Uh oh...RAID not detected by Windows XP

[tk149]

Everything's been working fine for months. I've assigned drive letter "R" to the RAID array. I've had a USB card reader plugged in for months.

Last night I plugged in a 2nd USB card reader, and WinXP autodetected everything, and it seemed fine. WinXP assigned additional drive letters to the card reader. I'm not sure if this is related to my problem or not, but it's the only "new" thing I've done recently.

I did NOT reboot overnight. This morning, I noticed that my RAID drive letter was missing from Windows Explorer.

I've rebooted several times now. The BIOS/RAID setup autodetects the drives, and says I have RAID 0 set up.

But I can't find the RAID drive letter in Windows Explorer now. I've unplugged BOTH USB card readers. Same result. Any help?

 

[biostud]

What shows up in disk management if you use administrative tools from the control panel?

 

[tk149]

Originally posted by: biostud
What shows up in disk management if you use administrative tools from the control panel?

Not good.

Disk 0
Unknown
152.66 GB 152.66 GB
Not Initialized Unallocated

Plus the RAID setup wizard popped up.

I have two 160 GB drives in this array.

 

[MrChad]

Did you try reinstalling your RAID controller drivers?

 

[tk149]

Originally posted by: MrChad
Did you try reinstalling your RAID controller drivers?

Yes, I reinstalled the Nvidia NForce 3 IDE drivers. Still no good.

If I allow windows to reinitialize the RAID array, will I lose my data?

 

[LED]

Originally posted by: tk149

Originally posted by: MrChad
Did you try reinstalling your RAID controller drivers?

Yes, I reinstalled the Nvidia NForce 3 IDE drivers. Still no good.

If I allow windows to reinitialize the RAID array, will I lose my data?

Yes more than likely...but maybe not if it's unallocated...did you format the reader card?

 

[tk149]

Originally posted by: LED

Originally posted by: tk149

Originally posted by: MrChad
Did you try reinstalling your RAID controller drivers?

Yes, I reinstalled the Nvidia NForce 3 IDE drivers. Still no good.

If I allow windows to reinitialize the RAID array, will I lose my data?

Yes more than likely...but maybe not if it's unallocated...did you format the reader card?

If by "reader card" you mean did I format anything using the new USB card reader, then the answer is no. All I did was copy some pictures from the CompactFlash card to a different (non-RAID) hard drive, then delete the pictures from the Flash card.

 

[LED]

Well the RAID array should be reading 300GB and it's not so I bet if you intialize then it'll do the 300GB+ but all will prolly be lost ...got a backup?{You should}

 

[tk149]

Well, I opened up the case, pulled out the IDE cable (parallel), and plugged it back in. On reboot, the RAID is back, and the data seems intact.

The Disk Management module in Computer Management says the Disk 0 305.33 GB array is "healthy".

Weird, because I did not even TOUCH the computer case last night.

Thanks for your help, everyone!

/me scurries off to backup everything.