I recently came home to find my desktop at BSOD with the error "unmountable boot volume". For whatever reason it looks like the pc rebooted and ended up here. I reset the machine and ended up at the same point again. My boot drive (C
consists of two WD 74g raptors in a Raid 0 array. Up until now I have had zero problems with the drives and I've noticed nothing that would indicate a pending drive failure.
Hardware:
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
74g Raptors x2 (Raid 0 on Sil 3114 onboard Raid controller)
AMD Athlon X2 chip
At POST, BIOS sees the two drives and they appear to be fine. I can enter the Raid setup (ctrl-s) and the array appears to be setup properly. However, when I try to boot to the C: drive I get the error: "Ntldr is missing". Next I booted with the Win XP cd and went into the recovery console. I can get to the C drive, but a dir listing shows a bunch of garbled text/characters in place of folder/file names. I was able to copy the Ntldr file from the windows cd to the root directory of the C drive, but upon rebooting I get the same Ntldr missing error message.
Next, I ran a level 2 scan on the drive using SpinRite. The scan detected no errors or issues on the drive. It's almost as if the data is still there, but for some reason Windows isn't recognizing the Raid array properly. Next, I moved the two drives from the Sil Raid controller to the onboard SATA controllers (essentially making them independent, non-raided drives) and tried to analyze the drives using the Western Digital Lifeguard tools. I ran the quick test on the first drive and it checks out fine. Ran the quick test on the second drive and it hung, never actually starting the test so I did a ctrl-alt-del. Next I tried SpinRite again. One drive is fine and passes the level 2 scan in SpinRite. On the other drive SpinRite gives the following message (in light of this message I did not attempt any scan):
Invalid Partition for Drive Size
This partition exceeds the size of this drive as defined by the system's BIOS or BIOS extension.
You should NOT PROCEED to use SpinRite on this drive until you have verified and corrected the disparity between this drive and the BIOS's or BIOS extension's understanding of the drive size.
Maybe this is the result of trying to look at a Raid drive outside of the Raid configuration? Should've mentioned this earlier, but I'm kind of a Raid noob so who knows.
I plan on picking up a new Sata drive tonight. I'll install windows on that and then I'm hoping I'll be able to accomplish more regarding the Raptor drives from within Windows. I also plan on trying new Sata cables for each of the drives although I don't think that is the issue. I'm contemplating deleting the Raid array and recreating it (still on the Sil 3114 controller), but I'm afraid of what this might do to the data on the drives and I think this would be my last resort. The Asus mobo also has an onboard Nvraid controller that I could try, but again If I create a new Raid 0 array with the drives I'm afraid that may screw up the data. I'll also grab a PCI or PCI-E Raid add-on Raid card. Does switching Raid controllers screw-up a Raid 0 array?
This was a pretty popular mobo when I built the machine 3 years ago so I'm hoping others out there may have worked through similar issues. It's not vital that I retrieve the data on these drives but it would be nice as my most recent backup is several months old. Any help is greatly appreciated.
consists of two WD 74g raptors in a Raid 0 array. Up until now I have had zero problems with the drives and I've noticed nothing that would indicate a pending drive failure. Hardware:
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
74g Raptors x2 (Raid 0 on Sil 3114 onboard Raid controller)
AMD Athlon X2 chip
At POST, BIOS sees the two drives and they appear to be fine. I can enter the Raid setup (ctrl-s) and the array appears to be setup properly. However, when I try to boot to the C: drive I get the error: "Ntldr is missing". Next I booted with the Win XP cd and went into the recovery console. I can get to the C drive, but a dir listing shows a bunch of garbled text/characters in place of folder/file names. I was able to copy the Ntldr file from the windows cd to the root directory of the C drive, but upon rebooting I get the same Ntldr missing error message.
Next, I ran a level 2 scan on the drive using SpinRite. The scan detected no errors or issues on the drive. It's almost as if the data is still there, but for some reason Windows isn't recognizing the Raid array properly. Next, I moved the two drives from the Sil Raid controller to the onboard SATA controllers (essentially making them independent, non-raided drives) and tried to analyze the drives using the Western Digital Lifeguard tools. I ran the quick test on the first drive and it checks out fine. Ran the quick test on the second drive and it hung, never actually starting the test so I did a ctrl-alt-del. Next I tried SpinRite again. One drive is fine and passes the level 2 scan in SpinRite. On the other drive SpinRite gives the following message (in light of this message I did not attempt any scan):
Invalid Partition for Drive Size
This partition exceeds the size of this drive as defined by the system's BIOS or BIOS extension.
You should NOT PROCEED to use SpinRite on this drive until you have verified and corrected the disparity between this drive and the BIOS's or BIOS extension's understanding of the drive size.
Maybe this is the result of trying to look at a Raid drive outside of the Raid configuration? Should've mentioned this earlier, but I'm kind of a Raid noob so who knows.
I plan on picking up a new Sata drive tonight. I'll install windows on that and then I'm hoping I'll be able to accomplish more regarding the Raptor drives from within Windows. I also plan on trying new Sata cables for each of the drives although I don't think that is the issue. I'm contemplating deleting the Raid array and recreating it (still on the Sil 3114 controller), but I'm afraid of what this might do to the data on the drives and I think this would be my last resort. The Asus mobo also has an onboard Nvraid controller that I could try, but again If I create a new Raid 0 array with the drives I'm afraid that may screw up the data. I'll also grab a PCI or PCI-E Raid add-on Raid card. Does switching Raid controllers screw-up a Raid 0 array?
This was a pretty popular mobo when I built the machine 3 years ago so I'm hoping others out there may have worked through similar issues. It's not vital that I retrieve the data on these drives but it would be nice as my most recent backup is several months old. Any help is greatly appreciated.
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