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1. Re: disk problems
John T Smith Apr 16, 2014 11:00 AM (in response to illucine)If you have a way to create a DOS boot disk https://www.grc.com/intro.htm Spinrite is the best drive diagnostic I know about
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2. Re: disk problems
JSS1138 Apr 17, 2014 9:17 AM (in response to illucine)I've been using these.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149396
Very fast drive.
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3. Re: disk problems
illucine Apr 17, 2014 9:38 AM (in response to JSS1138)Jim, thanks for the drive recommendation. It's larger than I need but something to consider.
My problem seems to be getting worse. Now, not only has my output drive disappeared (although it can still be seen by the BIOS), but my cache RAID comes and goes. It has disappeared from Windows several times and the last time I ran the disk administrator and it told me the logical volume needs to be initialized so I clicked ok and it said something like device not found. I powered down and back up and now it's back like nothing ever happened. Because I've had problems with multiple volumes I wonder if the SATA controller could be going bad.
John, do you know if Spinrite can diagnose controller problems? I glanced over its documentation and Spinrite seems to be mainly concerned with disk surface problems (bit errors and such). Any othere suggestions appreciated. This is the first computer I've built and am not sure where to turn. I'm used to picking up the phone and calling Dell.
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4. Re: disk problems
John T Smith Apr 17, 2014 12:43 PM (in response to illucine)I have used Spinrite in the past to check a drive, but have NO idea if it checks controller hardware
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5. Re: disk problems
Bill Gehrke Apr 17, 2014 3:30 PM (in response to illucine)Why don't you just remove the suspect drive(s) and see if your boot up problems disappear?
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6. Re: disk problems
illucine Apr 17, 2014 6:23 PM (in response to Bill Gehrke)Bill Gehrke wrote:
Why don't you just remove the suspect drive(s) and see if your boot up problems disappear?
Yeah, that would have been the obvious thing to do but I was avoiding having to go into the hardware. My computer in under the desk with about a dozen things that have to be uncabled and recabled and I hate having to move it to open it. But I was finally forced to and it appears the problem was in cabling. Everything looked ok but I went ahead and unplugged and replugged all the power connectors and controller connectors (on 7 drives) and when I hooked up it again the problem disk was back online and running fine. I know I should have done that to start with but I detest having to move the thing.
What led me to finally do that, and a tip for anyone else having disk problems, was a free diagnostic from Seagate called SeaTools. It scans the system for all controllers and all devices attached to them and presents a nice tabular display with drive serial numbers and other info and provides long and short diagnostics. It told me the problem drive "is not responding to commands." Obviously the drive must have be responding in some way or it wouldn't have been able to get any information about that drive (e.g. serial number). I think it's also interesting that one of my (R)AIDS would come and go and I wonder if the problem drive was putting bad data on the bus that interfered with the other drives. Anyway, it was a good (though frustrating) learning experience.
Thanks to everyone for your suggestions.



