Failed Delayed Write?!

[TheraEdge]

OK, so I moved the drive off the RAID controller onto the main one, and I came out one morning and the freaking drive was like it wasn't there...I tried to play back a show and it said something about the show not being available any more, so I go check the drive...it shows up as 0 bytes, so I try to get into it...and darn if it doens't say drive isn't formatted, would you like to format drive now...! What the heck...I'm about to give up. So I think I did a repartition and format on it, and about a week later same thing, it was just shot...so I ran the diagnostic tool again, and it all came back good, it didn't say anything was wrong. My more computer savy friend was pretty sure it was the drive, and I had actuall ordered another identical Seagate 200GB drive for my main system, but I figured I could suffer for a bit and try the drive out in the sage machine. So I did, and I'm a little concerned now, because I just caused my first lock up in sage last night while, you guessed it, jumping forward again through a commercial. So I'm a little worried I'm on the same downhill slope I did before.

My question is that if that some of my problems are from a couple of differences from other people's settups I know of.

1.) I am running 2 tuners (Hauppauge 150 MCEs) so I am recording 2 shows at the same time that I am trying to play back 1 and silly me I record everything at DVD quality because I don't like the fuzzy shows with other higher compressions. So, since all those are going to or comming off of one drive am I stressing out the IDE channel to much and is that why I am getting the lock ups? I mean I was thinking about adding another tuner already because my wife's shows and mine seem to like to be on at the same time...I might end up with 4 also so that we can watch live TV through it too, but the concern is, is this actually going to work?

2.) I took the recomendations of the sage guide about formatting the partion with 64K blocks. I havn't tried formatting without yet, so I'm starting to suspect everything...

So, any help would be appreciated, because I was hoping that I would have this thing resolved by now. Could it be the Hauppauge cards as was suggested before? Mind you, it hadn't regressed yet into being an unformatted drive, but I fear that might not be far away.

I also just purchased an SIIG ATA 133 RAID controller so I could add more drives to this computer more easily. I don't want to run the RAID for te SAGE part, but was hoping to use the box for file backup later also, which might also cause some problems. I had such great plans, and they are all blowing up in my face, and I find myself just bing frustrated.

[stanger89]

You don't have a non-VIA system you could try it in do you?

[teedublu]

It really sounds like a bad drive to me.
You don't have another machine to try it with?

you should run a disk benchmark test like HD Tach
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public...request=HdTach
Poor performance: make sure UltraDMA is the mode for the IDE controller.
Also caused by a failing drive.

the fact that the cache checkbox is greyed doesn't mean you don't have a write cache. It just means the driver doesn't allow you to turn it off or on. Not unusual when using a PCI or RAID controller.

[teedublu]

I tried that SIIG Raid .... no way, it wiped my good source drive during the setup phase.

I've been satisfied with the Gigabyte 7N400 Pro2 which has a decent IDE 2 channel 4-drive raid (~ $90 at newegg). And a 2-drive SATA RAID (haven't used the SATA though). Documentation for the RAID is better than typical (not hi praise, but....)
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...128-199&depa=0

I recently had a drive failure in the raid. I didn't have a spare for a few days, so I had to run the good drive non-raid -- I just moved it to std IDE port. When the new drive arrived, I disk copied so either drive could be master or slave of the mirror (to be safe) and then rebuilt the raid. In other words, the RAID works.

TW

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by teedublu

I tried that SIIG Raid .... no way, it wiped my good source drive during the setup phase.

I've been satisfied with the Gigabyte 7N400 Pro2 which has a decent IDE 2 channel 4-drive raid (~ $90 at newegg). And a 2-drive SATA RAID (haven't used the SATA though). Documentation for the RAID is better than typical (not hi praise, but....)
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...128-199&depa=0

I recently had a drive failure in the raid. I didn't have a spare for a few days, so I had to run the good drive non-raid -- I just moved it to std IDE port. When the new drive arrived, I disk copied so either drive could be master or slave of the mirror (to be safe) and then rebuilt the raid. In other words, the RAID works.

TW

I've worked on Servers with various RAID configurations for almost two decades and I've run hardware based RAID1 at home for a decade and RAID5 at home over 5yrs. If hardware based RAID, including RAID1, is working properly when one drive fails you should not need to move surviving drive to another controller while waiting for replacement drive. If you did have to move it to standard IDE interface in order to access good drive, then the RAID1 controller setup did indeed fail in it's job, part of which is keeping system up. By design and specification you should be able to run a RAID1 (mirror) with one of it's drive's failed indefinitely, until the 2nd HD fails of course.

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by TheraEdge

OK, so I moved the drive off the RAID controller onto the main one, and I came out one morning and the freaking drive was like it wasn't there...I tried to play back a show and it said something about the show not being available any more, so I go check the drive...it shows up as 0 bytes, so I try to get into it...and darn if it doens't say drive isn't formatted, would you like to format drive now...! What the heck...I'm about to give up. So I think I did a repartition and format on it, and about a week later same thing, it was just shot...so I ran the diagnostic tool again, and it all came back good, it didn't say anything was wrong. My more computer savy friend was pretty sure it was the drive, and I had actuall ordered another identical Seagate 200GB drive for my main system, but I figured I could suffer for a bit and try the drive out in the sage machine. So I did, and I'm a little concerned now, because I just caused my first lock up in sage last night while, you guessed it, jumping forward again through a commercial. So I'm a little worried I'm on the same downhill slope I did before.

If the same drive has problems on two different controllers, take the hint it's likely not a controller or software problem. And definitely don't trust the drive to do anything but continue to fail.

[teedublu]

Originally Posted by mdmint

By design and specification you should be able to run a RAID1 (mirror) with one of it's drive's failed indefinitely, until the 2nd HD fails of course.

Yes, I agree. So, we'll say this GigaRAID is at best so-so? I've seen its limitations and am willing to live with it.... It's at least as good as the other el-cheapo RAID-1 controllers I've tried.

TW

[TheraEdge]

Thanks for everyone telling me the drive is bad, but that wasn't really the question. I replaced the drive, granted with a like drive, but that one has yet to fail. Just the glitch of a lock up when I was fast forwarding one time. I am hard pressed to believe that a second drive, even though the same model, from Seagate is my worry. It may have been the cause of the first problem, but somehow that is still in question in my mind also...something just seems to not be playing fair. Thanks for the advice teedublu, I ran through the list, and everything seems to be set up tha way..the only question would be another failing drive.

And forgive the bluntness, but your comment about the SIIG Raid controller sounded like it could have happened because of a selection you made when setting up the RAID set because from what I have read in the manual, you have to set up the drives manually, and you specifically have to know (and really make sure you know) what drive is listed under what number. The alternative is that you have a 50/50 chance you wrote the blank drive onto the data drive, and if you let it set it up automatically, to me it is unclear as to if it would wipe the drives or not.

The answer to do I have another board besides a VIA is no, is that what is believed to possibly be the problem? My controller? Would the aftermarket conrtoller possibly alleviate this or would it still being on the VIA PCI bus screw me over anyway? I guess I do have an nForce 2 board in my main system, but it would never get the playback use that this one does, so I don't think I would ever see the issue if I swapped all the hardware out (not even sure if I would have room for it in the main system).

I have downloaded the hard drive HdTach software to run on the system when i get a chance, but i am watching programs right now. The drive still seems fine, the only issues I have had were the sage crash caused by lots of fast forwarding toward the end the file, that I am not so sure wasn't a windows related thing (there was nothing in the event log though) and just today there was one show listed in the menu that no longer seems to be recorded as it was just blank when I went in...There was also one that seemed to be pieces of other shows all recorded over each other, but still listed as that show, but I think it was a show I told my wife she could stop recording to be able to just use the machine to watch TV. So I'm not sure how sage works yet, and if it recorded parts of other shows accidentally and still called it the same thing or not. I'm starting to become wiery of this, and am considering just giving up as it has been to long comming and there are still far to many issues.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by TheraEdge

The answer to do I have another board besides a VIA is no, is that what is believed to possibly be the problem? My controller? Would the aftermarket conrtoller possibly alleviate this or would it still being on the VIA PCI bus screw me over anyway?

Let's just say I'm still not conviced VIA has a decent PCI implimentation. Basically it's really easy to hit the limits of VIA's PCI implimentation, for example, I remember back in the day, there were reports that wrighting to the HDD while playing audio would cause audio corruption, and I remember stories of HDD corruption.

If I read your experiences correctly, the problems appear (or get worse) when you're recording 2 things and playing another. That shouldn't come anywhere near stressing the PCI bus (I can record QAM HD over 100Mbps ethernet, that's like 36Mbps or about 9 digital cable channels), however you're hitting the limit of something. You've already swapped controllers, so that's probably not it, leaving the PCI bus.

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by stanger89

If I read your experiences correctly, the problems appear (or get worse) when you're recording 2 things and playing another. That shouldn't come anywhere near stressing the PCI bus...

I'd have to concur PCI bus can handle it since I've tested recording 5x Mpeg2 Max Quality concurrently (with all encoders local) and HD Raid5 controller susbsystem on same PCI bus as 5x encoders while playing back 3 streams to 3 Clients at the same time. (FWIW mobo not VIA chipset, Nvidia)

[TheraEdge]

OK, some more work (my job) getting in the way of my fun, and I did a little bit on the server while I haven't posted at well...OK, so, where am I now.

Got myself an ASUS A7N8X-X so we are switched over to nForce2 now...that should make the VIA haters happy, but, I may be a convert, becuase guess what? havn't had any erasing problems yet, and it has been up for a little over a week now. But, my string of bad luck seems to jump around and my temporary GeForce III Card's TV out is turning my screen purple and green and causing flicker in certain situations. But that is another post. I had never switched in the SIIG RAID controller before getting the new motherboard, but did install it with the full system reinstall (I love swapping motherboards, bleh) Anyway, it is installed now, and seems to be working well in concert with the new motherboard, hope this hasn't jinxed it...so the suggestions seem to be very helpful, and this way I still have a spot for a second hard drive for programs and 2 connections left to do a mirror set for a file server as well.

So, in closing it looks like VIA is a good suspect if someone else is having the same problem with there setup.

[steer]

hi... i also got delayed writing error... i have reformat my hard drive but i still have the same error.. i try changing hard disk coz i thought that maybe that hard disk is damage or have bad sector in it. but after i swap hard disk and thought that my problems gone... then after a while the error "windows delayed write failed" had pop out..
can someone tell me what to do coz i realy dont know what to do.. i tried to google for some answe.. but the delayed write failed still not gone... pls somebody help me for solution to my problem..

[Steve52]

I had the "delayer write error" problem about a year ago on my sage server. It would happen often and cause me to loose the programs I was recording at the time. Like most people have said in this thread the most likely problem is a bad hard disk drive. I thought that also and spent a lot of time testing my drives, but I could not find a drive problem however. I worked with this issue a long time before I finally figured out the real problem. I was using all SATA hard disks, and one of the SATA ports on the motherboard was bad. I proved it by transfering a full 320gb hard drive contents over each of my SATA ports and all were ok except one. It would fail everytime over this port. I discontinued use of that port for awhile but eventually other SATA ports started failing and I had to replace the motherboard. This may not be your problem! I still think that a bad hard drive is what usually gives this error message, but in my case it was not. There is an old thread on this forum that I started about this problem if you search for it.

[paulbeers]

Steve is correct. If you have already replaced the hard drive, then most likely it is a bad port. Your only option at this point would be to stop using that port or replace your hardware. Have you tried your hard drive on another controller to verify that it isn't the hard drive? If the first hard drive gives you the same error on a different port then you probably have two bad hard drives (unlikely).

[steer]

yes.. i tried that hard drive to my other computer... but i didn't really burned it to see if the delayed write failed would pop out... but for about 3-4 hrs of using that hard drive on the other computer the delayed write error didn't pop out.. maybe the problem is as you both have said is in the sata port or maybe in the sata cable.. because i replace the sata cable and plug it in a different port and right now im using that hard drive in its original computer and the delayed write error is not yet popping out... but im still observing it if the delayed write error is really gone...

thanks guys...