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panzerkw
Forum Ninja
panzerkw
889 Posts
6 Jun 2003, 2:18am

My RAID died

On my other machine, windows XP fails to finish booting. I've got two IBM deathstars in there on RAID0. I'm thinking that a partition on one of the drives may be corrupted.

To recap: machine posts ok, windows starts to boot, BSOD, restart, rinse, repeat.
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Spinner
Getting it done!
Spinner
5,003 Posts
6 Jun 2003, 2:53am
Have you tried entering in safemode? What makes you think it's related to your RAID array? and what was the last thing you did of system wide proportions the last time you had it fully working?
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primesuspect
The Icrontic Guy
primesuspect
27,806 Posts
6 Jun 2003, 2:56am
First, always always do a memtest86 (www.memtest.com) when you start getting BSODs because memory goes bad.

If it was your raid, windows would probably not start booting. This is not a guarantee, but that's pretty much always the case. What you can do is try a "repair install" -- boot off the WinXP CD, act like you're going to reinstall the OS, and then it will "search for previous Windows XP installations" and offer you the choice of "Repair installation"... Do that, it will avoid the need to reinstall apps and restore personal settings.

Give that a shot.
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panzerkw
Forum Ninja
panzerkw
889 Posts
6 Jun 2003, 3:00am
Reinstalling fails because Setup can't see my hard drives.

Safemode does not work, same problem.

The memory works, I'm using it in the working computer and it runs fine.

The machine that had failed had not been used for 3 weeks.
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Spinner
Getting it done!
Spinner
5,003 Posts
6 Jun 2003, 3:07am
Yeah, sound advice. BSOD's are much more likely to be caused by hardware faults these days than they are by software problems. That is of course relating to the greatness that is Windows XP. However BSOD's at startup can be a great pain, as eventhough it may be a simple problem to fix, you need to be able to get to the desktop to fix it.

With regards to your attempts at re-installing ;

Make sure that you have instructed the setup (windows XP right?) that you are using a RAID controller i.e a third party controller (under Windows 2000 and XP by pressing F6 when prompted at the start of the setup program), otherwise your partition/s won't show up.
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Spinner edited : 6 Jun 2003 at 3:09am .
panzerkw
Forum Ninja
panzerkw
889 Posts
6 Jun 2003, 3:09am
I've installed the proper RAID driver, but Setup still does not recognize my hard drives.

I should also mention that this system was overclocked.
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Spinner
Getting it done!
Spinner
5,003 Posts
6 Jun 2003, 3:15am
Hmmm. This is extremely odd, I mean it's one thing not detecting drives, but it's inconsistent that they are detected at boot at least enough for the OS to start it's boot procedure but not during the OS setup program.

A last resort of course would be to gut the array and rebuild it from scratch. But it's all circumstantially pointing to the array. I don't really want to tell you to do that as there isn't really any hard facts supporting the theory that you've lost a stripe or two.

EDIT : If your system is still OC'd then crank it down to it's default speed, that includes all basic timings as well.
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Spinner edited : 6 Jun 2003 at 3:18am .
panzerkw
Forum Ninja
panzerkw
889 Posts
6 Jun 2003, 3:21am
Resetting the CMOS (and therefore restoring default speed settings) didn't work either. It looks like one of the drives just doesn't want to work. I place my hands on the drives as the machine attempted to boot. I felt the familiar, comforting *click*, *CLICK* on one drive but not the other.

Is there anyway to restore the data, say taking to a technician somewhere?
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Spinner
Getting it done!
Spinner
5,003 Posts
6 Jun 2003, 3:27am
Good question, probably yes, but the fact that the drives partition is spread accross two drives complicates matters.

I honestly couldn't say. Let us know how you get on anyway. Sorry we couldn't be of any more help.

Also just as a last very basic thing to try, make sure that all the cables and everything are attached and working properly on the drive you think ain't working. You never know.
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fatcat
sasquatch wannabe
fatcat
3,991 Posts
6 Jun 2003, 3:38am
try replacing ur ide cables...unless u said u tried that and i missed it...
my buddy was having failed raid-0 errors and a new ide cable fixed the problem
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panzerkw
Forum Ninja
panzerkw
889 Posts
6 Jun 2003, 3:39am
Yeup, different IDE cables didn't work. All of the cables work fine on the other system.
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profdlp
Off To The Gym
profdlp
21,407 Posts
6 Jun 2003, 4:45am

Try this:

If you have Norton System Works try booting from the Norton CD and running Norton Disc Doctor. My board supports Raid, but I got fed up with the semi-annual data recovery business and now just use it as an ATA-100 controller. The only times I have had any luck restoring my drive when it was Raid was doing it that way. I'm not saying that this is the ONLY way to do it, just that it's the only way I've had it work for ME).

If you're lucky, Norton will tell you that it has found a partition (the size should match what you had before) and offer to recover it. My twin 45GB drives (85GB partition) took a while to recover, but it booted up after that like nothing was ever wrong.

Prof

PS: Good Luck!
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profdlp edited : 6 Jun 2003 at 4:51am .
Interlink
New to the neighborhood
Interlink
1 Posts
8 Nov 2004, 11:01pm
Hi,

Just stumbled on this thread as I have been experiencing similar problems with my A-BIT BE7 Raid system...

I made the mistake of upgrading to XP Pro rather than doing a fresh install. Along the way my computer crashed leaving my computer with 1 1/2 copies of XP

Anyway, thinking it would be an easy case of format and reinstall I tried doing a CD-Rom Installation only to find that XP wasn't recognising any of my drives...

A couple of hours of head scratching later I decided that I would try putting the boot drive onto an IDE cable rather than a RAID cable. Fortunatley this seemed to work and XP found the drive and began the installation...

Once it was all set up and installed I then replaced the RAID cable and all was well....

Hope this helps!...

Dan.
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Tex
Tex Support
Tex
4,130 Posts
9 Nov 2004, 2:58am
If both drives are alive even if the raid array is trashed then the data can probably be recovered. If you lost a drive you lost it all. Welcome to the down side of raid-0. If you had important data on a old ibm deathstar and were not backing up you need spanked anyway.

Tex
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Leonardo
F@H Reign of Terror is back!
Leonardo
14,703 Posts
9 Nov 2004, 4:35am
The suggestion above was very good: try a WinXP repair installation on one drive, connected to an IDE port. When (if) that completes, try spanning in RAID array. I got tired of this kind of thing after playing with RAID 0 for three years. RAID was so easily broken - usually cable connectors that didn't quite fit as snuggly as they should. Others will disagree and say that RAID has always been reliable for them. For me, it just wasn't worth the effort. One thing I would recommend to any RAID 0 user is to run a third, IDE connected hard drive as a backup; that way you can easily wipe faulty RAID arrays and restore them from the backup drive. That set up strategy saved my butt too many times to count.
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