of all, raid 0 can be any amount of hard drives, it is NOT limited to 2. sigh.

__________________
Dell Studio XPS 16 Notebook

p8600 2.4Ghz
4Gb DDR3 1066Mhz RAM
128GB Samsung SSD
ATI Radeon Mobility 3670 512Mb
16" 1920x1080 RGBLED LCD
Backlit keyboard
Windows 7 Professional x64 RTM

Quick69GTO

Two drives is RAID 0.
Adding more than two drives to a stripped array changes it to a different RAID configuration (i.e. RAID 5, RAID 0+1, etc.)

If he wants the third drive to be part of the stripe, he will loose his data.

Cleric7x9

Striped set without parity/[Non-Redundant Array]. Provides improved performance and additional storage but no fault tolerance. Any disk failure destroys the array, which becomes more likely with more disks in the array. A single disk failure destroys the entire array because when data is written to a RAID 0 drive, the data is broken into fragments. The number of fragments is dictated by the number of disks in the drive. The fragments are written to their respective disks simultaneously on the same sector. This allows smaller sections of the entire chunk of data to be read off the drive in parallel, giving this type of arrangement huge bandwidth. RAID 0 does not implement error checking so any error is unrecoverable. More disks in the array means higher bandwidth, but greater risk of data loss. SNIA definition.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redunda...ependent_disks


owned

__________________
Dell Studio XPS 16 Notebook

p8600 2.4Ghz
4Gb DDR3 1066Mhz RAM
128GB Samsung SSD
ATI Radeon Mobility 3670 512Mb
16" 1920x1080 RGBLED LCD
Backlit keyboard
Windows 7 Professional x64 RTM

Cleric7x9

A RAID 0 (also known as a stripe set or striped volume) splits data evenly across two or more disks (striped) with no parity information for redundancy.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standar..._levels#RAID_0

owned again.

__________________
Dell Studio XPS 16 Notebook

p8600 2.4Ghz
4Gb DDR3 1066Mhz RAM
128GB Samsung SSD
ATI Radeon Mobility 3670 512Mb
16" 1920x1080 RGBLED LCD
Backlit keyboard
Windows 7 Professional x64 RTM