Problem with new Hard Drives/RAID enclosure

saint2e

Hello all,

I've recently needed some additional space for my computer, and purchased the following to remedy the situation:

1x Vantec NexStar MX
http://www.vantecusa.com/en/product/view_detail/497
2x Western Digital Red 4TB Hard Drives
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810

To install, I followed the directions of the Vantec enclosure: Put the two drives in, toggled the bits to configure it to use RAID 1, and then connected it to my PC via the USB 3.0 cable.

Windows 7 recognized the new drive, and I initialized it using GPT. No problems so far. I go to format it (using NTFS), and Windows complains that "Format did not complete successfully".

Thinking it might be a problem with the enclosure I purchased, I took out the two drives and individually tried to format them via my 1-slot SATA "toaster" appliance (can't remember the name/make/model as I'm at work right now), connected via eSata. Again, the drive is recognized by windows, and I'm able to initialize, but the "Format did not complete successfully" message appears. For both drives.

So I'm suspicious that either I've done something gravely wrong, I'm missing something obvious that I didn't do, or I got two drives from a bad batch...

My next steps are to: connect each drive directly to the motherboard and try to format again. Otherwise I'll be calling Western Digital and seeing if they suggest anything.

Any thoughts on what could be the issue?

Myiagros

I would try booting Gparted and trying to format the drives there. If that doesn't work then try the motherboard connections instead of eSATA. If it works with straight SATA then it would point to an eSATA failure.

saint2e

Myiagros wrote: »

I would try booting Gparted and trying to format the drives there. If that doesn't work then try the motherboard connections instead of eSATA. If it works with straight SATA then it would point to an eSATA failure.

Thanks. That was what another friend suggested to me, so I will add that to the list of things to try.

The toaster appliance did have a hard drive in there for the longest time that worked without issue, but I still think the simplest configuration is probably the best way to narrow down the problem.

Aioua

How are you trying to format them? With Disk Management (the gui) or DISKPART (cmd line)?

Cause sometimes Disk Management is real dumb.

I'd start up diskpart, run 'clean' on it, and then format it.

Beazle

Read this and see if it helps http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581408

saint2e

So as an update, I used GParted last night and formatted both drives individually in NTFS. Not sure I did it right though because it went way too quickly. As well, when I booted up into Windows, Windows didn't recognize them as formatting, so I'm going to try again tonight. Got too frustrated last night. Essentially when I got into GParted I deleted the existing volumes/partitions that had managed to be put on there, hit apply, and then set format NTFS and hit apply again. Perhaps I missed a step?

Also tried "diskpart" and got the following, after selecting a disk/volume:

DISKPART> format FS=NTFS LABEL="Pictures2" QUICK

0 percent completed

DiskPart has encountered an error: The parameter is incorrect.
See the System Event Log for more information.

System Event Log has a error log stating "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk4"

I also tried putting them into the 2 drive RAID enclosure again just to see if it could format it. Same problem as before. RAID enclosure is connected via USB 3.0, and the toaster appliance is connected via eSata, so I'm pretty sure I don't have a cable problem.

Discovered I've used up all my SATA cables, so I need to go grab a spare one before I can test connecting directly to the motherboard and trying the format again.

saint2e

SUCCESS!

So I booted up into GParted with the enclosure connected via USB and noticed that it wasn't being detected. I switched to an eSata cable (taken off of my toaster appliance), and it was detected. So I formatted the RAID Array in GParted, loaded up into Windows, and we're in business.

Thanks for the suggestion of GParted. clearly I was overthinking things and should've just gone for the simplest approach.

saint2e

Hrrm. Maybe not. I've started to copy things over to the new drive now that it's showing up in Windows. However, when I went to copy more things today, Windows gave an error:

"Could not find this item

This is no longer located in Q:\. Verify the item's location again."

I look, and EVERYTHING that I copied over last night is gone from the drive. Windows still reports that there is a lot of space taken up by data, but all I see accessing the drive is empty top level folders. Good thing I copied things instead of cutting and pasting.

Interestingly I get this when running chkdsk:

C:\Users\Saint>chkdsk Q: /f
The type of the file system is RAW.
CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.

Not sure what to make of this.

Aioua

I gotta say, looking through reviews of the enclosure the whole thing seems kind of wonky.

I've never tried to use one where you were setting dip switches to configure the array.
If it says the FS is raw then it lost the RAID or file sysytem config somehow.

Some reviews for it are mentioning software you need to run to do configuration. Have you hit get the manufacturers website to get the latest drivers for it, along with any software that goes along?

Edit: Yeah, from the page you linked, in the drive zip you can download, there are a set of RAID configuration tools. I would see if those work.

saint2e

I'll look at that to see if I can get over my problem.

As of now I'm running fine using an eSata cable instead of USB 3.0. I rebooted into GParted, and need to switch to eSata for it to detect it, and I noticed it detected it as NTFS.

Rebooted into windows and windows could read it again. So something wonky with the USB port on the drive, or my USB 3.0 drivers.