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Monday, May 21, 2007 5:14 PM PT Posted by Erik Larkin
QuickTime, iTunes May Wreck Vista RAID
Have a care if you have a Vista PC with a RAID array and use QuickTime or iTunes to play video. A report today at Tweaktown.com suggests that playing a QuickTime movie may cause a repeatable problem that makes it seem as if a drive is failing. After some online research, it appears that Intel's RAID drivers may be the source of the problem.
Cameron Wilmot wrote that he reproduced the problem on a Vista Ultimate 32-bit system with a RAID 10 array on a motherboard with an Intel ICH8R chipset. After digging around and finding reports of a similar-sounding problem, I found Intel release notes for its Intel Matrix Storage Manager version 7.0.0.1020 that acknowledge a known problem with using iTunes and Quicktime to play video.
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Simple Question for Complex People:
If the problem with the RAID array is due to an ACKNOWLEDGED problem with Intel & its Matrix Storage Manager, why do you say "may wreck Vista RAID?" Wouldn't it be "may wreck Intel RAID?"
Or is that too terribly difficult a question to ask?
Thanks! I?ve been having this problem with iTunes in Vista (on a computer with Intel RAID). I?ve searched high and low for a solution ? not thinking it could have anything to do with the raid controller.
This problem has cost me more than 40 hours on the phone with HP technical support, replacing disk drives, and ultimately eliminating iTunes and QuickTime until the Vista-compatible version was released. Now that it has, I installed it and managed to turn my computer in to a doorstop once again. Only after another sleepless night was I able to bring my PC back to life, with two separate non-RAID drives, and thankfully, most of my data files (but not all).
For the love of my iPod I go on. Thanks to this note, I think it is safer (talk about irony!) to maintain a non-mirrored machine with a solid backup strategy for data.
I racked my brain (and sanity) with this issue for two weeks since I received my new Gateway FX computer outfitted with Windows Vista, two 500gb drives on RAID 0. I installed Quicktime and my machine went into convulsions everytime I tried to open any kind of .mov file (ie. in iTunes, DJ Juicer, Adobe Bridge). Gateway was no help ? their solution was to wipe the drives and start over (by the way, Gateway support is absolutely awful, nevermind this issue).
After countless hours of updating drivers, trying, rebooting and failing, I stumbled upon a "fix." With the newest Intel Matrix Storage Console installed (v. 7.6.0.1011 and no, that upgrade didn't solve anything) I went into the console and enabled the "volume write-back cache" on the RAID 0 drive and voila! .mov files play flawlessly.
The help documentation says that the ENABLE mode is only for RAID 5, but it somehow makes a difference in RAID 0 with Quicktime.
trapazoyd...I have no idea who you are...but your solution has solved MONTHS of turmoil. I video edit professionally, and several progams I have use quicktime. I was so close to doing a clean re-install on my brand new dell/vista machine...and then I found your solution and it worked immediately! Thanks for figuring this out!