HELP! Hard disk failure on RAID?

[ohmylord]

My Win2K computer has major problems. It seems like a bad sector or bad disk, but I'm not sure. I do have 2 disk drives in a RAID setup (not mirrored) running Highpoint HPT370 with an EPOX 8K7A+ motherboard.

- At startup, it will continually restart after a blue screen. It does say "Starting Windows" and the windows logo shows up before the blue screen. The latest error was STOP 0x0000000A (0x00000020, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0x8043FD28) Address 8043FD28 base at 80400000, Datestamp 384d5a76 ntoskrnl.exe. (I did see one stop error that was 0x00000024).
- I tried to repair Win2K. It did find the disk volume and the \WINNT directory. I got into the recovery console and ran CHKDSK /P. It got to about 28% and then said "The volume contains one or more unrecoverable problems"
- I tried a complete re-install of Win2K in a different directory. It got part way through copying files to about the "f's", then started giving errors saying it couldn't copy the file. I tried to ignore the errors but it eventually quit.
- Getting more desperate, tried FIXMBR and FIXBOOT from the recovery console. That didn't fix the problem.
- I tried PartitionMagic but I don't think it supports RAID drives from the DOS console (and I can't run the windows console).

Of course, I don't have everything I would like to have backed up, so I'm like to try and find a way in so I can get some files off. After that I'm more than willing to reformat the drive and start over.

Other things I've thought to do, but am not sure about the results:
- In the Highpoint console swap the master and slave drives. I'm thinking I might be able to install a new copy of Win2K, but I'm guessing I won't be able to see files that are split across the 2 drives.
- Move the disks from the RAID controller to the IDE.

Any help would be appreciated. I'm running out of ideas on what to try.

 

[przero]

Do you have a spare hard drive? If so, disable the Raid array in the bios. DO NOT delete it ! Install and format the spare drive, install an OS on it and boot up. Set your machine to boot from the spare drive. Re-able your RAID Array in the bios and copy the files that you need from the RAID Array. Then delete the array and start over?

 

[ohmylord]

I did get a new drive installed and Window 2K loaded but it won't recognize the RAID disks. When it boots the Highpoint drivers load because it shows the 2 disks. In Windows it doesn't show up. I figured I needed to install the RAID drivers in Windows, but I can't figure out where to add them. I thought there was a section under Device Manager for SCSI and RAID devices. Since I couldn't find them there I re-ran the Window 2K setup and added the drivers as part of the setup, but the drives still don't show up and I can find the section in Device Manager. I'm not getting any errors, but the RAID drives don't show up. Ideas?

 

[ohmylord]

FIXED!!! I'm back up and running. Thanks for all the help!!

I finally got the RAID driver loaded in Windows and it recognizes the drive. I ended up finding the way to manually add the device. The odd part was once I added it and rebooted, PnP found it again and added the driver again. So, it's listed twice, one of them with a caution icon. Oh well, I can see my old data and it seems to be in tact. I did try and get the system to boot off the RAID disks, but it kept booting off the IDE drive. Anyway, I'm going to start the big copy to back up everything.

I think I'm going to take this opportunity to reconfigure the drives and re-install everything. Now that I have 3 x 40GB drives how would you recommend I configure them (RAID vs IDE)? Ideally, I would like one 80 GB partition for applications and data and the other 40 GB drive for backup. Should I recreate the same striped RAID I had before, then use the IDE drive for a backup?

Thanks again for all the help. I still have work to do, but at least the data is there. I'll chalk this up a another reminder for regular backups!

 

[RustyNale]

Originally posted by: ohmylord
Should I recreate the same striped RAID I had before, then use the IDE drive for a backup? !

That's how I'm doing it. 2 40gb hdds setup in a raid 0 (striping) and an 80gb hdd (on 2nd ide set as slave) with nt backup program set to do a file backup every day. (this means 7 diff backup jobs, each set for a diff day of the week). Glad to see you got your data back. Before you start to reuse those hdd that were in the raid, I'd run a diagnostic from the manufacter's website to test each one, you might have some sectors going bad...and now's the time to find out