SCSI RAID Issues with MegaRAID 320-1

I started out with three seagate cheetah 10K.6 drives in a RAID5 config, then I added 3 more drives to increase storage and speed. I am now having problems, which seem to be isolated to the 3 new drives I added.

Basically, I create and init a new array, and when I go to install an OS (win 2003), I get a disc error...or the installation just hangs and all disc activity stops.

When I Restart the computer and go into the RAID bios, I see that 1 or 2 of the new drives has "failed", thus bringing the system to a halt.

I've tried various combinations of drives in the array, I've tried Raid 0, I tried various stripe sizes from 64 to 128KB and I even did a consistency check, which writes zeroes to the drive and takes like 10 hours+! Still, nothing. I really need the extra storage these extra drives provide, so am I doing something wrong or did I get 3 dud drives?

Another thing I noticed, that I should point out, is that during heavy disc access, the drive access lights start getting desynchronized. I thought the raid array would be accessed as one drive, so the drive access lights should blink together in unison. One or more of the 3 new drives always fail, the 3 original drives are always fine.

These drives are connected via an SAF-TE backplane, which handles the IDs and supposedly the termination. I have 6 drives total. Any ideas?

 

 

 

 

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