Problem: Installing extra 120 GB IDE on RAID system corrupts MFT

[Satyre]

I am using a dual 60 GB Maxtor RAID 0 array and am trying to install an extra single 120 gb seagate drive.

The raids array is of course connecteed via the RAID ports on the mainboard.
The new HDD is connected to IDE 1.

The 120 GB drive is detected fine, shows up in disk manager or partition magic as the first drive (drive 0 or 1 respectively) whereas the raid array shows up as the second dick (drive 1 or 2 respectively).

WinXP detects the new HDD without any problem. I can format them and apply drive letters.

However when I reboot windows is corrupted and I get messages saying that the $mft cannot be saved.

As soon as I disconnect the hdd this problem stops.

I have had other smaller ide drives running in addition to the raid array.. they caused a few problems, mainly due to the fact that they wanted to occupy the c: position.

Can anyone help?

[sechs]

Which disk is your system (boot) disk?

[Satyre]

The system boot disc is on the RAID array, the C: partition.

I believe that my computer wants partition C: to be on the IDE 1 HDD.

Once I recover the damned files I need from the partition I accidentally deleted whilst installing windows, I will create a primary c: partition on the IDE drive and change the current C: to D:.

However the current boot partition will remain the boot partition, however with drive letter d: instead of c:


In addition my 120 Gug HDD seems to be missing almost 8 Gig.

Hmmm....

[kranich]

It seems like the system is trying to save the MFT to the 120 Gig drive instead of the array partation. Check the properties of the other IDE drives and make sure that the new drive mirrors those for starters. Then maybe you want to replace one of the existing IDE drives with the 120 gig one and see what happens.

[Satyre]

In a fit of tiredness and stupidity I accidentally reformatted the wrong partition.... ...and have now lost nearly 70 Gig of data, including a large number of my install files.

This is a complete bollox-up if ever there was one.

One tiny oversight whilst reinstalling windows and *poof* goodbye all of the damned data that I had wanted to store on the new HDD in the first place.

Well.. that's one way of solving the problem I suppose... I sure as hell no longer need the storage capacity.

Data recovery programs generally show what I feared: Lots of files containing lots of zeros or gibberish.

At least my most important files are backed up and stored elsewhere.
Just not those ones...
Damn.. all my pretty Babylon 5 episodes.

[stroyal]

Your 8 Gig missing from your HD is space taken up by formating.

My 160Gig RAID with 2 partitions formats to 148.9 Gig

[Satyre]

Thx.. thought that might be the case.

Have largely given up trying to restore the lost data.
I hate it when I do stupid things.

Some of it I have stored on othe HDDs as drive images and I was going to buy the Babylon 5 DVDs anyway.

Now I am working to see if I can create a stable partition layout that will survive crashes and let me run windows from my raid array.

BTW: I just copied a 6 GIG image of my C: partition to my seagate IDE drive. It took over 10 minutes.

Replacing the C: image on my raid array takes 2.5 minutes.

Raid is great.