P55A-UD4P rev2 - RAID0 issues / questions

[Dr3thepooner]

Hey All...

As i almost seemed to fix all my issues some more came up : ) -

Here is the rig:

P55A-UD4P - Mother
2X260GTX in SLI
Intel i5 760 @ Stock for troubleshooting
4GB1600 Corsair DDR3 RAM
1000W mod PSU from Corsair i think
Windows 7 Ult 64
2xSeagate Barracudas 7200rpm 360BG HDs in RAID0

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So yesterday i got home after leaving my PC idling to DL some certain things from the internets , to check the DL status i moved the mouse - monitor woke up - it showed that soft (utorrent) was not responding, neither i was able to start task manager - only moving mouse around would work.

Restart was the only option - restarted PC, for some reason it completely shutdown and then came back up on its own - and then i noticed error message on one of the drives (port 0) in my RAID0 while booting up - "error occurred (0)", even though it was reporting Striped raid 0 - as healthy above.
the other drive (port1) was showing normal green status.

Windows booted up just fine, i didnt really notice any performance issues, but when trying to resume DL - with utorrent PC would crash hang again, which was probably caused by corrupt information. After reboot - i removed the file, and there was no issues further on - tho message is really annoying on boot. I have done some research and some recommended downloading - Intel Storage Matrix Manager, I did so and it reported one of the drives (port 0) had write errors - I was able to clear that message, now it boots without an error.(Something tells me it will come back soon)

Even tho it looks ok now, i am concerned as RAID0 might be fragile (i have back up). So the questions I have :

Any one had this issue before? Should I start troubleshooting HD's / Controller / Raid Drivers first?

One more thing - when i installed windows - it i never asked any RAID drivers - windows showed me raid 0 ready partition, i suppose putting default drivers.

And there are 2 drivers on this website -

ntel SATA RAID Driver
OS:Windows XP 32bit,Windows XP 64bit,Windows Vista 32bit,Windows Vista 64bit,Windows 7 32bit,Windows 7 64bit,Windows Server 2003 32bit,Windows Server 2003 64bit
   9.​6.​0.​1014   9.43 MB   2010/09/03
and

GIGABYTE SATA2 Driver
OS:Windows XP 32bit,Windows XP 64bit,Windows Vista 32bit,Windows Vista 64bit,Windows 7 32bit,Windows 7 64bit,Windows 2000
   1.17.54.1   3.33 MB   2010/04/29

Which one does what? and should i try installing them?

Thanks!

[Dr3thepooner]

If on one ever seen this before, could some one please explain - what is the difference between 2 RAID drivers -

Intel vs  Gigabyte one? and which one is being used by default when i set up raid0??? I thought there is only one that is being used by P55 chipset - the one i have set up and - the Marvel one...

[Dark Mantis]

Sorry for the delay in replying but I have been a bit busy. I am surprised nobody else has answered your question yet. There are two different chips that controll the RAID ports on this board. There is the Intel ICH10 that is the Southbridge and then there is the rebadged chip that Gigabyte call the GSATA. The lower number ports are controlled by the Intel chip and the port 6&7 come under the Gigabyte chip. It should all be covered in the manual.

[Dr3thepooner]

Thanks for the reply as usual!!!

Just wanted to share, just in case some one has the similar issue - I fixed mine it looks like.
What i have done was - updated RAID controller drivers from Gigabyte website, with that new Intel storage soft was installed as well - which is awesome.
As well dl'ed SeaGate utility to check drives, made a bootable cd, disabled raid - checked each disk on its own - and sure enough found bunch of bad clusters on Drive 0, which were fixed but it recommended replacement regardless..

[Dark Mantis]

Thanks for the update on  your progress. If there is any doubt at all about a drive the last thing you want to do is add it to a RAID array. Better to start out with two(or more) new drives if possible.