Event viewer is reporting bad blocks, on multiple drives, for real?

[chrismilne]

I've had on ongoing issues with my media server going offline while watching movies or copying files (from the server not to it).  I have two esata 5 drive towers and when it happens one of them will show all drives offline.  

 

Recently i've been watching the event logs and notices around the time of the crashes it's showing i have a bad block on a drive.  I assumed maybe i had a drive about to fail but tonight it happened again and it was a different drive.  Then when i checked the past 2 days there was yet another drive saying bad block.

 

Could all my drives be failing at the same time, or is something going on in Drivepool and windows doens't know how to register the error?  

[Christopher (Drashna)]

First, do you have StableBit Scanner installed as well? I ask, because in rare circumstances, it can cause issues.

 

 

However, I suspect that the issue here is that the eSATA box is getting overwhelmed. The controller for it is probably crashing. Right before, or as it does that, it's causing read errors, because.... well, the controller is crashing and no longer sending intelligible data to the system.

 

What eSATA tower are you using specifically, and what controller are you using for the eSATA port on the system?

[chrismilne]

Thank you, i do not have Scanner.  This is WHS 2011, using two Sans Digital 5 bay towers (not great but all i could afford): LIke this:

 

http://www.sansdigital.com/towerraid/tr5mb.html - using the card that came with them.

 

I have swapped the cards out with my backup (same card) and it didn't seem to help anything.  It used to always be one of the towers that crashed but recently it has gone back and forth between them.  It will work for weeks, then crash a few days in a row, very mysterious.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Okay, so it's most likely a hardware issue then.

 

Unfortunately, there are a lot of things it *could* be, and not very easy to tell.

 

It could be the power supply. If that is experiencing issues, it could definitely cause that, and should be rather simple to replace.

It could be the controller card in the system. I'm not sure which chipset it's using, but some do have issues like this. Especially under heavy load. 

It could be the cable.

It could be the enclosure it self.

 

Looking at reviews on newegg, it does seem that the card included is a Silicon Images based card (the sil3132 chipset specifically). I have experience with this chipset, and to be honest, this is most likely your issue here. A lot of the reviewes on this enclosure, and on the cards that use this chipset tend to agree with this, as well.

I would recommend replacing the card with something else that ... well works better. Such as this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124044

[chrismilne]

Thanks, i have two of the same towers and for a long time only one had the issue, now it sort of goes back and forth. I have changed the cables, the pc has a new power supply...i have also changed the controller card, however it's the same brand (each unit came with one).  I will look in to the other card you recommended.

 

On a side note, should i upgrade to the V2 of Drive Pool or stick with the older one that was WHS specific? 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Alex (the developer) has done a lot of testing with the different chipsets, and he prefers the ASMedia cards (which is what I linked you). Specifically, because they do seem to be the most stable.

As for why you're only developing issues now.... it could be that the controller has been overworked and overheating. This can cause damage to the chipset. Which can be very inconsistent and hard to troubleshoot.

It could also be an issue with one or more of the disks (or just a bad connection). Needless to say, the error can be caused by a lot of sources....

 

 

 

As for StableBit DrivePool, unless you have need of some of the features in the newer version, I would recommend staying on the 1.3 version, as it's a better experience on WHS2011