Server 2003 Corrupting MFT, Corrupting Files, how should I proceed?

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Tell me more about this 30 percent chance of failure during rebuild, please, is it a logical or mechanical issue? Do you have any external references that provide additional details?

This is not a Raid rebuild situation, but this sounds like important info nonetheless.

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Seagate st310034as 7200 rpm sata hdd's

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Seagate st310034as 7200 rpm sata hdd's

Also,download an eval copy of Backup Exec 2010 System Restore and create an image out to a USB drive.

Use the restore disk to test on another system using the restore anywhere option and see if your corruption goes away.

If so,I would rebuild the RAID using RAID 6 and restore the image to the new config.

SOLUTION

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SOLUTION

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SOLUTION

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These are excellent resources, pgm554!

Thank you for going above and beyond and "teaching a man to fish."

I am busy shifting operations to an alternate server while I troubleshoot this one - I will likely be replacing the mobo RAID with a 3Ware controller (a recurring theme from other forums is that the Intel mobo RAID is not known for reliability), and I will be reusing the existing drives to construct two RAID 1 volumes - I know those Seagate drives are consumer drives, but the customer cannot afford Enterprise-class drives. They would have afforded them if they knew how much the cheap ones really cost over the long run!.

Before I do that, however, I will be running diagnostics against the RAM, RAID, and MOBO to see if there are any overt failures.

I will keep you posted!

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The failure is snowballing - I'm glad I'm on top of it - this error began appearing in this mornings Application log:

Source: ESENT Event ID: 508

wins (3672) A request to write to the file "C:\WINDOWS\system32\wins\j50tmp.log" at offset 0 (0x0000000000000000) for 4096 (0x00001000) bytes succeeded, but took an abnormally long time (91 seconds) to be serviced by the OS. This problem is likely due to faulty hardware. Please contact your hardware vendor for further assistance diagnosing the problem.

I'm 75% certain its a failing drive, and 25% certain that it is a failing controller. Both are going to be ordered!

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I can't find Spinpoint F1's, are Spinpoint F3's acceptable?

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I have analyzed the hard drive space requirements and have found that 1TB is way too much space, the server OS + it's data is under 100GB.

SO:

I have ordered the following:

3ware 9650SE-4LPMLl + it's 4 drive breakout cable
4 x Western Digital RE4 WD2503ABYX 250GB 7200 RPM

I will create two RAID 1 volumes, 1 for the OS, and 1 for the data.

I am planning on using the Backup Exec 2010 System Restore for the move.

SOLUTION

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Found the issue, one of the drives in the existing array had bad blocks but it was never reported to the controller - cheap Intel RAID - had to figure it out by doing a consistency check then watching the lights on the hdd's - the flaky one stayed almost constantly illuminated as it ruminated on its bad sectors. An error, however, was never reported during the in-OS consistency checks, I had to do the BIOS check instead.

Since I can recover the existing system I'm going to replace the failed drive, get it going soundly, then migrate to the new (more reliable) array.

The Symantec solution is crippled unless I buy it, so I'm going to set aside the repaired array and use ASR + NTBackup for the restore to the new array.