RAID Access Failure (but it still works)

I built a system using the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe and 3 Western Digital
Caviar drives 320GB in size.

I set up a bootable RAID 5 and installed Windows XP Professional. It
seemed to work fine. I installed the 2 nVidia drivers from a floppy
using F6 during the Windows installation. When I had Windows running I
installed the nVidia chipset.

It seems to work fine until I try to do something "low-level" like
printing or adjusting settings on the Windows control panel. Then I get
a series of popups in the system tray saying "RAID Access Failure".

However, the print operation succeeds! If I just ignore the popups,
everything eventually sorts itself out. What's up? Any ideas?

Question asked; question answered.

I discovered what's going on. Nothing. My RAID works fine. The problem
is the Disk Alert utility from MediaShield. It is inferior. It reports
Raid Access Failure when there is none.

You don't really need a RAID monitor from your OS if you have a
hardware-based RAID. It's just a convenience. And not even convenient
at all if it's inaccurate.

You also don't really need MediaShield. It's just another convenience.
In point of fact, you can maintain your RAID from the BIOS.

The solution was simple. Omit the monitor from the startup items.
Deselect nvraidservice.exe from the startup items in MSCONFIG.

There are many places on the internet that say nvraidservice.exe is a
driver or that it is otherwise essential for the operation of your
RAID. This is incorrect.

You do need to install your RAID drivers, but nvraidservice.exe is not
a driver. It is not essential for operation of your RAID.

My RAID was working correctly from the beginning in spite of the
erroneous Disk Alert popups. So what's wrong with MediaShield's Disk
Alert? Are my disks just slow in RAID 5 and Disk Alert thinks I'm
having a read failure for every block my OS attempts to read? I'm
guessing here.

RoadRaat wrote:
I built a system using the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe and 3 Western Digital
Caviar drives 320GB in size.

I set up a bootable RAID 5 and installed Windows XP Professional. It
seemed to work fine. I installed the 2 nVidia drivers from a floppy
using F6 during the Windows installation. When I had Windows running I
installed the nVidia chipset.

It seems to work fine until I try to do something "low-level" like
printing or adjusting settings on the Windows control panel. Then I get
a series of popups in the system tray saying "RAID Access Failure".

However, the print operation succeeds! If I just ignore the popups,
everything eventually sorts itself out. What's up? Any ideas?

There are numerous reported problems with media shield and active armour
just view nvidea forums
Personally, and from experience, I have no faith in onboard raid or the
onboard raid utilities.
I'm now using a raid card and its supplied utilities ($350) , though my mobo
has two different raid controllers. But I guess it depends how important
your data is to you

"RoadRaat" wrote in message
ups.com...
Question asked; question answered.

I discovered what's going on. Nothing. My RAID works fine. The problem
is the Disk Alert utility from MediaShield. It is inferior. It reports
Raid Access Failure when there is none.

You don't really need a RAID monitor from your OS if you have a
hardware-based RAID. It's just a convenience. And not even convenient
at all if it's inaccurate.

You also don't really need MediaShield. It's just another convenience.
In point of fact, you can maintain your RAID from the BIOS.

The solution was simple. Omit the monitor from the startup items.
Deselect nvraidservice.exe from the startup items in MSCONFIG.

There are many places on the internet that say nvraidservice.exe is a
driver or that it is otherwise essential for the operation of your
RAID. This is incorrect.

You do need to install your RAID drivers, but nvraidservice.exe is not
a driver. It is not essential for operation of your RAID.

My RAID was working correctly from the beginning in spite of the
erroneous Disk Alert popups. So what's wrong with MediaShield's Disk
Alert? Are my disks just slow in RAID 5 and Disk Alert thinks I'm
having a read failure for every block my OS attempts to read? I'm
guessing here.

RoadRaat wrote:
I built a system using the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe and 3 Western Digital
Caviar drives 320GB in size.

I set up a bootable RAID 5 and installed Windows XP Professional. It
seemed to work fine. I installed the 2 nVidia drivers from a floppy
using F6 during the Windows installation. When I had Windows running I
installed the nVidia chipset.

It seems to work fine until I try to do something "low-level" like
printing or adjusting settings on the Windows control panel. Then I get
a series of popups in the system tray saying "RAID Access Failure".

However, the print operation succeeds! If I just ignore the popups,
everything eventually sorts itself out. What's up? Any ideas?

Thanks, Old Man, for the tip about the nVidea forums. I'll check those
out.

I'm new to RAID. When things didn't work, I naturally assumed it was
me. When I realized that MediaShield is less than perfect, I suspected
I would have to go with a RAID card. Your feedback was informative.

I'll watch how things work with my system. At some point I may be
upgrading the way you describe.

old man wrote:
There are numerous reported problems with media shield and active armour
just view nvidea forums
Personally, and from experience, I have no faith in onboard raid or the
onboard raid utilities.
I'm now using a raid card and its supplied utilities ($350) , though my mobo
has two different raid controllers. But I guess it depends how important
your data is to you

"RoadRaat" wrote in message
ups.com...
Question asked; question answered.

I discovered what's going on. Nothing. My RAID works fine. The problem
is the Disk Alert utility from MediaShield. It is inferior. It reports
Raid Access Failure when there is none.

You don't really need a RAID monitor from your OS if you have a
hardware-based RAID. It's just a convenience. And not even convenient
at all if it's inaccurate.

You also don't really need MediaShield. It's just another convenience.
In point of fact, you can maintain your RAID from the BIOS.

The solution was simple. Omit the monitor from the startup items.
Deselect nvraidservice.exe from the startup items in MSCONFIG.

There are many places on the internet that say nvraidservice.exe is a
driver or that it is otherwise essential for the operation of your
RAID. This is incorrect.

You do need to install your RAID drivers, but nvraidservice.exe is not
a driver. It is not essential for operation of your RAID.

My RAID was working correctly from the beginning in spite of the
erroneous Disk Alert popups. So what's wrong with MediaShield's Disk
Alert? Are my disks just slow in RAID 5 and Disk Alert thinks I'm
having a read failure for every block my OS attempts to read? I'm
guessing here.

RoadRaat wrote:
I built a system using the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe and 3 Western Digital
Caviar drives 320GB in size.

I set up a bootable RAID 5 and installed Windows XP Professional. It
seemed to work fine. I installed the 2 nVidia drivers from a floppy
using F6 during the Windows installation. When I had Windows running I
installed the nVidia chipset.

It seems to work fine until I try to do something "low-level" like
printing or adjusting settings on the Windows control panel. Then I get
a series of popups in the system tray saying "RAID Access Failure".

However, the print operation succeeds! If I just ignore the popups,
everything eventually sorts itself out. What's up? Any ideas?

On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 21:23:34 GMT, "old man"
wrote:

There are numerous reported problems with media shield and active armour
just view nvidea forums
Personally, and from experience, I have no faith in onboard raid or the
onboard raid utilities.
I'm now using a raid card and its supplied utilities ($350) , though my mobo
has two different raid controllers. But I guess it depends how important
your data is to you


ZERO problems with on-board RAID0 on A8N32-SLI with MB driver 6.85 and

dual (non-Maxtor) 3.0Gbit SATA disks. Of course, my system disk is
non-RAID - life is too short and I am not a masochist.

John Lewis

"RoadRaat" wrote in message
oups.com...
Question asked; question answered.

I discovered what's going on. Nothing. My RAID works fine. The problem
is the Disk Alert utility from MediaShield. It is inferior. It reports
Raid Access Failure when there is none.

You don't really need a RAID monitor from your OS if you have a
hardware-based RAID. It's just a convenience. And not even convenient
at all if it's inaccurate.

You also don't really need MediaShield. It's just another convenience.
In point of fact, you can maintain your RAID from the BIOS.

The solution was simple. Omit the monitor from the startup items.
Deselect nvraidservice.exe from the startup items in MSCONFIG.

There are many places on the internet that say nvraidservice.exe is a
driver or that it is otherwise essential for the operation of your
RAID. This is incorrect.

You do need to install your RAID drivers, but nvraidservice.exe is not
a driver. It is not essential for operation of your RAID.

My RAID was working correctly from the beginning in spite of the
erroneous Disk Alert popups. So what's wrong with MediaShield's Disk
Alert? Are my disks just slow in RAID 5 and Disk Alert thinks I'm
having a read failure for every block my OS attempts to read? I'm
guessing here.

RoadRaat wrote:
I built a system using the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe and 3 Western Digital
Caviar drives 320GB in size.

I set up a bootable RAID 5 and installed Windows XP Professional. It
seemed to work fine. I installed the 2 nVidia drivers from a floppy
using F6 during the Windows installation. When I had Windows running I
installed the nVidia chipset.

It seems to work fine until I try to do something "low-level" like
printing or adjusting settings on the Windows control panel. Then I get
a series of popups in the system tray saying "RAID Access Failure".

However, the print operation succeeds! If I just ignore the popups,
everything eventually sorts itself out. What's up? Any ideas?

I had two different Asus mobos using raid, both gave raid problems
On one, mirror raid, the raid utilities reported all ok, I then had
considerable probs with NIS, which I've used for many years without a
problem, then my DB app started giving probs. All utilities reported the
raid ok, but I broke it, rebooted and found three months of data missing,
the raid was not in sync, NIS had partially installed on one disk and
partially on the other.
Asus admitted there had been raid probs with data loss but thought it had
been cured by a bios update they were unable to offer any other insite.
Since data is critical to my business, once bitten twice shy. Using a raid
card with auto hotswap, event err email + backups offsite and on site and
Raid telephone support.

"John Lewis" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 21:23:34 GMT, "old man"
wrote:

There are numerous reported problems with media shield and active armour
just view nvidea forums
Personally, and from experience, I have no faith in onboard raid or the
onboard raid utilities.
I'm now using a raid card and its supplied utilities ($350) , though my
mobo
has two different raid controllers. But I guess it depends how important
your data is to you


ZERO problems with on-board RAID0 on A8N32-SLI with MB driver 6.85 and

dual (non-Maxtor) 3.0Gbit SATA disks. Of course, my system disk is
non-RAID - life is too short and I am not a masochist.

John Lewis

"RoadRaat" wrote in message
oups.com...
Question asked; question answered.

I discovered what's going on. Nothing. My RAID works fine. The problem
is the Disk Alert utility from MediaShield. It is inferior. It reports
Raid Access Failure when there is none.

You don't really need a RAID monitor from your OS if you have a
hardware-based RAID. It's just a convenience. And not even convenient
at all if it's inaccurate.

You also don't really need MediaShield. It's just another convenience.
In point of fact, you can maintain your RAID from the BIOS.

The solution was simple. Omit the monitor from the startup items.
Deselect nvraidservice.exe from the startup items in MSCONFIG.

There are many places on the internet that say nvraidservice.exe is a
driver or that it is otherwise essential for the operation of your
RAID. This is incorrect.

You do need to install your RAID drivers, but nvraidservice.exe is not
a driver. It is not essential for operation of your RAID.

My RAID was working correctly from the beginning in spite of the
erroneous Disk Alert popups. So what's wrong with MediaShield's Disk
Alert? Are my disks just slow in RAID 5 and Disk Alert thinks I'm
having a read failure for every block my OS attempts to read? I'm
guessing here.

RoadRaat wrote:
I built a system using the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe and 3 Western
Digital
Caviar drives 320GB in size.

I set up a bootable RAID 5 and installed Windows XP Professional. It
seemed to work fine. I installed the 2 nVidia drivers from a floppy
using F6 during the Windows installation. When I had Windows running
I
installed the nVidia chipset.

It seems to work fine until I try to do something "low-level" like
printing or adjusting settings on the Windows control panel. Then I
get
a series of popups in the system tray saying "RAID Access Failure".

However, the print operation succeeds! If I just ignore the popups,
everything eventually sorts itself out. What's up? Any ideas?