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Brand new Alienware machines fails with Matrix Storage Manager 8.9

idata
Employee
2,460 Views

I know there is a post about this already but I am really upset today that I paid $10k for this computer and it has the IMSM 8.9 bug. I have 4 WD Raptors in RAID 10 and they randomly fail. I also added two brand new 2Tb drives in RAID 1 and guess what? RAID 1 fails too.

Can we at least get an acknowledgement of this problem from Intel and what the real solution is because people are recommending things, others are saying no and I have no clue who to believe. And why is Intel locking these threads? BTW, the thread on this error has over 100k reads. Compare that to the other threads and I think we have a real problem here guys.

EJK

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JBras2
Beginner
520 Views

I second this. Been following threads for a few weeks now. I am having exactly the same problems. Would be nice to hear Intel comment on this.

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idata
Employee
520 Views

/thread/5036 http://communities.intel.com/thread/5036

^ I was the one that asked for the thread to be locked due to people not fully testing their hardware to rule out a non driver issue.

Try 8.8 or 9.5

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idata
Employee
520 Views

The machine is brand new from one of the largest PC suppliers in the world. I did not modify a single thing. The machine failed after 2-3 hours of being up and running. So there is nothing to rule out in my case unless Dell made a serious mistake. I called Dell tech support and they accidentally read me an internal notice saying "do not ship" for this particular platform. They acknowledge the problem but they won't provide more details (I think they don't want to face the prospect of having all of those machines returned)

Look, I know many people don't test things and fool around with overclocking and all kinds of other things that cause issues. I do not believe this to be the case here. There is a very serious problem with this driver or Intel hardware/firmware and it simply would baffle my mind that over 100,000 people have read this other thread on this forum where most threads receive only a fraction of the traffic. Something is wrong. It cannot be that this many users are experiencing this problem by mis-configuring their hardware or not testing it. I don't believe in conspiracy theories, I don't wear a tin foil hat and I read Michael Shermer's skeptic column regularly. And my skeptic logic tells me right now that we have a problem that is statistically relevant and someone is not fessing up to it.

As for this 9.5 driver you refer to, I tried to locate it. Do you have a link to it? And also, why does that appear to be a different piece of software altogether? Why is there two sets of drivers? Am I using a driver for something else that seems to work but will cause me other issues???

EJK

idata
Employee
520 Views
The machine is brand new from one of the largest PC suppliers in the world. I did not modify a single thing. The machine failed after 2-3 hours of being up and running. So there is nothing to rule out in my case unless Dell made a serious mistake. I called Dell tech support and they accidentally read me an internal notice saying "do not ship" for this particular platform. They acknowledge the problem but they won't provide more details (I think they don't want to face the prospect of having all of those machines returned)

Yes but do Dell fully test the HDD's, CPU, RAM at load at idle for 24 hours and such ... I think not.

Look, I know many people don't test things and fool around with overclocking and all kinds of other things that cause issues. I do not believe this to be the case here. There is a very serious problem with this driver or Intel hardware/firmware and it simply would baffle my mind that over 100,000 people have read this other thread on this forum where most threads receive only a fraction of the traffic. Something is wrong. It cannot be that this many users are experiencing this problem by mis-configuring their hardware or not testing it. I don't believe in conspiracy theories, I don't wear a tin foil hat and I read Michael Shermer's skeptic column regularly. And my skeptic logic tells me right now that we have a problem that is statistically relevant and someone is not fessing up to it.

Do you really I started that (yes thats my thread) "100,000 people have read this other thread" and Intel didn't think there is a problem with 8.9? of course not I know there is a serious problem with that driver and that's that I don't need Intel to tell me that.

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idata
Employee
520 Views

>>I know there is a serious problem with that driver and that's that I don't need Intel to tell me that

Well, that's where we differ. I do need to be told there is a problem from the company that owns the hardware. And I need them to come clean on it and tell me what they are doing about it. I also need them to remove this 8.9 driver for the platforms this affects (I have no clue if 32bit OSs have this issue). I also need them to send a notice to their suppliers/integrators to explain the issue and what to do about it so when I call a company like Dell, they immediately point me in the right direction. I would also like for Intel to simply tell people if they have or have not identified the specific issue and if they have a timeline. This has been going on for months now. I mean this is not preventing me from playing a video game. It's wiping my machine clean. And btw, I just installed it as no RAID and one drive. Same problem.

So after a day of phone tag with Dell, bye bye machine. They are taking it back, no questions asked. Full refund and they are paying for shipping. BTW, I am not blaming Dell at all for this. This is an Intel problem.

Anyways, that's it for me. I am not going to be a martyr any more. Machine is going away tomorrow. I am getting something else and end of problem. Good luck to everyone else who is going to stick around for the end of the movie.

EJK

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idata
Employee
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It's now March 2010 and the problem seems not to be solved yet. I have 5 dead hard drives to prove it.

I wish I would have read these threads a month ago. I would have steered well clear of Raid. That word leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Anyway here's my story for the record.

I recently built this machine and set up a 4 WD 500gig Raid 10 using Intel Storage Manager 8.9 supplied with the board. I did all the right things when installing XP on Raid 10 and it worked a treat. I do want the OS on raid despite the risks and I did try and minimise that risk of failure by using raid 10.

 

I installed all the drivers and applications for the Rampage 2 MOB plus updated Windows. By then this solid machine was humming along and its performance stunned me.

 

Two days later the drive on sata # 2 failed. Raid then started rebuilding itself. I looked into the storage manager and the offending drive had disappeared, it was missing. I then set the raid to rebuild to another drive I had spare which it started to do then drive # 4 failed, then the blue screen of death.

 

As the raid had totally failed I booted into Bios, turned off Raid then re booted into the raid setup and all but one drives was missing.

 

 

Now I have re installed on one drive only whilst sorting this problem.

 

 

I have tested all seven sata ports with a healthy drive using the same power and Sata cables that drove the original drives during the raid. All work. The machine fully booted off all ports. When I plug in the drives I used in the raid they cannot be detected in bios nor do they even spin. Two of those 500gig drives were brand new.

 

Now they all seem completely dead.

 

As far as I can tell, this is not a cable problem nor a settings problem in Bios.

 

As a last resort I did re-enable raid and booted into Bios, same deal, drives not detected.

 

So now I'm shaking my head. I think the chance of 5 drives dying the same day is very, very slim.

 

Here's the full setup:

 

Asus Rampage II Extreme (Bios ver. 1802)

 

i7 920

 

G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3 6g (limited to 3g by XP)

 

ATI Radion 4890

 

Huntkey Max 700W power supply

 

Coolmaster Sniper case.

 

XP Pro 32bit

 

5x 500g WD (4x Raid 10, 1x hot spare.)

 

1x Asus Sata DVD burner.

 

1x 10g WD (General backups, install files etc.) on Jmicron sata

 

 

I have looked at WD's website and found no answers other than firmware updates but I cannot do a thing with the drives as they simply don't work at all.

 

I hope some of you may have some theories for me to pursue.

 

 

Thank you all,

 

 

Magnus
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