Why RAID controllers & SATA plugs are so badly made and why I'll never use RAID again

As happened to me last year when I booted with a drive disconnected from my RAID 0 and "lost" everything, it happened again.

Now I have to ask firstly why are RAID controllers made so that if you accidentally boot with a drive disconnected you loose everything? Is it really that hard to program them to re-recognize a drive? I shouldn't have to loose my entire PC because I booted with a drive accidentally unplugged.

Secondly, what sort of moron invented SATA plugs? I absolutely can't stand them, they just slide in and can be unplugged by a speck of dust falling on them, tjey should "snap" in and not just loosely slide onto the connector, which is why my above problem happened both times, just moving the PC is enough for all SATA plugs to just fall out.

Because of this, I'm forgetting about RAID, unless I go back to properly fitting IDE connectors and drives, I don't care if my PC is half the speed it was I can't keep loosing everything due to ridiculous SATA plugs and poorly programmed RAID controllers which make RAID far more trouble than is worth.

At least it was reliable back in the good old IDE days, but not anymore.

Backups are your friend.

emr

I have daily backups to tape but that still doesn't solve the SATA RAID problem, those cheap connectors that fall out by themselves combined with the RAID controller "bug" that causes all to be lost if a drive is disconnected even just temporarely makes RAID completely unusable, I'm not gonna make a raid again if I'll loose everything whenever an air currant blows all the SATA plugs out.

What about JBOD, would I loose all my data each time a cable is unplugged with the drives in JBOD mode? I'd rather see just 1 drive than 2 and I'm certainly not maiking a raid egain, even if it mens cutting the performance in half, I'll have to go back to IDE if I want RAID, those IDE plugs certainly never just fell out as the garbage SATA plugs do.

What about a windows-made RAID, will that get wiped clean if a cable got unplug and I boot (which happens very frequenly, even just by moving the pc, with these POS SATA cables)? What about JBOD? Can a promise controller do that and if so will that get wiped clean if a cable is unplugged?

I need to know how I'll reconfigure this ASAP.

Is there any way I can get my raid working again without installing win on a new drive and then using a recovery program to restore the broken raid?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

What about a windows-made RAID, will that get wiped clean if a cable got unplug and I boot (which happens very frequenly, even just by moving the pc, with these POS SATA cables)? What about JBOD? Can a promise controller do that and if so will that get wiped clean if a cable is unplugged?

I need to know how I'll reconfigure this ASAP.

Is there any way I can get my raid working again without installing win on a new drive and then using a recovery program to restore the broken raid?

---

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
You could put a spot of CYANOACRYLATE (Super Glue) on your raid cables
and when harddrive fails just throw away harddrive and cable and pick up
new cable with new drive. All will do ok :)

Sounds like your running raid 0, which is the least secure of the raid varieties, Becuase your data is striped across two drives ( Split ) it is risky, so when one drive is disconnected or dies your data is useless
Raid 1 is a mirered array and much more secure, If one of the drives dies or is diconnected your data is intact
For the best of both worlds go with a raid 0+1 array of four drives , If one is disconnected the array will still function
If you want to keep costs down, go with a fast SATA drive and a new SATA cable, Use a hard drive in an enclosue or your trusty tape drive for back ups
I would avoid raid 0 altogether
Now about your cables that fall of when you breathe hard, Try a littl glue as suggested to keep them in place
I know on my DFI board ( N-force 4 ) I have fun trying to unplug the darn things , Maybe you got bad cables, try a new one
Or after you move your machine double check those cables to make sure they stayed put

For the hard drive connections I cured the same problems by epoxy gluing a power and data connector together (used a duff drive to line them having put epoxy on the sides) works well and I have not had a 'fallen' data cable since, plus you dont need to renew those cables when the drives no longer any use. I got the idea from the WD Raptor connector which uses a block that plugs into the data cable port and locks into the power port, you have to use a molex for power, but those blocks will never fall out.

I agree entirely as an engineer the design of these things is pathetic and very amatuerish.

Amazing story there Click2Surf
I have yet to have a cable "fall out" on its own
Although i agree they are a little flimsy i dont seem to have any "fall out" on their own

It's Nero's fault they're falling out. Blame them.

Its the N conspiracy
(Nero+Nvidia)
:grin:

http://www.snt.com.tw/proimages/0003...TA%20black.JPG
SATA Backplanes

A cheap SATA backplane might help. You can secure the cables to backplane and still get your drives in and out -- quite obvious if they're not in. Handy also if your card supports fault tolerant RAID options and hot swapping.

Edit: a low heat glue gun from a dollar store is handy for securing connections. Holds well enough and you can still get it apart if you need to. I used to hot glue in slot 1 processors and adapter cards on PC navigation systems for boats -- the rough weather would bounce the slot 1 processors loose even if they were in "so-called" locking clips.

Hmmm I have accidently knocked a cable loose installing an adapter card of some sort but I plug it back in and it starts up just fine again and this was on two different boards. Ofcourse mine are nvidia boards.

Kodiak: You need to boot while one of the drives is accidentally unplugged for the RAID controller to refuse to recognize the drive ever again without having to delete and rebuild the array.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

Kodiak: You need to boot while one of the drives is accidentally unplugged for the RAID controller to refuse to recognize the drive ever again without having to delete and rebuild the array.

---

Exactly what I have done in the past and then plug it back in and away it goes again. Done it several times since one of the plugs is very touchy due to the plstic guide being broke.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kodiak

Exactly what I have done in the past and then plug it back in and away it goes again. Done it several times since one of the plugs is very touchy due to the plstic guide being broke.

---

I also have had a couple of "OOPS!" moments where a drive in an array has come unattached (with or without user intervention ... usually with :rolleyes: ). When that happened the RAID controller warned me that the array was broken. I simply turned off the PC, plugged the drive back in, and the array was recovered without any problems. I've had it happen on Intel, nVidia and VIA/SiI controllers.

Dunno what kind of hardware Clicked has but I'd like to know so I can studiously avoid it in the future. :flames:

I don't know much about RAID, but I've meesed around with it in the past here and there, everytime I did something wrong or a cable was unplugged, it warned me... also, you must be using the wrong type of RAID there is one (mentioned before) 0+1 I think it was, that with multiple drive one can go down (unplugged) and you can rebuild it with a brand new drive(plug it in). Again I'm not knowledgable enough to tell you specifics but the guys around here should be able to point you to some pages...

The SATA connectors, yeah I've found some of them to be REALLY flimsy and for once I do agree with you. I don't like using glue on drives but it certainly can help the situation. But I found seperately obtained cables are usually much higher quality and often fit much better, espeically the power cables. I've had some power supplies with really cheap connectors on the, I just plug in one of these and it usually clicks in just fine.

Doesn't matter what raid you are using when it comes to software corruption. I like raid 0 because it does improve performance considerabley. Only sure way to keep your data safe is to have a constant backup. Only sure thing about a computer is that it will crash sooner or later.

never the less these pitifull sata cables are a f****k shame and yes i have had them come in for repair just because they had fallen off

I guess I'm unlucky. I have 3 SATA drives (2 in a raid 1 arrangement) for the best part of a year and I've had no problems at all with them. I do agree, however that the SATA plugs have no locking system at all

As for locking... some cables do.

My Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI Boards came with 4 red and 4 yellow SATA cables. The Yellow Ones were for the onboard Nvidia Controller and they snapped in with a little metal latch. They don't come out very easy. I also believe that my new DFI-CRX3200 board has some yellow SATA cables that click in somehow.

As for RAID. I am running 4 Maxtor SATA 300GB's in 0+1 on my server and one of them failed this week. It was kind of scary because I hadn't had this experience before, but I backed up the most critical data to my main station, than identified the failed drive, un-pluuged and replaced and the RAID automatically re-built it. (Also a Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI using the NVidia RAID Controller.)

In my experience the mainboard connections are not an issue it's the drive connector which naturally works looser than it starts off and often becomes sufficiently loose to be disconnected, the entire plug\socket design is, from a design engineering point of view, pathetic. The only people who seem to have understood this is WD whose connector for the data cable is a large blue plastic block which has large locating lugs on either side of the connection so it seats firmly into the back of the drive, you have to use a molex for power since the narrow SATA power connector is now covered but at least it's a 'thought about' design not just a herd instinct follow the leader like all the other manufacturers do.
Anyone who has not had a SATA data connector vibrate out of contact has been very lucky.
Even the ends of the cables are sometimes designed with little or no thought, the data plug on some has a small plastic lug on either side of the body which makes it impossible to insert the flat power connector next to it, fine if the drive has a molex too but most dont so you have to trim the connector block on the data cable so the power will fit.
It needs design work and standardization, some of my clients won't have SATA installed again due to the problems with drives being suddenly 'missing' and insist on going back to IDE.

I agree that the SATA connectors do suck, but running an array in RAID 0 is not a good idea if you expect any kind of fault tolerance or reliability. RAID 0 is for speed plain and simple.

If you want your array to be robust enough to handle the scenario you are describing, do not use an on-board RAID solution on the consumer level mobo's, unless it is a high-end board with a reputable chipset, such as one from Adaptec. Secondly, use a fault tolerant RAID configuration like RAID 1 or RAID 5, or if you have the extra cash for the drives and really need the speed, RAID 0+1. Anything less is just playing on the law of averages and you are inviting inevitable disaster.

Yes, I am quite aware that many people run RAID 0 with no issues, but this type of failure is an all too common scenario, and a much less common scenario when using a fault tolerant array with a decent/reputable RAID controller.

OK Fault tolerance. In most cases, 9/10, when a customer comes to you what is the problem? Is it because the drive failed? Is it because the system is so infested with spyware and viruses or they installed something that killed there PC? In my experience it has be viruses and spyware so where does Raid 1 or 5 help, not one bit. A good backup regiment is the only way to go wether it be full backups daily or full and daily incs. I do agree the sata connections are crappy and we are starting to see the metal clips now though.

That wasn't the scenario described by the OP, and to be honest I haven't been a bench tech in 7-8 years, so I am speaking from a corporate Net Admin perspective. What I said is just good solid advice IMHO.

If a person's system is that hammered with malware, they have much larger problems to deal with first, before deciding on which RAID array config suits them best.. :)