RAID 1 (Mirror) Simultaneous HDD Fail?

Question

I have dual MaxTor 250GB SATA RAID 1 hard drives which have both just malfunctioned.    My XPS Gen 2 has been running perfectly well since purchased in Jan 04, until I recently installed (what I think was) a prompted Windows update.  Strange things then happened.  I noticed for the first time since initial setup the Windows XP Administrator / password logon screen. On restart, Windows XP Professional would only let me sign on as Administrator, and refused to let me enable other XP user accounts unless I uninstalled Netware for Client Services.  After doing that, on further restart I got the 'blue screen of death', which happened so quickly I didn't pick up the details.  Now on restart I show 'degraded' status, and the first drive on Port 0 shows 'Error Occurred', and Port 1 shows 'Normal'.    With help of Dell Technical Support I ran the IDE Drive Diagnostics, which produced 'Fail. Return Code: 7' for both HD's, at which point the Dell technician told me that I had to replace both HD's.  I'm told that it's very rare for both HD's to fail simultaneously.   Is there is a chance that this is a virus or software problem?    I have run the more detailed diagnostics in which both HD's pass the confidence, self, seek and S.M.A.R.T. tests, but fail the read and verify tests, returning this message: '0F00:1344 - uncorrectable data error or media is write protected' for numerous blocks.   Obviously, I was running RAID 1 because I thought my data would be more secure, and I've been lax about running data backups.  How can I best salvage whatever data is left on my HD's (particularly pictures and Outook messages)?  Should I use a data recovery shop?  I have a DVD burner on my computer, is there any way to burn a DVD of what's currently on my HD's?     XPS Gen 2 3.0GHz HT 2GB SDRAM 400MHz 256 DDR ATI Radeon XT HD SATA RAID 1 Dual 250GB HD's XP Professional SP 1

shesagordie · Answer

wonderit.

Check out the following.

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

Data recovery companies are very expensive. Never rely on hard drives not to fail, even through a RAID helps to reduce the odds, still make backups to other media, such as CDs or DVDs.

Bev.

ejn63 · Answer

I would break the mirror on the RAID array and test each drive independently. Each drive contains a full set of data - and it is very unlikely, even for Maxtor, for two drives to fail simultaneously.

Storage, Drives & Media

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