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Crash Crash Crash

So I bought a new XFX X58i motherboard and a nifty Intel Core i7 CPU to go with it. It was time to upgrade my Core 2 Quad system to a faster Core i7 system and get more RAM. I had Windows XP Pro 64bit and it was finally starting to run slow after a good 2 years of processing and programming.

Friday came and I pulled apart my system and installed the new motherboard. Turned it on and ... nothing. No beeps, no POST, nothing. Worst yet, my 3ware card did not show the bios.

So I pulled out the new stuff and returned the old stuff. Turned it on.

Got past the POST and the Marvel embedded RAID controller BIOS and then again, no 3ware bios. Well, that really stinks because the 3ware card controls my RAID-1 array that contains my system data.

I called 3ware who insisted that I just RMA the 8006-2LP and get a replacement. When I talked to the tech support person, she stated that it was not possible to hook the drives up to a new 3ware card because the "old" 8006-2LP (pre-9000 series) locks the drives. Not only was I stuck with RMA'ing the card, but I had no other recourse but to wait for the RMA process to finish to recover my hard drive with all of my data on it.

Then Monday came, and Zen had taken root. I had absolved myself to waiting until Wednesday to get my data off one of the drives. I took the slave RAID member and installed Windows 7 on it (clean install). That was a smart move, as now the drives and the system is super fast again. That makes me think the 3ware card was failing long before this day.

I found a software program - Data Recovery Wizard (www.easeus.com) - for $89 that appeared to be able to pull the data off the RAID-1 member. So I did exactly that - I pulled data off that drive and after several hours (150GB of data to recover), I had the most important aspects of my old system - the Outlook PST file and some development files that I did not have under source control.

Will I buy a 3ware card again? Probably not. Now that 3ware is LSI, though, they may have finally decided to add some compatibility to their cards. It was clearly short sighted of them to not allow future compatibility with their hardware RAID cards.

3ware did offer to send me a new 8006-2LP overnight on Monday for $49. The cost of overnighting my old 8006-2LP to Huntsville? $46. It's all a wash. I won't be using the new 8006-2LP in any system, though.

XFX board - crash. Never again. Why I experiment with non-Intel motherboard vendors, I don't know. EVGA and XFX get my Big Turkey rating when it comes to hardware. They're about as reliable as Dell. BFG gets my Lame Duck rating because they refused to honor my rebate check and cost me $20!

3ware Cards - can't say that I am happy there, but I do know that they are reliable cards. Only purchase new cards in the 95xx or newer range.

I've never had a problem like this with my HP/Compaq hardware. We sure do need another premium hardware vendor like Compaq.

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