Smart array 5i and lost I/Os

[eran borovik]

Hi,
I have an application that manages an internal journal file. To make sure journal updates are atomic, the application issues open to the journal file in FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING mode to make sure the file-system cache doesn't stand in the way, and Issue I/Os to this file of size 512 bytes (Sector size on the disk) with 512 bytes aligned buffers. This scheme works well and was tested by power-plugging the machines while transactions were active and checking that the required roll-forward behaviour is achieved via the journal. However, with a win2k3 box with smartarray 5i controller, we have seen cases in which the journal appears to be corrupted (I/Os get lost) after power-plug. It seems that it happens only on drives that have raid1+0 on them (One drive composed of two disks). On simple raid 0 drives, the issue doesn't happen at all. I tried upgrading everything to the latest version: service pack, driver and firmware, but to no avail.
Does anyone have any experience with such issues?

Thanks,
Eran.