WD2500YS RAID Woes

[WoZZeR]

You may recall in an earlier post I had a boot problem with my WD2500YS's in RAID 1.

Here's an update:

Everytime I boot up the pc from cold the ICH7R fails to recognise one of the hard drives, on the second boot it recognises 2 but has to rebuild the 2nd since it didn't recognise it the first time.

Needless to say since it takes a good 90 minutes to rebuild it is getting a bit tedious.

I trawled through the WD website and applied a firmware patch to each drive, the patch was specifically to tackle this known issue:

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=15&swid=57

The problem persists. The WD diagnostics tell me the drives are fine after a full test.

I am awaiting a reply from WD at the moment.

Now then, since the ICH7R writes information to the hard discs when you set them up in RAID, should I take the HD's out of RAID and then back into a new RAID setup in order for the ICH7R to write new data including any of the firmware changes?

I have eliminated the PC's and RAID chipsets as I have had the array in 2 PC's now with the same problems.

 

[WoZZeR]

An update.

Every morning when cold the PC fails to recognise one of the HD's, several reboots later it recognises it, then the RAID rebuilds itself.

So I took them out of RAID, installed windows on the known good HD and I still have the same problem with the PC recognising the bad HD until several reboots but at least the RAID array isn't there to rebuild itself.

I have ran all the WD diagnostics on the dodgy drive and they come up fine, obviously they don't work until after all the reboots to get the HD recognised.

If I connect the dodgy HD up when it's warm, mid afternoon it's OK.

Obviously I need to RMA it, it's less than 3 months old, but I can't find a fault.

Ideas?

 

[WoZZeR]

The drive makes hideous noises and isn't recognised by the bios.

I've filled in the support request email stuff on the WD site twice in 2 weeks and still no reply.

Do I just RMA it?

Thing is if they test it in a warm room it's OK, just when it's cold in the morning it plays up.

EDIT: I'm hestitant to RMA it since if they test it in warm surroundings they'll just send it back to me.