The machine in question:
Windows XP Pro SP 2
AMD Opteron 175 (dual core)
MB is an A8N-SLI Deluxe
2 GB RAM
system drive is SATA
media drive is 2xSATA in RAID 0 (but I don't remember if I'm on the NVidia or the Silicon Image controller)
I was told the machine was unstable and slow, then there was a problem with the RAID array. When I examined the PC, drive manager reported the array as Healthy (At Risk). Some files (roughly 20%?) on the drive are listed with correct file data but are unable to be opened. When the system is being dodgy, processor utilization is listed in task manager at 50%+, but system idle process is still in the 90s, which I thought was impossible.
As I'm attempting to repair or scan the disk, the system becomes unstable. Part of the way through the scan it will lock up. 10 minutes later CPU usage drops to 50% and still no progress. Eventually I get an error: "Windows was unable to complete the disk check."
Does replacing the RAID drives make the most sense, or is this likely a controller or different problem? And is there a diagnostic test to get a handle on what's wrong and how much data is lost? There doesn't appear to be a diagnostic option in the controller menu that comes up after POST.
I checked, the RAID controller in use is the nVidia controller.
Also I managed to get a screenshot of task manager so you can see what I'm talking about. It's attached.
This is the real downside of RAID (and especially the so-called RAID 0, which actually has no redundancy at all). With RAID 1 you might have been able to recover the data, with RAID 0 it is a specialist job (mucho $$$). I would advise transferring as much data as possible onto an external drive, then reformat and clean install on a standalone drive.
I decided long ago that the somewhat pathetic "RAID" controllers are far more trouble than they're worth, and very dangerous to your data. If you need RAID, spend the money on a proper hardware controller card.
Your 50/90 split usage sounds as if the AMD dual core optimizer was never installed. Not sure if it was needed with the Opteron server CPUs, but it straightened out a few problems just like yours when using the Athlon X2s.
Since I was working on a budget and editing HD video, I figured that RAID 0 for performance plus a backup on an external USB was the way to go. All the data was backed up so it's not the end of the world. I installed 2 1TB drives in RAID 0 and they seem to be working ok, but I'll run SeaTools on the troubled drives to see if I can get a better idea of what's wrong. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to run the diagnostics!
The good news is that all the performance issues went away once the problem RAID was disabled.
Lucky for me the old ones are seagate and the new ones are Samsung. What failed was a 320 GB Seagate that was about 3 years old after moderately heavy use. Thanks for the heads up, though.
It took forever to transfer 600 GB of files over USB... I think my next external drive will be eSATA or something.
[RESOLVED] RAID & Multicore expert needed
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