If one disk dies in RAID0 isn't the whole array suppose to be gone?

Phunky · 4 May 2014 at 12:24

Right, so i've got 4x120GB OCZ Agility 3s in RAID0 and recently i've been having a problem where one drive won't be detected on a cold boot.

I've switched ports, cables and power connections and the same drive fails each time, but after a good 5-15min of "fiddling" it will be found and allow me in to boot.

Once this is done the system works fine, i've not had any BSODs of crashes while the system actually boots, can reset and even power down and re-start the system fine its only on a cold boot that the drive dies.

Now i've always understood that if the one drive dies in RAID0 then the whole array is gone, is this true for 3+ drives?

I've avoided rebuilding the array just yet, as still trying to figure out what the actual fault is first then I plan on doing a secure erase over all drives and testing them out again.

Craig321 · 4 May 2014 at 12:26

Yes, it will die if one drive fails as all your data is striped across the four disks.

If you want failover you should look into something like RAID 10 (1+0)

Phunky · 4 May 2014 at 12:33

I don't want to failover, I want to understand why this single disk is failing on cold boot. I also wondered if due to having 4 disks if it was possible that it wasn't performing writes to this individual disk.

Only thing i've ever seen error during a write has been AS SSD Benchmark which will sometimes fail on the final access time tests.

Up until now i've just assumed it was a dodgy sata port, as i'd expect the array to be dead if one disk went away at any time.

Andy_82 · 4 May 2014 at 13:09

have you tried disabling the overclock if there is one? Might be the cause

Jamin280672 · 4 May 2014 at 13:49

First of all like Craig321 says, if one drive is gone, you've lost the whole array, at the moment windows is seeing only 1 disk where in reality its spread across 4 disks on your system.

With the coldboot issue your having it might be worth downloading OCZ Toolbox and checking that you have the same/latest firmware on all the drives, it may be causing conflicts, current is 2.25 and for some drives 2.24.

Be warned though, you will have to break your RAID to do this, it cant check them in RAID mode.

Phunky · 4 May 2014 at 18:26

Thanks, but first thing I attempted was resetting bios and checking firmware on all drives.

Guess the data connection on the drive must just be on the way out as there is no consistent pattern as to how I eventually get it started.

Will attempt the secure erase as that was the only suggestion to a similar problem with an Agility 3 however that wasn't in an array. Actually think i'll drop it from the array and test it on it's own for a while and see if I can debug it more.