YASU + nVRAID == array corruption ?

[Jito463]

As a computer tech who's been doing this for well over a decade now (wow, has it been that long?), I just wanted to confirm what LoB said. PSU issues affect everything in the system, so without a PSU tester (which aren't always perfect, but usually suffice), or a new PSU, it's hard to track down the PSU as the cause of the problem. It's definitely the least expensive option to swap out and test, though.

It's even more likely if you have a no-name brand PSU in your system. In this case you have a decent brand in your system, but even good ones can go bad. I had an Enermax one once that fried one mobo and nearly fried a second one before I discovered it was bad. At the very least, it's worth testing. Worse case scenario, if your PSU doesn't turn out to be the problem, at least you've got a backup PSU for testing in the future.

[Aerowinder]

Thanks for the input. I haven't had any problems since I posted my original message (changed some things around), but if they continue, I will pick up a new PSU.


Does this one look good to you? I've heard a lot of good things about OCZ. It's probably got a little more power than I will need, though. I think something like a minimum of 480w was recommended for this board.

[Jito463]

Well, while you wouldn't want for power with that thing in your system, you don't need anywhere near that much power for your computer. A 400WT would suffice even. Here's a 500WT ThermalTake that would work nicely as a replacement if you felt the need.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153028

[Nodens]

Well that PSU is powerful enough, maybe a bit overkill for your system but I always say that it's better to plan ahead. I'd suggest a 500W PSU with at least 32A on the +12V (preferably 2 or 3 rails since it's safer that way--) and another 32A on the +5V.
But like I said, I like to plan ahead so thinking future upgrades and how power requirements have jumped on an exponential curve lately I'd go for the one you linked.

Back on topic. YASU had nothing to do with my RAID issues.

Well the idea came up after setting up an identical system with Vista x64 for code compatibility testing and I witnessed that exactly the same thing happened on that machine too. At first I thought it was a chipset issue or even a BIOS one. I decided to get a bit dirty and use a bus sniffer.

The issue is this, apparently the nvidia chipset drivers do something entirely stupid. They spin down the hard disks when you choose to shut down. In Win XP x64 that started to happen after the installation of SP2 while on Vista x64 it happens every now and then with the OOB drivers and 100% with v15 drivers. The drives spin down and apparently they sometimes spin down before the write cache gets flushed resulting in data corruption. Vista x64 detects that and disables write cache on the array.

The problem is far more apparent on Vista x64 since a warm boot with the v15 drivers ALWAYS results in the the RAID BIOS extension timing out on "Detecting array" or reports a degraded array.

Talking with nvidia, they said they are aware of the issue and they're working on a fix. They already have a beta driver that fixes it but it's only for Vista x86.

Workaround for anyone experiencing the same issue:

1. If vista has not disabled write caching on your array, disable it manually via device manager>array>properties. That will reduce the chances of actual corruption and you'll only have to deal with the Detecting array" issue.

2. To avoid the "Detecting array" issue don't choose to restart. Simply shutdown instead. Wait for your system to shutdown entirely and then start up normally. This gives your drives enough time to spin up normally.

3. I'd suggest keeping a backup of whatever sensitive data you have on your RAID array until we get the replacement driver.