mdadm software raid problems on Debian

[starfury6]

Hey all,

I have a server running Debian and did have a software raid1 array of 2 x 250GB SATA disks on a Sillicon Image 3112 onboard controller. I am running the latest 2.6 kernel for reference. About 3 months ago I had a disk fail (was marked faulty by mdadm monitor) with ATA ioerrors and then about 30 minutes later the other disk started to have the same errors. I shut the machine down and was able to recover the info from the drive which hadn't been marked faulty. I figured it wasn't out of the realms of possiblility of them both going wrong since they were the same drive, from the same manufacturer and had serial numbers almost identical.

So, not trusting them, I purchased 2 raid edition drives (300GB ones this time) one seagate and one maxtor and recreated my array using these new drives. They proved faster, quieter and were also put in IcyDocks, to keep them cool.

Last night the EXACT same thing has happened to the drives again. This to me is far too much of a coincidence.

My plan is to fire up the server with the disk marked faulty removed and copy the contents off onto another machine on the network. Then I can play around with things.

I obviously need to find the problem. When the original problem occurred I was using Debian Sarge, I switched to Debian Etch in the hopes that newer programs and drivers would solve the problem but alas it hasn't. I can only guess that it's either the motherboard, or Debian itself which is having problems.

Anyone else have any suggestions as to the cause and a solution?

Thanks guys. (and girls)

[chunkey]

can you provide the SMART values of your drives?

apt-get install smartmontools
smartctl -d ata --all /dev/{first hdd}
smartctl -d ata --all /dev/{second hdd}

[starfury6]

will do this evening (at work at the moment).

I didnt try smartctl, hddtemp I tried but that wouldnt even return a thing.

[chunkey]

so? are the drives dead?

[starfury6]

Interesting question. I can't get the server booted up because the gfx is screwed. Borrowed another card for a minute (the wife wouldn't let me keep it!) and it was fine so it appears the gfx card is knackered. I had it a few times where I would reboot the server for something and it would come up with corrupted gfx, I just put it down to residual images in the frame buffer and a few restarts and it would go away. Now its totally screwed.

Knowing how wonderful the PC hardware architecture is, can a GFX card spewing crap out on the PCI bus cause problems for other devices? If so it could explain my previous problems. I put one of the original drives which I thought were toast when it originally occurred in my Fedora box (which I had to reinstall last night, not a good week) and it seems to be fine, suggesting my 2 new ones are okay too.

I'm going to order a new card for the server before I start screwing with it just in case the GFX card was causing other problems. It was only £16 so it's hardly worth trying to warranty it. (Connect3DAti Radeon 7000)

Will keep you posted.