[3ware.com #1819] [CLUE-Tech] Problems with 3ware 7006-2 RAID controller?

[via RT]

Dear Jim,

     Please check your drives with Maxtor diagnostic utility. You can
download the maxtor software from their site.
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/index.htm
If you are running 3dm software, please attach 3dm details page, 3dm
alarms page, 3dm error log (in alarms, scroll down, click on "download
error log", save it).

Sincerely,
3ware Customer Support.

[clue-tech at clue.denver.co.us - Sat Nov 15 00:24:29 2003]:

> Hi all,
> 
> I was wondering if anyone else on this list is using a 
> 3ware Escalade 7006-2 PCI RAID controller?  I bought one a
> couple of weeks ago thinking that it was going to solve my
> storage problems for good.  Also the price was right, and
> it's _real_ hardware RAID, not fake hardware RAID like some
> other vendors *cough* *Promise* *cough*.
> 
> Anyway I have two 120GB Maxtor drives, set in a RAID1 mirror.
> I have the tw_cli 3ware utility that lets me query the array
> status and drive status.  Everything's OK, according to tw_cli.
> 
> However, I seem to be losing files.  My system logged the
> following, and similar ext3_readdir errors:
> 
> Nov 14 21:45:06 tahoua kernel: EXT3-fs error (device sd(8,3)):
ext3_readdir:
> 
> 	bad entry in directory #344065: directory entry across blocks - 
> 	offset=572, inode=17760284, rec_len=26988, name_len=98
> Nov 14 21:45:41 tahoua last message repeated 3 times
> Nov 14 21:47:02 tahoua last message repeated 2 times
> 
> lots of times.  A reboot and fsck caused the system to drop to
> manual fsck mode because there were too many errors.  I am the
> sort of user that has to answer 'y' to every question asked by
> e2fsck, but this time there were some 250 "questions" .  Needless
> to say a bunch of files got put in /lost+found and the filenames
> are lost, so I am stuck trying to rebuild the system manually.
> 
> Anyone else have filesystem corruption apparently caused by a 3ware
> RAID controller?  I'm on Red Hat 7.3, newest up2date kernel 2.4.20-20.7,
> newest 3ware driver, firmware, BIOS, etc. etc. etc.  System is a P3
> 500MHz CPU, 256MB RAM, Intel 440BX chipset, nothing wrong with it
> AFAIK.
> 
> The drives and 3ware card are brand new, and in my opinion there's
> no excuse for this kind of behavior from the 3ware card.
> 
> Any ideas?