Argh!! Failed RAID Array. :-(

[kramerd1506]

Hi guys, I sure could use your help.

I have twin 80gig hard drives installed in a machine that I built running in a performance (striped) RAID configuration. Yesterday, the POST test indicated that the RAID array was 'offline' and it would not boot.

What can I do to find out if the hard drive(s) are the problem (and which one) or could it be the motherboard?

If I enter the RAID setup utility, I can rebuild the array, but I don't know if I will lose all the data if I do that. Will I lose the data by rebuilding the array?

I don't really know where to start, so any help is appreciated. I must recover the data on that array, so I'm tempted to just take both drives into the shop and tell them one is good and one is bad - find the bad one and copy all the data on it to another one just like it. Would that work? They might have to send it to a reovery store. How much does it cost to send a drive to a recovery shop for data retrieval?

Thanks for the help!

 

[rclarke250]

nope sorry that is the problem with striping. if you loose 1 drive,you loose all data, no redundency. that's why if you are going to stripe,you need to backup data,often.
If you rebuild the array, it will destroy all data on the disks when you initialize the array. same as formating for a single drive. You can test the drives seperately with the drive tools from the manufacturer. If they test ok, I would get a couple of smaller cheaper drives and see if you can build an array. and install windows on it. Thousands of dollars to send it to a recovery house. Also most stores will say they are not responsible for your data. As in most won't even attempt to recover the data from a dead drive.

I shall use google before asking stupid questions!

 

[kramerd1506]

Well, I have an update. I use the promise raid controller and a buddy said that this happened to him and he was able to rebuild the array with no issues.

So, I did! I deleted the array and recreated it with no problems at all. Surprise - the array is now "Functional" instead of "offline". So now I'm back to the problem I was having before the drive array went "offline". And that problem was that when Windows XP is loading and the little blue bar is going accross the screen, the moving bar pauses for about 4 seconds and then keeps going, which it did right before the drives went offline, but was not normally.

Anyway, windows never starts. It just sits on the XP splash screen with that blue loading bar going. I think part of windows may be corrupt. Any way to repair or reload windows onto that raid array without damaging the existing data structure?

I have a WindowsXP Pro Installation CD, which I thought was bootable and would analyze and repair my windows installation, but it's not booting. I have the 6 floppys that make the WindowsXP setup/boot disk set, but once loaded, they do not see the raid array. So it says "no hard drive" and won't continue the repair. Any ideas?

I might just get another HD and load windows on it, boot from it, and then access the raid array to recover the data I want and then wipe everything and start over.

The good news is that it appears that the drives are okay. Because if they weren't working, windows wouldn't even get that far. Also, when I try to boot in safe mode, it lists a long list of files that it's trying to load, then the same problem - it just sits there with the list on the screen and never starts.

What to do?

Thank you!!
Dan

 

[nlm9802]

If you haven't already, you need to go into bios and set the cdrom as the first bootable device. Then stick the XP pro cd in there, start up, and run a repair. You'll have to re-patch/update everything when it's done.

I ran into a similar problem with my p4c800e dlx.. one of the drives was unplugged and the array was reported as "broken". so i shutdown, checked all the plugs etc. when it came back up it rebuilt fine, but windows wanted to run checkdisk. Before I could hit cancel it started. It proceeded to "fix" every file on the raid array. once I got into windows nothing on the raid array worked. all the files were named 973497030848 in folder 391740973593. I managed to recover text files, but all mp3s, games, etc were unrecoverable. lost about 40 GB of data :/

Live and learn. I now roll with a raid 0+1 array (4 80 GB drives, striped and mirrored)

just be wary. and do not let windows run checkdisk until you get in there and back up your data.

 

[ibmtech65]

The reason the recovery does not see the hard drives is because it does not have the driver for your raid card loaded.
When booting to the XP CD you should see a "press F6 to install additional raid drives" at the bottom of the screen.
This will allow you to install the driver so it will recognize the raid card and then find the drives.

 

[kramerd1506]

Hey, thanks for the help guys!

I knew the XP Install CD should have been bootable. My CDROM is set as the first boot device. I still don't know why it's not booting. I'm going to try and see if I can get another disk. I suppose it could be scratched or something (?).

I also suspected that the reason the XP recovery disks would not recognize the drive was because it didn't see the raid driver. But, it's wierd because when POST is happening, it DOES access the RAID driver and shows the functional raid array. It doesn't start booting from the floppy until AFTER that, so I thought it should already know about the raid array. Strange. Anyway, if I "reinstall" the RAID driver, could it corrupt the RAID I already have set up? I'm asking because I'm using FastTrack ATA133 Lite from promise and it was very difficult to load. The striped configuration was NOT striped, it was mirrored and vice versa. So I don't want to load the wrong configurtaion and ruin my data when attempting the repair.

 

[kramerd1506]

Shoot! One more thing. I'm not using a RAID card, I'm using a gigabyte motherboard with on board RAID. If it matters.

Thanks!

 

[ibmtech65]

The recovery console is not going to do you much good if you dont already know what is the problem. If the OS is hanging when it tries to load you most likely have a driver issue or a corrupt registry.
Have you tried booting to safe mode?
If you have a raid1 have you tried breaking the mirror and just booting from one drive?
If that does not work you can always do a install and just dont change your partitions or format the drive and you will not lose your data (because you did not format), it just overwrites the stuff in your WINNT folder.

 

[kramerd1506]

Thanks IBMTech. I don't have a mirrored raid set up. Only striped.

I have tried booting to safe mode. It lists a long list of files on the screen that I assume it is trying to load, but after the list finishes, it just sits there. It does not ever start windows, just remains there with the list on the screen.

Does that tell you anything? Also, that's good to know about reinstalling windows. I thought that was pretty risky as far as keeping your data, but maybe not if what you say is true.

Also, would it help to buy a new drive, partition it, load windows on it and boot from it and then retrieve the data from my raid array? Would that work?

Thanks!

 

[rclarke250]

weird, I have a gigabyte with the promise raid and have had no issues,of course I don't stripe....you can reload xp on yop of itself. my documents and things like that will be gone,most of the other stuff will be there.

I shall use google before asking stupid questions!