AR31S RAID0 Errors

[jseyerle]

Has anyone with this model experienced RAID0 error?
I have had laptop for about 1 week.

Left it running while iTunes processed a huge (50gig) music folder.
Came home noticed latop had crashe and rebooted.

Have RAID0 error in BIOS RAID config as well as in Vista Intel RAID monitor.

I dont know if it just is because of a crash or because problems with RAID controller.
The disk diags tested fine for both disks.

Possibly error caused by sudden crash??

[Blencogo]

Unfortunately we just don't know if all AR models with RAID are at risk. It just seems to be a handful that have this problem. The problem is that the underlying cause has not yet been identified.

Until Sony decide what is causing it we are all in the dark. It is fairly certain that it is a SMART error causing the unusual messages in RAID because RAID does not recognise SMART.

I have a feeling the treatment for this is going to be to completely format the drives and reinstall the system onto a new RAID Volume - perhaps after changing the BIOS RAID settings.

Like you, I do not believe there is a hardware problem. We have seen about five cases of this on the Forum and have flagged it up to Sony who don't seem to have seen any more. Literally thousands of units must have been sold - so the odds of another unit having this problem would appear to be low. I believe they are collecting affected units for repair and in the short term will probably replace the drives.

[kee-lo_]

I knew this was software related

[evpapad85]

Thanks but this simply removes the reminder yours disks are having problems from flashing infront of your eyes 

I clear it, it soon comes back.

Mine has never shown up again.
Since I couldn't do anything about it, I thought that I should at least stop the warning message from popping up, after every system restart. That's why I did what I said in my previous post.
I take a full backup of my PC twice daily, so I don't worry too much.

[jseyerle]

Hi all,
I am 99% confident my RAID0 Errors are resolved.
I had previously been getting them and I narrowed down why they occur to the point I could replicate the conditions and cause the RAID Erros 100% of the time.

Situation when I would get errors:
1)I had clean install of machine.
2) installed latest version of iTunes.
3)I copied 60 gig of MP3 from my external drive to a temp directory on my laptop
( i know I didnt need to do that but I wanted to test the drives performance)
4)I would then open iTunes, add my temp folder to iTunes, tell iTunes to Consolidate the songs. When you chose consolidate it basically copies all the MP3 from my temp folder to the iTunes Music folder.

** This is when the RAID0 Errrors would occur. During the massive copying from temp folder to iTunes Music folder. On top of RAID0 Erros CPU would normally be near max the entire time. **

I suspected the drives or the RAID Controller software just wasnt keeping up with the reads/writes on the drives or buffers were just getting filled with the 128k stripe size.

What I did to fix it?
1) Created Recovery DVDs
2) Backedup all my docs onto external HDD
3) Rebooted and went into BIOS RAID Configuration. Deleted existing Volume0. Created a new RAID0 Volume but this time with a 64k stripe instead of 128k. I know people are going to say 128k is the optimal for RAID0 but there are some varying arguments on this (google) so as I was having no luck with 128k stripe I decided to try my luck with 64k stripe.
4) Went thru whole recovery process
5) Did all the available updates from Vaio and Microsoft
6) Installed iTunes again
7) Copied all my MP3 from external HDD to the temp folder again
😎 Had iTunes add temp folder and consolidate it.

Guess what?!

** NO RAID0 Errors **
** CPU never got more than 20% **

It would be interesting if one of you do the same thing and use the 128k stripe to see if the problems simply went away because I reinstalled everything and created new RAID volume.

I will update this post in 1 weeks time if I do or don't have more RAID0 errors.

[Meld51]

Hello,

I went to the trouble of returning my machine to SONY even though I was unsure what the issue was. It should arrive back in a day or so (shucks....bank holiday!). I hope they have managed to definitively deduce the problem. I'll post when I know...

[jseyerle]

ERROR Occurred once more.
I have gotten the error again while iTunes was processing 9 music videos.

It only happens when the system is max'd out resource wise.

At the time I was processing the mp4 I had media centre running and then the system froze while CPU was at 100% for a while, then RAID Error occurred.

It looks like its not the disks but the system was maxed so it couldnt process a read/write requests, thus drive reported it missed a read/write.

[Meld51]

I sent my AR21S back for a repair because of this problem...on SONY's request. All they did was replace a HDD and disable the RAID. They sent it back with an unRAIDed disk configuration. So I don't think they have a fix. I reckon it's a soft problem.

[Thalamus.]

Hi Meld,

Yes I think it would need to go back otherwise if you configure your drives in RAID you would loose your recovery partition..

Best to let Sony set it up correctly..

Hopefully it will be repaired as a priority..

[Meld51]

Well, I think you can repartition yourself provided you created some recovery disks first can't you. A booklet came with my VAIO which describes the different recovery procedures. I feel sure that a method was described in there.

[kee-lo_]

With the use of TrueImage I think you can fix this problem at home, unless it really is hardware.