SATA RAID level 0 drives undetected on clean XP install

[buffjung]

Hard to think of a descriptive subject for this one

How can I determine if my RAID array has died?

My computer started hanging then rebooting starting XP (at mup.sys, but investigation online suggests that the problem is hardware related)

So I obtained an IDE drive, and did an XP install on that (thus narrowing it down to the RAID stuff I presume), but this new install cannot see the RAIDed drives..

I don't think that they can be totally dead, as I can start to boot from them (loads up loads of drivers, gets to the first Windows screen with the little green bar), but since I cannot complete a boot from them and the new install doesn't seem to be able to see them does that mean that I'm stuffed and won't be getting anything off them ever again?

Is it possible to remove them and plug them into another computer with a RAID controller to see if they've just decided that they don't want to play with my setup? Or will that not work? Is there some kind of boot disk I can make that should let me see them from a command prompt?

Any ideas?

What motherboard/controller and hard drives do you have?

[buffjung]

It's an Asus A7V600 motherboard, with 2 Maxtor DiamondMax 120gig SATA drives on the onboard VIA controller.

This setup was working completely happily since September, then one day last week I rebooted, and it just kept on rebooting...

Hadn't installed new hardware, only software that might have installed is a windows update.

Thanks

Have you tried to reformat the array? Or a Windows repair? Perhaps the SATA driver has become corrupt?

[buffjung]

I can't even get into Safe mode...

I've gone into the motherboard's raid setup utility, it sees them, thinks that they're striped.. if I try to get it to create again then it doesn't do anything.

I've tried the repair console, It spends 1/2 hour scanning the drive, then dumps me out to a command prompt, still unable to see the drive (s) it leaves me at c: (bizarrely, my original install decided to make the drives H: rather than c:, despite my not having any other harddisks) if I type dir at the prompt, it sits for a bit, then says that it's unable to (sorry, don't remember exact message)

I tried to re-install windows, but it just said 'unable to setup' and rebooted...

I'll try copying a new version of the driver onto a floppy and using that tonight.. (talking from work at the moment..)

Do you know if it's possible for me to put something on a boot disk, so I could try and look at them through a dos prompt?

[stroyal]

Can you set them up as non- RAID drives and format them or scan them seperatly to see if one of them has gone bad.

[buffjung]

Originally posted by stroyal
Can you set them up as non- RAID drives and format them or scan them seperatly to see if one of them has gone bad.

Haven't tried scanning them separately. I'll have to see if I can do that tonight. Although - sounds like I risk losing all data doing that, so I'd prefer to leave that to a last resort.

I was trying everything I could to avoid losing the data before I went down the formatting route....

[stroyal]

If you still want your data, don't do that. I thought you were past that when you said "I tried to re-install windows, but it just said 'unable to setup' and rebooted"

[buffjung]

Originally posted by stroyal
If you still want your data, don't do that. I thought you were past that when you said "I tried to re-install windows, but it just said 'unable to setup' and rebooted"

Well, I'm getting to the stage of giving it up as a lost cause.. I tried the windows setup thing, just because I assumed (being windows) that it would say it had detected a previous install, and would I like to fix it...

I'm not so worried about the data, just that it'll be loads of hassle starting over, so I was going to exhaust all other possibilities first.

The thing I find most confusing is that it can half boot off the RAID. does that mean that it keeps all the operating system stuff on one drive rather than striping it, and so if one drive dies, I can still half boot?

Just re-read that - if I attempt to boot into safe mode, it gets through a good page of loading drivers, before it hangs at mup.sys and reboots - since this happens with no other drives in the computer, something in the RAID must still be working...

[stroyal]

I'm no expirt, but I think all the data is spread out over both drives. Maybe it is just data corruption and can be fixed.

This is the slowest part of the day at Tech IMO, You will get more help in a few hours.