Hi, I'm running 2.4.2 here and so far its going pretty well. I ran into a problem though and I'm not sure how to diagnose it correctly. So here's the situation: I downloaded a torrent (using utorrent) which is quite large but was divided into a set of rar archives. uTorrent downloaded the file without reporting any errors and the unRAID console doesn't report any errors either but if I try to extract the archive I have some corrupted archives. At first I thought maybe the torrent was corrupted at the source so I didn't think much about it but now it has happen again twice. From what I can see, these torrents are reported as fine and the problem would be on my side. These torrents were all downloaded to the same drive on the array so I'm suspecting it has some bad sectors. Is there any way I can verify this? And wouldn't unraid warn me about it?

 

 

It's not likely to be due to bad sectors.  They would either be reported to you, or be handled transparently and quietly, by the SMART firmware of the drive, with no data corruption.

 

Can you tell us more about your hardware setup?

 

Is there any chance you have an nForce4-based motherboard, either in your unRAID server, or in the machine running uTorrent?  They are known for problems like this.

 

You might test your drives and systems by copying large RAR's or ZIP's to and from your unRAID server and other computers, then testing them for data integrity.  I don't know what archiving tools you use, but they normally have an archive test function.

 

Hi Rob,

 

Computer running utorrent is an intel X38 based board using the onboard gigabit through a d-link gigabit switch to the unraid server which has a netgear gigabit adapter and the board is a 945gc from intel. The hard drive in question is a WD IDE 250g that came out of an external HD case.

 

I will try moving an archive I create and testing for integrity and let you know.

The most likely suspects are memory and a networking card or chipset.  Memory is easy to test.  A memory tester is built into unRAID, and a similar memtest utility can be downloaded and run on your desktop computer.  It usually involves creating a bootable floppy or CD.  If memory is fine, and you have an extra network card, you can try installing it in each of your computers and re-testing, assuming you have a test that can reliably create corruption.  When I get time, I'll write up a testing regime for isolating data corruption sources like this.

 

Recommended memory tester:  Memtest86+ V2.01 - http://www.memtest.org/

  - download bootable ISO

  - burn CD (using ImgBurn or other CD ISO burning software)

  - boot and run overnight or at least 4 hours

(always a good thing to have in your toolkit, works on any Intel-based computer irregardless of operating system installed)

 

@ Lohkay - what happens when you do a parity check on your array? Reason I ask is here http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1845.0.

 

paul