New RAID 5/WIN XP: recycle bin corruption???

[JSM88]

looking everywhere for an answer on this one...

New system, 3 500GB disks in a RAID-5 Array running off the intel ICH8R controller.

WinXP sp2 on a seperate boot drive.

The array seems to be working fine, but I did get an error message about the recycle bin on the raid drive being corrupted. The data on the drive still appears stable. Having never previously encountered a corrupted recycle bin (lukcy?) and being new to raid 5 this raised a red flag. I consulted with my office sysadmin - a linux guy who runs a win/lin network but who is generally windows hostile. He tells me that there is a fundamental problem with the XP recycle bin and Raid, and that I will need to delete and rebuild the array and then not use the bin on that drive. Suprised me, but given my history with windows (since 3.1) not shocking. It also caused me to recall that MS often takes pain to state that raid is supported only on windows server, and not xp. On the other hand, I cannot seem to find any references to this problem on the web, and given the proliferation of raid, makes me think that the problem may not be as dire as I've been led to believe. So:

1) Is this a real XP problem?
2) If so, do I need to rebuild my array now? (not an easy thing to find somewhere to put the data now on it)
3) If so, will elminating the recycle bin solve the issue in the future? Can I just tell the bin not to work on the array via the properties switch or do I need to delete it from the registry?
4) If no to #1 - any thoughts on why I had a corrupted recycle bin within hours of setting this system up, and does it indicate some other problem with the array?

It strikes me that the fault tolerance of raid 5 only protects me from hardware failure, and that, if XP doesn't play well with RAID software corruption might be a much bigger concern - mooting any advantages I got from going raid 5 rather then just buying two 750's and using one as a back-up drive (a truely inelegant solution.)

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[drizzt81]

I have a hard time understanding how RAID-5 would corrupt anything. After all, it ought to be transparent to the OS.

 

[JSM88]

well, all things being equal I assume that it's XP, specifically the recycle bin sub-system that's doing the corrupting - but if your point is that the RAID setup is transparent to the OS and so RAID 5 should just look like a 1TB drive and nothing more - I agree - but, the parity process itself could (i guess) have some effect on the way data is written which doesn't play well with the rec. bin. Anyway - that's why I'm asking

 

[drizzt81]

Since I did not know how the recycling bin works, I took at look around:
http://www.codeproject.com/shell/recyclebin.asp

Doing it the other way (using the [allowundo] flag), the file is moved to a hidden folder whose name will vary depending on the format of the hard-drive: if it's NTFS, the name will be Recycler, otherwise Recycled.

During this operation, many things are done by the system :

The file doesn't move on the disk, only it's directory entry. Just like we have issued a MoveFile or have used the FO_MOVE flag.
In the Recycle Bin, the filename is changed and some information is stored in a proprietary index (if interested on this topic, read this article from the MSKB))

so let's follow that link:

How the Recycle Bin Stores Files

SUMMARY
When you delete a file in Windows Explorer or My Computer, the file appears in the Recycle Bin. The file remains in the Recycle Bin until you empty the Recycle Bin or restore the file.

Older files are also removed from the Recycle Bin when newer files are deleted and the Recycle Bin exceeds the maximum size allocated in Recycle Bin properties.

[...]

When you delete a file, the complete path and file name is stored in a hidden file called Info or Info2 (Windows 98) in the Recycled folder. The deleted file is renamed, using the following syntax:
D<original drive letter of file><#>.<original extension>

then the KB article goes on to talk about how stuff in the recycling bin could be damaged etc.

The bottom line is: the recycling bin does not does any super low-level operations. In fact, it appears that it is nothing more than a folder with files that have been renamed and a database (the index) that contains information about these files.

Unless the fact that the recycling bin is flagged as hidden, system and has some other special attributes is inherently incompatible with RAID drives, I do not see any logical reason for why it would be incompabile with RAID-5. Provided that files are moved to the recycling bin using the regular APIs available in windows, the likelihood of corruption should be approximately equal to the likelihood of any folder corrupting, given the same amount of access.

Bottom line: I do not see any reason why the Recycling bin should be "incompatible" with a correctly implemented RAID solution. I consider Intel a company that would provide you with a correctly implemented RAID solution for their chipset.