Bad HDD?

[chrome0011]

Thought I had some nasty virus when CPU usage would ramp up to 100% with random lockups, ran all kinds of antivirus apps, decided to reinstall xp pro. No biggie since I have all essential files on backup drive. Now trying to reinstall XP, but computer locks at the point after RAID drivers are installed and windows says "Windows is starting up".

Any ideas? I thought maybe it could be a bad drive. I have 2 Raptors in Raid0, and would like to keep them that way, but I'll go to one if i need to. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!!

 

[imported_Kensai]

Run WD diagnostics on both drives individually.

 

[chrome0011]

Ok, found "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS." This is the one you're talking about?

 

[dclive]

Pick a drive, remove RAID from the equation, and see if you can get past that hangup point using just one drive. If you can't, try using the other drive to see what happens. Quick, easy test.

 

[chrome0011]

I'll try the diagnostic first, then the non-RAID suggestion. I'm at work right now but I'll post results (hopefully) when I get home. If anyone else has suggestions please don't hesitate to post!

 

[chrome0011]

OK, back up and running. Ran diagnostic on both drives, they were fine. Had to try many different BIOS settings before Windows would install and boot, but finally settled on a non-RAID setup. Even this took many tries before it would work.

Just a tip here: SATA drives are great, but in my future builds I'm going to include at least one PATA cd/dvd rom. This setup would not work until i gutted my roomie's comp for one. (Every drive in my system is SATA... I use a PCI card with 2 extra ports when overclocking, to avoid the non-locked ports on the mobo)

Oh yeah, and you need to cough up the 10 bucks and get a floppy drive. At least until Vista is out of the beta. Unless you have a great roomie that trusts you to steal his. :laugh:

Thanks for the help gents!