2 HDDs drop out of Intel RAID every shutdown, but not on restart or sleep

[Gilbo]

I have a 4-drive RAID 0 for working data on my main home computer. Occasionally in the past, if the power went out or for no reason at all that I could tell, 2 of the disks would drop out and show up as "non-RAID" on the boot screen. Deleting the array, putting it back together with identical specs, and then recovering the partition using partition recovery tools would bring my data back. The disks are fine and have been forever except for dropping out like this occasionally.

Recently, things have escalated. These 2 disks now drop out every single time the machine boots after shutting down or hibernating. Sleep or restarts don't cause the problem, so basically I've stopped shutting the machine off for the last couple days.

After a ton of googling the only thing I could think was that the drives were spinning up too slowly or something and dropping out, so I setup a BIOS password to give them time. This hasn't helped.

I also re-seated all the SATA cables. No effect.

Any ideas?

I'd like to keep this machine working. I'd certainly like it to hold on long enough to at least replace it with a quad-core Kaby Lake and Z270 machine if I have to replace it, but I don't think I can get work down on something this fragile for another month or two (or however long it's going to take Intel to get yet another incremental upgrade out). Even if I replace it, I'll probably want to re-purpose it as a fileserver or something useful.

The motherboard is an Asus P8Z68-M PRO. It's got an Nvidia 8800 GTS with the latest drivers that very occasionally bluescreens the machine since I installed Windows 10. Boot's from a RAID 0 of 2 SATA SSDs. Data's on the 4-drive RAID 0 of HDDs.

EDIT: PSU is a Hiper Type R MkII, 650W unit.

 

[Handruin]

How does the SMART data look on the drives that are dropping out when compared to the ones that do not drop out? Any abnormal amounts or errors or corrections or even reallocations?

 

[ddrueding]

I think you are spot-on with the drives not spinning up thing. I don't know if the BIOS password stalls things at the right time to do anything. Does your motherboard have staggered spinup?

 

[Gilbo]

Sorry for the delay guys, and thanks for your thoughts!

How does the SMART data look on the drives that are dropping out when compared to the ones that do not drop out? Any abnormal amounts or errors or corrections or even reallocations?

Intel's RST hasn't reported anything, and it usually does support any unusual SMART stuff, but there may be something going on that it hasn't picked up. It doesn't give details --at least not in its BIOS interface just a warning if thresholds are passed. I'll look for some other, more detailed way to check the SMART data.

Does your motherboard have staggered spinup?

Some Googling revealed that other people report the BIOS password has solved the problem in their situations, but it had no effect in mine. It probably varies from motherboard to motherboard exactly how it's arranged. The password does come up before the Intel RST BIOS screen, but it doesn't change detection of the drives even if I let the machine sit at the password screen for a couple minutes before entering it.

No staggered spin up unfortunately. I wonder if a juicy enough PSU could get them up fast enough. The peak current draw when the motors first go from standstill to trying to move is probably the problem. It does make sense given there's no issue on restarts. It's probably a combination with the timing of the motherboard's POST process.

This Hiper is not a particularly high-quality PSU I don't think, and it's 650W are divided across 4 separate 12-volt rails which is always such a pain to micromanage.

If this is really what the problem is, this Asus motherboard has a variety of POST timing issues that are a pain. With my scanner, printer, and the USB hubs built into my monitors all plugged in, it won't detect a keyboard at POST no matter which USB port it's plugged into. When I need to get into the BIOS, I have to unplug everything except the keyboard because I guess it doesn't wait long enough to successfully poll that many USB devices (or I assume that's the problem).

 

[Gilbo]

I ordered a replacement PSU to see if that might fix it. I haven't been able to solve it so far.

 

[Gilbo]

Bought an EVGA 850W G3 which solved the problem.

The computer also boots much faster interestingly enough.

 

[Handruin]

Wow, glad that solved the issue. That's a very strange symptom to troubleshoot and have resolved by it being the PSU. Glad this worked out.