D975XBX2, Raid, Velociraptors failing

[Bookseller]

Have a D975XBX2 with quad Q6600, normally clocked, 4GB, generally works great even if a bit dated. Very stable, running Vista.

I had a drive failure, and decided to add a pair of 300GB Velociraptors from WD as Raid-1 for system drive.

First drive in pair, on port zero, keeps failing. No specific error, hangs, degrades. Mark normal, comes back. After a half dozen times, RMA'd it, installed new, rebuilt. Did a full checkdisk twice, defragged fully (to exercise), checkdisked again, ran for a week, and returned old drive.

Two days later it goes degraded again, same drive position (port 0). Rebuild. Later in the day same thing.

Firmware? (Running 2838, am I correct that upgrades the intel raid as well?)

Bad port? Unfortunately I have another pair of drives mirrored, so no really easy way to test that.

Anyone use this MB with Velociraptors in a raid-1 config, maybe they are not compatible?

Or can someone suggest a good PCI raid controller, I do not so much care if I debug this, as just get it stable.

[bluedragon9r]

There's a known problem with the velociraptors in RAID0 and the Intel ICH9R and 10R chipsets. I ran this a while myself on a 9R, had a lot of problems, upgraded motherboards and ran into the exact same problem. I moved the drives to a Acrea raid controller and they worked perfectly. From what I have read on this, WD blames Intel, and Intel blames WD. Another forum topic on this with a lot of links:

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showt ... p?t=732464

I ran mine on the Acrea for almost a year, then I upgrade to an SSD last week. 1 SSD is much faster then the VRs.

[Bookseller]

There's a known problem with the velociraptors in RAID0 and the Intel ICH9R and 10R chipsets.

I later found out there is also a known problem with the 8.9 version of Intel Matrix Storage manager, with drives going off line and degrading raid sets. Intel has acknowledged they are getting a lot of complaints but last time I looked no fix, though going back to 8.8 fixes it.

Before I found that out, I had decided to build a new computer anyway, and did buy another Intel board (DX58SO), so far quite happy, but am running 8.8 of the software!

[ibleet]

Actually if you check the net, there are numerous known issues with the BX2 boards. It is one of the most problematic boards ever and yet remained relatively popular...go figure!

Anyway, I'm glad you got it sorted out.