From: "Frank Haber" 

I don't have to deal with many hw RAIDs, but I've seen strange behavior as
well.  You remember the trouble I had three years ago with a bad chip in a
DPT controller subtly corrupting data?  They recalled that card.  Since
then, I've seen extreme strangeness with subtle drive firmware differences.
 Do you make an effort to buy only vendor-approved drives?  SCSI only, I
assume?

On the less exalted workstation level, I've made up a little box of
bootable ISOs and floppies containing a SMART inspector and the diags from
Seagate, IBM/Hitachi, Maxtor and WD.  I no longer just assume a slow
machine is spyware.  I've caught a couple of 'Replace NOW!!' drives that
you had to put your ear on to confirm were retrying - and no action at all
from WinXP/SMART.

This week (heck, this SEASON) has been bad for 1991-2 Seagate 40-80G ATAs,
as I believe I've mentioned before.  You get a few hours of intermittent
CLANK, and then total failure.   Watch out for those 40 giggers in the
neoprene
condom-sleeves.  They run hot.  They're common in Compaq Presarios (vomit).

From time to time, I hear some vague tales of reliability horrors with RAID
0 on kids' motherboard ATA setups - from their fathers.  I run away.  Life
is short.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5