Yodarama Posted February 24, 2010 Share Posted February 24, 2010 All, I hate to restart this thread, but I need some help. I originally had two X256 series drives in RAID 0. The problem was/is after shutdown for the evening the system will not boot. One of the drives is not recognized during POST and no joy. I followed the advice from a previous post and insured I have the latest BIOS etc. Yesterday I installed four X256 drives and configured them in RAID 0. I completed a new OS install along with Office etc. I shutdown the system for the evening, and during power up today...no joy! The same problem occurs...a drive is not recognized initially, after several resets (cntl, alt, del) the drive is recognized and Win 7 loads fine. I have a Dell 730X, with an I7, 6Gig TriChannel etc. The RAID controller is an Intel ICH10R/DO. The drives are fresh out of the box etc. Firmware Rev 1 on all drives. Thoughts??? I have checked all the BIOS settings and am now thinking I need a new motherboard :( V/r Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davyc Posted February 24, 2010 Share Posted February 24, 2010 Is the failing drive connected to the same sata port each time? If it is then it could be that you need a new board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employee RAM GUY Posted February 24, 2010 Corsair Employee Share Posted February 24, 2010 And have you tried moving the drive positions to see if it follows the drive or stays with the port? Please note you will have to image the current install when you do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yodarama Posted February 24, 2010 Author Share Posted February 24, 2010 Ram Guy, I have tried moving the drives, changing the SATA Ports etc. The problem does not follow a drive or fail on the same port. I even put four new drives in the system etc. I have looked at every setting in the Bios...the only setting I have not changed is S.M.A.R.T. . This is turning into a hobby :( Thoughts? V/r Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employee RAM GUY Posted February 25, 2010 Corsair Employee Share Posted February 25, 2010 That's strange, are you using any type of enclosure for the drives? I would disable any smart feature and just set them to IDE mode and see if that still happens and I would try and swap the S-ATA Cables as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted February 25, 2010 Share Posted February 25, 2010 Also, I actually had a bad SATA cable recently. Did you try all new cables or at least try the 4 cables with 1 known working drive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yodarama Posted February 25, 2010 Author Share Posted February 25, 2010 All, Thanks for the help. I have the SSDs installed in the 730x chassis. The MB handles up to 8 SATA drives. I have the four SSDs in Raid 0, two 1.5 TB WD drives (non RAID), and the two cd/dvd drives. I have new cables, which I will install tomorrow and then turn off SMART. What I find perplexing is the system will reboot normally all night long. Once I shut it down and return after roughly 8 hours...no joy. V/r Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ewarwoowar Posted February 25, 2010 Share Posted February 25, 2010 Just a question. What PSU do you have. Long shot but maybe your not getting enough power? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yodarama Posted February 25, 2010 Author Share Posted February 25, 2010 ewaroowar, The PSU is a 1 KW unit. I was running SLI, and all spinning disks. I removed 2 disks and one 285 Vid card. So I am pretty sure I reduced my power consumption. Thanks for the input. I can reduce the power consumption further by disconnecting the two spinning disks. V/r Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ewarwoowar Posted February 25, 2010 Share Posted February 25, 2010 Then its all good then mate. But for maybe last resort try a spare psu laying about if you have one? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yodarama Posted February 25, 2010 Author Share Posted February 25, 2010 All, I replaced the cables, reset S.M.A.R.T...same problem. So I decided to unplug my USB devices as my one last test before looking at a new MB. Minus the keyboard failure the system booted up just fine. I'll confirm tomorrow and narrow it down betweem the G9 Mouse or the G19 Keyboard. V/r Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted February 26, 2010 Share Posted February 26, 2010 Try changing your BIOS mode for the keyboard + mouse or what may be called Legacy USB Support or something similar. If it's enabled, disable it and vice versa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employee RAM GUY Posted February 26, 2010 Corsair Employee Share Posted February 26, 2010 And you stated that you had them installed in a 730x chassis; is this a HDD Enclosure or the system model number please be more specific. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dugn Posted February 27, 2010 Share Posted February 27, 2010 This is a reach, but it helped me after a great deal of investigative work, cable swapping and even directly connecting my drives to alleviate my Corsair Obsidian's hot-swap backplane as a culprit. Depending on the motherboard vendor, you may not have the absolute latest iaStor.sys RAID driver on your system. And some vendors have a bad version that masquerades as the correct version – meaning that it looks correct in initial Device Manager DRIVER dialog – but doesn’t match the Driver File Details dialog. If you’re using RAID on an ICH10R and the driver is not the same on both dialogs and either is earlier than version 8.9.0.1023, you have a version that will periodically corrupt RAID volumes (specifically the MBR) and seems to have a more detrimental effect on SSDs in RAID than HDDs. If your driver versions don’t match, download the standalone iaSTOR.sys driver from within the standalone EVGA package or from an Intel motherboard driver package. Once you confirm its really, really version 8.9.0.1023, use Device Manager to update the driver to this version. Disparity between these two dialogs or an earlier iaStor driver leads to failures to boot, failures to resume from standby/sleep, and BSODs due to the MBR issues it causes. If this does help, consider reformatting your drives (secure wipe while you’re at it to recover performance) and reestablishing your RAID array from scratch to overwrite flaky sectors. The corruption is so subtle that CHKDSK cannot find or report the issue. Reinitializing your drives then starting fresh with the new driver is the best way to remove this as a possibility. http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/912/iastor.jpg I hope that helps… Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yodarama Posted February 27, 2010 Author Share Posted February 27, 2010 dugn, Thanks very much for the help. I checked the driver version and it is 9.5.0.1037 and appears on both the tabs. I am lost after this and will probably look at a new motherboard :( I do not relish having to take the time to swap out the MB, but I am going to keep the 4X256 X series drives in RAID 0. I must say the system is silly fast. To date I have swapped the cables, drives, checked the BIOS a hundred times, and installed Win 7 a minimum of 5 times. I thought I was on track with the mouse/keyboard but the problem occurred again last night with no USB devices connected. :( I have chosen to go back to the future and just leave the system on 24/7. The funny thing is...after I get the system to boot...I can restart the system at will with no problems. CRAZY!! V/r Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted February 27, 2010 Share Posted February 27, 2010 This is one of those issues you just walk away from shaking your head. :dunno: Gremlins? :evildevil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Englishman Posted February 27, 2010 Share Posted February 27, 2010 Just a thought, but I had a very similar problem where the PC was a real struggle to get to cold boot a couple of years ago. I lived with it for about 6 months. Try clearing or resetting all BIOS setting to their defaults and then change back to your preferred settings. Somehow one of the saved settings must have got corrupted somehow causing odd behavior. Never happened again and still using the same MB without a hitch! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yodarama Posted February 27, 2010 Author Share Posted February 27, 2010 Englishman, I just reset the bios and will shut the computer down tonight and test the theory. If it doesn't work, I think a grenade may fix the problem. I'll be asking my better half for an advance on my allowance :) V/r Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dugn Posted February 28, 2010 Share Posted February 28, 2010 Seems like your motherboard manufacturer is on the bleeding edge - in a good way. Your version of the Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IMSM) driver is the absolute newest version released - and (I think) only publicly available to ASUS and to Dell to resolve a specific customer issue. Very technical people on the Intel support forums have indicated that they've had problems with the most prevelant version (8.9.0.1023). See this link here. Many have seen the problems go away with the version you have. Others swear by the even older (pre Win7) version 8.8.0.1009. FWIW - you've got the best IMSM version going. Good luck tracking this down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yodarama Posted February 28, 2010 Author Share Posted February 28, 2010 dugn, Now I am confused. As I stated the two tabs indicate ver 9.5.0.1037, but as I watch the sytem boot when the system gets to the RAID screen which IDs the drives etc it shows Intel ICH 10R/DO rev 8.5.0.1030. Thoughts? V/r Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dugn Posted February 28, 2010 Share Posted February 28, 2010 That value's not important in this context. That's the IMSM BIOS version (updated when you install the driver software if an update is needed). Don't let that confuse you or this issue. I hope that helps (one less thing to be concerned about, at least). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yodarama Posted February 28, 2010 Author Share Posted February 28, 2010 dugn, Thanks...I thought so :) This problem will go away this week. I have ordered some new hardware and if I have to replace the MB after the new hardware, I will. I was very skeptical about SSDs, but now I am hooked. So, as long as my CFO (aka wife) says I can get a new MB and/or hardware to fix the problem all is good :) V/r Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yodarama Posted March 4, 2010 Author Share Posted March 4, 2010 dugn and Yellowbeard, I have tried replacing the sata cables and the power connectors etc. I think I am now going to replace the MB. I did find I have one bad SSD so I submitted a RMA request. The RMA screen only allows for repair or firmware upgrade. I think it would be nice to have both as I need the drive repaired and it would be nice to get the FW upgraded. Or I could assume that will occur regardless :) V/r Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted March 4, 2010 Share Posted March 4, 2010 Select the repair option. Anytime a drive is brought in for RMA, that drive (or if a replacment drive is sent out) it will have the most recent firmware on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yodarama Posted March 5, 2010 Author Share Posted March 5, 2010 Yellowbeard, Thanks...I thought so :) I cancelled the RMA for now. I was reading the Forum and learned "install jumper, power up, remove jumper". The Drive is now recognized...so I will secure wipe and test it before I send it in :) V/r Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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