Lost RAID stripe after Win XP install
oops... I might have done something wrong while installing windows XP Pro onto my box, but after I installed XP, both my mirror and stripe drives fell out of the RAID. I was installing XP onto a single hard drive, not to the mirror or the stripe. Also, the RAID bios does not recognize that the hard drives are in RAID, it just shows that the hard drives are connected. In windows, it shows that there is a striped drive, but I can't access it and when I try and open up the hard drive, it asks me to format it, which obviously I don't want to do.
so.... is there any way to save the stripe? the mirror is obviously intact, but I had a lot of data on the stripe. doh...
also, am I doing something wrong installing windows XP? cause this is the second time it's ruined a RAID array after I installed it.
Thanks.
so.... is there any way to save the stripe? the mirror is obviously intact, but I had a lot of data on the stripe. doh...
also, am I doing something wrong installing windows XP? cause this is the second time it's ruined a RAID array after I installed it.
Thanks.
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Comments
Are you saying you're running a RAID 0+1 array? Or two seperate arrays? Clarify please.
Are you pressing F6 at the start of the Windows XP installation to indicate a third party controller (e.g RAID controller) is present? This shouldn't effect anything really if you're not installing Windows onto a disk on the RAID controller, but I suppose it's the best procedure to let Windows see the big picture before it starts to install everything, if you know what I'm saying.
Is their supposed to be an OS existing on one of the RAID arrays? More info please. What was you previous setup before you decided to do a re-install? Was the OS previously on the single hard drive?
It does sound like you're array(s) have corrupted? Run me through exactly what you did from the time you knew your array(s) were working and readable in Windows, to the time they were not. Have you tried rebuilding the arrays? What controller are you using? More info please. Full spec please to.
Cheers
-Athlon XP 1600+ (I think....)
-Abit KG7-RAID
-512MB RAM
-two (2) Maxtor 80GB on the motherboard RAID as a mirror drive (promise 370)
-Two (2) WD 120GB HD's on a promise RAID controller (PCI, 370) that were striped (RAID 0)
-Win XP Pro installed on a IBM deathstar 60GB on the board's main IDE.
both RAID disks had nothing but data on them, no programs. the IBM drive had the OS installed on there. I was upgrading from 2000 server to XP. server was running a bit too slow so I wanted to try out XP.
all I did was boot up with the XP pro CD, pressed F6 and installed the RAID drivers, I quick formatted the 60GB drive, installed XP, rebooted, noticed drives weren't accessible in XP and rebooted again and noticed that the RAID bios was reporting the drives separately and not in RAID.
From what I've read so far on MS's site, if I didn't convert the RAID drives to dynamic disks before I upgraded to XP, it would corrupt the drives. doh... this is only true if you were not installing XP onto a RAID drive. I know this because on one of my other computers, I've installed XP onto a RAID drive and it worked fine.
either way, I guess it doesn't matter anymore because I already broke the stripe and reformatted it and started recovering my data. at least trying to re-obtain everything. but if you know what to do in the future if this happens again, let me know! Thanks
-DG
I recovered a 3 drive scsi raid in a similar situation (O.S. installed on other drive), in WIN 2000 pro. Windows saw the drives but didn't acknowledge the raid stripe.
right click "My Computer"
select "Manage" / "Storage" / "Disk Management"
it showed the three drives as "foreign"
right click one of the drives, select "import foreign drives"
it shows "foreign disk set (3 of 3)" or "select disks" individually
it found the striped volume and allowed Windows to use, no data loss.