Issues with WD10EADS in RAID 1

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

Hi all,

I just (2 months ago) put together a new HTPC. I have two WD10EADS in RAID configuration using on board Intel Matrix Storage manager (hardware RAID controller). This controller allowed me to create two volumes. One in RAID 1 configuration and second in RAID 0 configuration. The RAID 1 is used for system and more important data and the second volume for TV shows recordings and DVD copies. It already happened 3 times that the RAID 1 volume gets damaged (Intel Matrix Storage Manager notifies me). First time I reformatted the drive and reinstalled the whole PC. The second and third time I just marked the bad drive good again and the RAID volume rebuilt and everything seems to be OK. I am worried that something is going bad though. It was always the same drive. What is the best way to diagnose it? I was looking into using some of the WD utilities but I am not sure I can use them with the hardware RAID controller. And since it is now central unit our TV and DVR runs on, I don’t want to take it out of commission for too long … My wife and 2 years old would kill me. Micky Mouse is extremely important ingredient to our family well being :-)

Please advice

Thank you

2

YOU CAN’T USE THOSE DRIVES IN A RAID ARRAY!  They will keep dropping out on you.  What causes it?  Every desktop drive has the capability to go into ecc (error correction) mode.  That can take up to 2 minutes to complete.  If that happens in a raid configuration the drive will drop out of the array.  Raid drives are designed to NOT allow more than 7 seconds for error correction.  Hence, they don’t drop out.  If you want true raid capability, you will need to purchase true raid drives.