HDD Dramas: How to get an offline hard drive online?

[twjr]

Man my computer has been out to give me a headache today. I have to seperate problems which may be related.

My first problem is that i have a hard drive which is comprised entirely of bad sectors. This hard drive was until today part of a RAID0 array with three other Seagate 7200.10 320GB. I wanted to de-RAID the drives as I was moving some to my file server. Unfortunately my flatmate removed one of the drives before i had de-RAIDed them in the BIOS. I don't know if this contributes to the stuffed drive but it seems strange that the other three drives are weorking fine even though they didn't get de-RAIDed in the BIOS. I can try to get the warranty on the hard drive but would prefer not to go through the hassle.

The second and probably more pressing problem also comes from de-RAIDing of my computer. In order to get the data off my RAIDed drives i bought two 500GB Samsung hard drives. So I went ahead and moved all my data onto these two drives before i had de-RAIDed . The problem has now come that i can't seem to get my computer to recognise one of them with the new installation. When I go into Disk Management I can see the drive but it says that the drive is offline. When I try to turn the hard drive online it comes up with an error message. The other hard drive worked ok though it appeared as a foreign disk which I had to import. The only other option that I have is to convert the disk from a dynamic to basic drive. Doing this would mean I lose the 450ish GB of games and music on there which I would really rather avoid.

Any help would be awesome. Thanks in advance.

 

[twjr]

Bump

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Okay, I'm trying to follow what happened. You had four drives in RAID 0 and you moved the data off of this onto two 500gb hard drives. Then your roommate pulled one of the hds and it is giving you errors now. Is this the same drive that is not being recognized in the second situation or is the second problem with one of the new 500gb hard drives? Also, is the drive recognized in BIOS?

 

[Mondoman]

Perhaps you could describe:
1) The model numbers of *all* your hardware on all systems involved in this.
2) Exactly what you did, step by step.
Also, have you tried running the drive manufacturer's diagnostic software on any wonky drives (the software is freely available on the manufacturer's website)?

 

[twjr]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
Okay, I'm trying to follow what happened. You had four drives in RAID 0 and you moved the data off of this onto two 500gb hard drives. Then your roommate pulled one of the hds and it is giving you errors now. Is this the same drive that is not being recognized in the second situation or is the second problem with one of the new 500gb hard drives? Also, is the drive recognized in BIOS?

You pretty much have it. There are two different drives playing up.

The seagate 320gb that was part of the RAID array and is now full of bad sectors. This isn't the drive my flatemate pulled and that drive and the other two 320gb drives are working fine which is odd. I suspect I will have to warranty this hard drive.

The second problem is with a different drive, one of the new samsung 500gb ones. It is recognised in bios and disk management but appears as an offline hard drive. I tried to turn it on but it comes up with an error. I have one other option in disk management which is to convert this drive from a dynamic drive to a basic drive. however, this would mean losing a lot of data. If I could recover it using file scav then i may do this but i dont know if it is wort the risk.

Cheers