Please Help: Raid Hard Drive Issue

[afb2r]

Hey Gang,

So heres what happened. My Video Card crapped out on me and long story short one of the solutions I tried in the beginning to fixing the problem was to take the mobo battery out and unplug all my wires and replug everything back in. Well that didn't fix the problem, but eventually I went out and bought a new Video Card so the computer is running fine now... well ALMOST fine. Now when I boot up my computer I get the error "Reboot and select proper boot device" as if it isnt seeing the RAID Drives as it used to see them. A little aside, I had originally forgot to set them to raid and I tried to boot up and it said No Operating System Found, or something to that nature, when I switched the setting to RAID now it says the improper boot device error.

When I disconnected the mobo from the back up battery it lost all the settings and when I unplugged my raided harddrives that probably didnt help. They are non-mirrored Raid Drive (Raid0 I believe that is). I already went into my BIOS settings and set it back to RAID and I went and set "Harddrive" as Boot priority 1, but those 2 things are all I have done because I dont know what else there is.

My mother board is an ASUS PSB-E mobo and 2 Seagate Baracuda 7200 320GB Harddrives.

I really dont want to lose everything on those drives, especially since I dont even know where my Vista OS disk is.

PLEASE HELP! Thanks so much!

 

[afb2r]

I just switched the cables around and nothing, still getting the error so that isnt the problem.

 

[kimsland]

Actually when Raid 0 Fails, it can be somewhat difficult to backup

But as I was reading your post I thought, I wonder if you put the old Video card back in, and then plugged in an external monitor, you could see the Bootup and display again

Really that's as far fetched as I get. But I'd try it. Because other than that I don't know
Obviously the rule learned is always make external backups to Cd or USB Drive

I hope someone else sheds more light on the subject. Member jobeard was quite good at this, but I haven't seen him around lately.

 

[DelJo63]

OUCH! Raid-0 is particularly difficult due to the way a files are spread across the
HDs in the raid; block-1 on hd1, block-2 on hd-2, block-2 on hd1, ...
this makes recovery impossible if you do not have a backup; sorry.

The only thing left to do is to (1) disable raid, (2) format both drives, (3) resintall --
and I hate even saying that as many here at TS know of me. The rest is just
fyi and a learning experience.

I've seen Nvidia cards impact HD controllers so if you're first card was Nvidia *maybe*
that is the cause.

here's a good summary; https://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?p=749513

and here's my analysis: http://www.tech-101.com/tutorials/topic174.html

 

[afb2r]

NOO, Say it aint so Joe.

Are there any far fetched options I could even try. I mean it just doesnt make sense. Why would nothing be stored on the drives themselves. Isn't it possible to take a raid array and install it in a new computer? I mean this is even more straight forward than that because it is as if I am installing the new drives in a new computer (even though I am not), but it is a computer with all of the exact same hardware devices (even down to the exact same raid controller).

I'm not saying I don't believe you, I am just saying it isn't logical that a configuration as popular as the raid array would be impossible to move from one computer to another (or in my case the EXACT SAME computer).

I'm desperate is there anything? I was reading elsewhere maybe if I went in and duplicated the BIOS setting I previously had (strip size and driver order) I may be able to salvage them. I also saw maybe my VISTA recovery CD could possibly bridge the gap between the two drives. Any plausibility there?

 

[DelJo63]

Of all people, my goal here at TS is to help AVOID this kind of problem where a
system gets trash and the sole option left is reformatting. This is the last option
I will ever make to anyone.

if you've not done any more damage to the HDs, you could send them to a
professional data recovery service, but that is going to

• very expensive
• and not guaranteed to work

As you've seen, RAID-0 is not for the faint of heart and devastating when there are problems.

That's my best shot; I feel your pain.

 

[DelJo63]

I was reading elsewhere maybe if I went in and duplicated the BIOS setting I previously had (strip size and driver order) I may be able to salvage them. I also saw maybe my VISTA recovery CD could possibly bridge the gap between the two drives. Any plausibility there?

NO! that option is quite different than RAID-0.
If used, it is better at recovery under these conditions, but will not be a solution for
your issue.

 

[afb2r]

Wait Sorry, that last reply confused me a little. Why would trying to duplicate the settings not work in my case?

How would I even go about switching strip size and drive order settings anyway?

Thanks!

 

[afb2r]

YAY! I SOLVED IT.

Ok so heres what I did to fix it. Under the BIOS IDE Configuration there is an option called Onboard Serial ATA Bootrom. I had that option disabled. I went back and enabled it and voilla, boots up like a charm. So apparently the raid array information was stored on the drives themselves.

Im just soo glad thats over with =)

 

[DelJo63]

SUPER! that will teach me to ASSUME when you put it back together that you also
set the BIOS options.

re Vista Dynamic Disk: This is just a way to say that when HD1 fills we continue onto
HD2, which is very different than a RAID-0 Stripe technique and why it would not
recover for you.

Swapping the cable attachments would be catastrophic to the raid layout and scramble the data.


ANYHOOO; now that you got it back, ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE A BACKUP?????

 

[afb2r]

YES, I will def look into a full system back up and also possibly just a pertinent document backup seeing as I have a lot of junk on there.

Which I do have another question. If you lose your sticker with the Vista Key is there anyway to retrieve it like you can with games by looking in the registry. I can borrow my brothers Vista Disk, but if I can't recover my Key and write it down in a safe place and this happens again or I want to do a reformat I am screwed.