Hey Everyone, I have a computer that is running XP PRO SP2. We are using your adaptec 1210SA Raid controller. Our setup is two western digital SATAII 320GB hard drives, running a RAID 1 configuration. For some reason we recieved an error "delayed write failed" I have been researching and apparently this error can be caused by RAID controler drivers and XP PRO SP2. After this error occured, I am now unable to boot into my windows, I can get as far as my windows xp splash screen, the bar keeps going back forth and nothing ever happens. If I unplug my first hard drive and plug it into the my motherboard directly, I can boot into windows just fine. When my system boots it says my raid array is degraded. Any Ideas? Any suggestions, knowledge will be most appreciated.

If it were the raid controller or the raid controller drivers, it's likely none of your drives connected to the raid controller would work. Check your hard drives with the manufacturer's diagnostics. See the latter part of response 1 in this: http://www.computing.net/windows95/... (thanks to Dan Penny for this link:) Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm... If you don't have a floppy drive, you can get a CD image diagnostic utility from most hard drive manufacturer's web sites, but obviously you would need to make a burned CD, preferably a CD-R for best compatibilty, on another computer if you need to. If the drives themselves pass the diagnostics, you have a software problem, but it's probably not caused by the raid drivers. I'm assuming you made no changes to the raid array setttings just before this first started to happen.

Thanks Tubesandwires for the info, I will scan the drives for corruption, hopefully that is the case. Do I have to take any procauctions before rebuilding a raid array? Currently we have been using drive(1) to get by work this week. Data has definetly changed on drive(1), let me know if there is anything to worry about before doing a rebuild. Thanks for the help!

^both drives PASSED the tests, I used the western digital dianostic tool. I cannot boot from my Adaptec 1210SA when the drives are plugged into it. But my system boots fine when the drives are direcly plugged into the motherboard. In Adaptec's knowledge base it says a 1210SA can only rebuild an array using the storage manager utility in WINDOWS. How am i suppose to do rebuiuld my array if the drive does not boot when its plugged into my 1210SA controller card? I can't get into windows. So what does one do now? The issue has something to do with the controller card for sure.

OK, so the drives themselves are fine. I mis-read what you said. If you're saying one of the two drives boots fine when connected to the mboard's onboard drive controller(s) but neither boots when connected to the adaptec controller, there may be softhing iffy about the cards connection to it's slot of the drives connection to the card You could check these things out - remove the AC power to the case and make sure the Adaptec card is all the way down in it's slot, and/or remove the card and re-install it in it's slot, and/or remove it, clean its contacts, then re-install it, same as in response 2 in this, except you're cleaning the contacts on the card, not the ram: http://www.computing.net/hardware/w... - The SATA data cable has a bump or slight projection on one side of the outside of it's end connector that is supposed to "latch" it into the SATA header socket on the card and on the drive. That bump or projection is, unfortunately, easy to damage or even break off. Make sure that the cable end "latches" into the socket on both ends - the data cable should not move or come out if you merely brush your hand against it. If it does not "latch", even mere vibration can make it come out of it's socket enough to cause problems - tape it in place, or use another data cable that does "latch", if it does not "latch". Similar applies to the SATA power cable end connector and its socket on the drive and the mboard. Does the mboard hard drive controller support RAID? If it doesn't it may be normal for only one of the two drives in the RAID array to be detected. If the above does not help, the card may have become defective or have been damaged(very unlikely, unless it was damaged by not being all the way down in it's slot when the computer was running, or you plugged it in or unplugged it when live AC power was still being applied to the computer power supply, whether the computer was running or not ), or there may be something else wrong. Unfortunately, I have not used RAID and I don't know much about it. Apparently RAID 1 is where the data contents of one drive are a "mirror" of (identical to) the data contents of the other drive. It could be one drive must be detected first of the two, in order for the RAID array to work properly - I can't think of any way that situation would change, unless the drives have had their connection to the card changed from the way they were when the RAID array was first made, or the bios Setup boot order settings were changed from what they were when the array was first set up. If you have not changed any of the latter things, and if you made no changes to the raid array settings just before this first started to happen, I would think you can cure your problem by deleting the contents of the drive that is not working properly and copying the contents of the working drive to it, but as I have said, I'm no expert about RAID. Adaptec has pretty good support in my experience. If you dig around enough on their site you should be able to find out what you need to do. Have you seen this: "How to rebuild RAID 1 with 1210SA SATA RAID Controller?" http://ask.adaptec.com/scripts/adap... Or you could search for info about how to fix a RAID 1 array on the web in general. Or perhaps someone else who knows more about RAID arrays could provide better answers than I can. ..... "In Adaptec's knowledge base it says a 1210SA can only rebuild an array using the storage manager utility in WINDOWS. How am i suppose to do rebuiuld my array if the drive does not boot when its plugged into my 1210SA controller card?" The card must work of course. Once it does, according to info on the Adaptec site, the storage manager software is supplied by Adaptec, not Windows, and it is also on the CD that came with the card, so if you can't get into Windows you may be able to run it from the CD, if it's bootable, or if you can boot with some drive or disk that allows you to access the CD.

Turns out, I had a corrupted RAID driver. Adaptec was unable to say why the driver was corrupt, but thats what they said. 1) I plugged (drive1) from the RAID into SATA1 on the motherboard, the system booted. Then in device manager, I reInstalled the driver software, with a new driver that was set to me from an Adaptec Support Rep. 2) restarted the system with the TWO drives now plugged back into the RAID Controller Card 3) Presto! the system booted, I was now able to rebuild the degraded RAID ARRAY in windows. If anyone is having simlar problems with this SAME adaptec RAID CARD. Give me a shout I may be able to help. Glad this is over! thanks for all your suggestions. case closed

Thanks for tying up the thread. Did you try using the Adaptec CD as I suggested in the last paragraph of response 4?