Computer help PLEASE....

Rick Meyer

Rick Meyer

Veteran
Okay, I’ll try to be as brief as possible.

My desktop has a 120gig main hard drive and two 36gig raptor hard drives in a RAID configuration. For the past few days, after boot up, I wasn’t able to see my RAID unless I went to the device manager. I thought that maybe I needed to update a driver. I went to Western Digital and downloaded Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2 for Windows. This wasn’t the driver but I figured I’d run the program anyway to see if this piece of Western Digital software would recognize/see my RAID. Sure enough it did and asked if I wanted to ‘re-connect it’ to my system. Not sure of the exact wording…I said yes then it went to another page…I saw the word Format and immediately clicked CANCEL. I didn’t want to reformat the RAID. I have stuff on there.

So, I figured I’d reboot my computer to see if I could see what’s going on in SAFE mode…well, it didn’t get that far. I saw the initial BLUE Intel screen then, after a second or so, I got a black screen with one non blinking cursor in the upper left hand side. What the F? I reboot several more times and tried desperately to tap F8 to get to SAFE MODE…figured I could turn back time on my system…but, nothing. It just hung there on the black-non-blinking-cursor screen. I did attempt to reboot, tapped DELETE and it brought me to the BIOS SETUP UTILITY screen. But I’m not much of BIOS SETUP UTILITY screen user. i.e. I haven't a clue what to do with it.

Any thoughts? Please don’t tell me I gotta reformat and reinstall EVERYTHING. Please GOD, SAY IT AINT SO. I am just assuming it had something to do with that damned Data Lifeguard software….but it was recognizing my RAID drive…not my primary…so would/could that have something to do with this? Anybody have any troubleshooting thoughts from this stage?

Thanks everybody. This has me more than freaking out.

Rick
 
in the bios you can select your cd drive to boot 1st. insert the windows disk and try to repair.


if this doesn't work, you may need to reformat and start over. before you do this, you can buy an external enclosure for your hard drive and download important files to another computer.
 
Hey Rick, I'm guessing you tried disconnecting the RAID setup. It might be a bad RAID controller. Is it a card or some sort of external fixture? If it's a PCI card, then I would pull the card out and see if that fixes it. There's a good chance that might be the problem.
 
or get a small (9-18GB) harddrive and install a copy of your OS on that and use that as your boot drive, then use your current Harddrive as another storage driver if you can't repair windows. That's if your comp. can take another drive.
 
What RAID level was it?

If it was RAID 1, you should be able to just pick one of the drives and hook it up independently of the RAID controller get your data. Any other RAID level, however, and you'll need the controller working to do so.

Depending on the make and model of RAID controller, you might be able to use a GNU/Linux LiveCD to get your data. Linux has support for most hardware based controllers. Was this a PCI card, or an onboard RAID? If it is onboard, it is most likely software based, and therefore probably not supported in Linux.
 
AlienFX said:
or get a small (9-18GB) harddrive and install a copy of your OS on that and use that as your boot drive, then use your current Harddrive as another storage driver if you can't repair windows. That's if your comp. can take another drive.
Click to expand...

Is it possible to get a drive that small?

This strikes me as a good lifeboat for technically challenged types like me.
 
brianluce said:
This strikes me as a good lifeboat for technically challenged types like me.
Click to expand...

You and me both brutha'.

Thanks guys for the feedback. I'm getting optimistic that all is not lost. I'm definitely no techie. In fact, I got a little excited I was even able to use the word BIOS in my initial post.

Ugafan-I'm gonna go ahead and try this. I was hoping there was just some insert-disc-here fix.

Understandably, this is getting me pretty stressed. I've heard of peoples hard drives crashing and them losing a lot of data...but THREE hard drives at once!?!?! I've got a TON of stuff on there and only part of it backed up.

Tom and Twisted-

As for what type of RAID...I wish I could say. I bought all of the parts 5 years ago this month and turned to my friend Randy and said "umm, here, are the parts and a 12 pack of Sam Adams. Thank you". But let me see if I can better help you help me...

The Raid was a pair of Western Digital 36gig Raptor 10,000 RPM drives. I didn't try disconnecting anything. I NEVER open up my case unless I have a few beers and am feeling wild. I just think it odd that the Data Lifeguard software I downloaded from Western Digital's website could see my raid hard drive. Though, recognized it as 1. Just saw a 36 gig hard drive. Some how the RAID configuration seemed lost.

Alien FX-I'll try to find the specs to my motherboard to see if she can handled another hard drive. But...not sure I fully understand...my computer is stuck at a blank screen...by loading up the Windows disc, will it allow me to install anything on a new hard drive?

Rick

EDIT: UPDATE...okay, I went back into the BIOS SETUP UTILITY screen. In the BOOT menu, there is a sub-menu called HARD DISK DRIVES and on the right it describes this sub-menu as "specifies the boot sequence". Well, the order was 1) WD Raptor 2) WD Raptor 3) Maxtor. The Maxtor is my primary C drive so I moved that to the number 1 spot figuring I've got nothing to lose....except data...ugh.....well, hot dang it worked! My computer rebooted.

Having said that, I still have a RAID problem. For the first time in days I can SEE my F drive (where the RAID was housed) but when I click on it, it says, NOT FORMATTED. WOULD YOU LIKE TO FORMAT NOW? When I right click on it it says 0 bytes...because its not formatted I'm sure. I'm guessing this may have to do with the controller...I may have lost the info forever.

Anyone know of a good Hard Drive REPAIR or DATA RECOVERY software I could use? Or better yet, a way to use a PCI RAID controller card to bypass my motherboard...if in fact this is the problem....thanks.
 
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brianluce said:
Is it possible to get a drive that small?

This strikes me as a good lifeboat for technically challenged types like me.
Click to expand...

Yep.... you can get a SAMSUNG 1.8" 16GB IDE Internal Solid state disk (SSD) it has IDE connector so.... most computer should be able to use it (although some computers have SATA connectors.). And with it being solid state you should get quicker boot times. It is physical smaller than a normal drive so it won't mount correctly into a computer's harddrive bay, but if you could just have it sit there without mounting I don't think it would be problem.

They also used to make SCSI drives that small, but I don't think they make new ones that small.
 
I just went through a similiar issue where after a microsoft security update my raid wasn't seen for booting, although if I booted from a different drive I could see the raid no problem and all of the data was also available no problem. If I set the bios to boot from the raid I would get a Drive Read Error press Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot.

The bios could see the raid but using a Windows CD would require loading the raid driver software in order for windows to see the drive to do a repair mode. Neither doing a fixboot or fixmbr solved the issue although the bios had no trouble seeing the drive. I even tried flashing the bios with an update. Nada. Since I lost no data and all disk repair utilities said nothing was wrong I just moved my data over and am now using a different drive for the system.

The raid is level 5 set up as a 3 + 1. Its all SATA using a Promise controller. I'm still not done poking around because I want need to get to the bottom of the issue.
 
Thanks for the post craig....as soon as I get through with work I plan to tinker around with it. I located the RAID driver floppy disc. I'll give that a shot. Its driving me crazy too because my desktop is 3 feet from me....I work from home. I just don't have time to figure it out now...because I know once I start the troubleshooting process....I'll get absorbed...
 
Hey Tom...thanks for asking...

Well, as I mentioned up top, I got her to reboot. And, now I can actually SEE my F drive (RAID). But, if I click on her it asks me to reformat. If I right click, it gives me the 0byte thing...so, I think I might be at the stage where I need to look at a data recovery program.

As you mentioned, the controller might be shot and if thats the case I'm going to need to reformat anyway and use them as separate drives. But not sure if I can extract the I had on there yet...sucks too because the computer is 6 feet to my right and I just haven't been able to absorb myself with it to get it done...

PS I used terms like 'controller' like I know what I am talking about. I don't. I just know that if its shot so is the RAID capability.
 
RAID controller cards aren't that expensive. You can get one for under 50 bucks. That way you won't have to give up any of the data on the drives. Just change add the controller card and that should be fine. I'm not a RAID expert though. I'm only assuming that would work. I'm pretty sure it would though.

The controller basically takes care of the data splitting between drives. It gets the data from the OS and then splits it up and sends it to the drive that it's laying down to. Then, when the OS needs to read something from the drives, the RAID controller reads the data from multiple drives (if that's the setup you have) and puts the data together and then sends it to the program that's requesting the data. It's sort of the middle-man between your RAID array and the OS.
 
I'm not a RAID expert either, but everything I remember reading suggested that you need the exact same make and model controller to access data stored in any type of array other than RAID 1. Not 100% on it, though.
 
Thanks for the chimin' in guys. I still haven't had a chance to truly get to this thing. and it doesnt look like I will until Tomorrow. But, I will keep you posted. Who knows, this may happen to a COMPUTER NEAR YOU!

As far as I know about the Raid Controller is that its a component already built into the motherboard. So, if its shot I believe its shot. Though, there may be a clever workaround, pci card maybe, but I'm just thinking aloud here...
 
Hey...quick update...in case some of you were on the friggin' edge of your seats!

I have been absorbed with other things. So, all I have been able to do is surf the net (when I should be working) to look at ways to recover the data on my hard drives. I want to try this http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1139 I just haven't had a bare second. I know this process will take some time so I don't want to start it unless I know I have a couple of hours.

So, if anyone has ever had to recover data before, please let me know if you have a good tutorial or a software suggestion that might help me expedite this. Its getting to be crunch time and I now need to get to the info/data stored on those drives.

As for the RAID...maybe I shouldn't assume...but I'm guessing that it's toast. I don't know. I'm more worried about the data. I'm figuring if I can get the data now I can worry about re-formating the hard drives later? Who knows?
 
Sorry Tom...I just saw this. RAID 0. Thanks.

Does anyone know of a Data Recovery program for mac that works on the same principal as Data Warrior but for the PC? Data Warrior (for Mac only as far as I can tell) fixes the directory chain. I'd prefer this method of data recovery versus finding a software that can go in and retreive data and store it somewhere else.

Anyone?
 
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