Can't find my Raid 0 drive

[Jerry5757]

Not a techie but enough to put together a system 2 yrs. ago. Has run flawlessly until last week. Initially had a problem with boot failure when loading gagpkx30.sys, but by the time I figured out a possbile fix (renaming file or copying good copy from windows on another system) I wasn't able to boot at all. (Not implying these two problems are related, just the sequence of things).

So currently I can go into the bios and my drive is there, but total failure in trying to boot from it - don't recall the error message but it never starts the boot sequence.

Can't see or find the drive in windows recovery console (and yes, did install raid drivers). Installed an older drive with windows on it and not able to see the RAID drivers from there either.

Flashed the bios, successfully, and no change in the problem.

Going to build ultimate boot disk (UBCD) to see if drives show up in any of the utilites, but sure what that will do for me.

Looking for any guidance as to trouble shooting or other possible efforts to solve the problem.

Drive is backed up but still need to get the system up and running. Considering replacing the motherboard but not sure that will fix or if it is a drive problem.

MSI K8MM-ILSR Motherboard with AMD 3000+ processor; (2) Samsung 160 GB SATA drives in raid 0; eVga video card; 1 GB ram; Windows XP;

 

[Seekermeister]

While in the Recovery Console, did you run CHKDSK /R? If you multiboot and have changed anything lately, you might be able to use BOOTCFG. In any case, I imagine that the problem is in Windows, not in hardware or the bios.

 

[obeseotron]

Are you sure that both of the drives are working properly? If either one has an issue the whole array is toast. Since you're backed up anyway, I would break the array and check the SMART status of the drives in the BIOS, or with a utility (I'm sure there is something on that boot disk). You could try making a windows disc with the RAID drivers slipstreamed onto it (google a program called nlite) and formating the drive, reinstalling windows and then restoring your data. Unfortunately your options for using a recovery console or a bootable Linux CD to do maitenence are probably limited because of the drivers required to see the array. RAID0 is more trouble than it's worth in my opinion, I'd love to break my 2x300gb array, but just haven't had the time or free space to do so.

 

[Jerry5757]

Thanks.

Didn't try running it since I was not able to find the drives while in the recovery console. So. . . just went in again and ran it and it it did some repair . . . I can now find my drives, where as I couldn't before (by find I mean I can do a c:\dir or d:\dir and at least see my file structure).

However, still not booting, but at least more hope now. Hopefully I will be able to go in with a utility disc and get a better idea of what is going on.

 

[Jerry5757]

Yep, understand 1 toasted drive toast the array, and that's why I always tried to stay current on by back-ups.

I did look for a bootable disc that could was RAID friendly but didn't find one so I think you are right on that.

Forgot that Norton Ghost came with a recovery disc. It does ask for the drivers and new that windows had a copy. And it does show the complete drive with correct partitions and total GB correct, so I think the drive(s) is there and semi-operational. Ran Norton DD on all the partitions and no problems.

Now that it seems like the drives are at least visable I might try a reapair of windows first and see where that gets me.

Thanks, and feel free to say more.

 

[Tegeril]

If you can boot the system to safe mode with command prompt, you might find some success with a run of sfc /scanonce

 

[johnos]

i say ditch the raid0, if ur gunna do raid do a raid1 or 5.
i would just set them up normally tho......best way for me, maybe not for u
dunno what to do with ur problem tho, lol