Windows Not Recognizing Disk Correctly in RAID 3 Configuration

[kjv1611]

If anyone can suggest a better forum, let me know, and I'll post there instead. Thanks in advance for any advice/help.

I recently reconfigured my system in this manner:
1 PNY S-CURE 3 Port PCI SATA RAID Card with 2 80 GB WD hard drives set up in a RAID 0 Array for Windows
1 PNY S-CURE 5 Port PCI SATA RAID Card with 4 500 GB WD hard drives setup with 3 in a RAID 3 ARRAY, and One additional as a separate drive (1 drive RAID 0 is the way it shows in RAID configuration).

Initially, the RAID cards were showing that something was wrong with one of the 80 gig hard drives. But, after swapping stuff around and all, the errors seemed to go away, so I figured that it must have been a system glitch.

The setup worked just fine with no hiccups it seemed for a couple weeks, and then I started getting the same errors on the 3 PORT RAID setup, and the first time I got that message, the system also would not boot into Windows (Windows XP Pro 32 bit).

I had considered buying 2 RAPTORS to replace the RAID 0, but wanted to hold off on purchasing them when it seemed the 80 gig drives were fine. But, since they finally crashed this last time, I went ahead and got 2 74 GB Raptors and installed Windows on the RAID 0 setup.

The RAID configuration shows that the RAID 3 and the additional drive on that card are just fine, no problems, all still setup the same.

However, the RAID drives/partitions are not showing up in Windows Explorer. Instead, they are showing up as disks that are yet to be configured.

I'd REALLY like to get this working WITHOUT reformatting the drives again on the RAID 3 array. If I have to reinstall Windows a certain way, I'm fine with that. But, I do not want to lose the data on the 500 Gigabyte drives. I believe that altogether, I've got right around 500 GB or maybe a little more of various files on these hard drives.

I guess I could get all of the data backed up on another drive, but I'm hoping there is a way using some program to just get Windows to recognize the hard drives as it did before, or at least enough that I can set them up and not lose the data!!

Any suggestions, Please help! I have all sorts of data on there, Office documents, baby pictures, email, audio files, etc. It's a lot of stuff! I am not worried about all of it, but I'd say at least 100 or possibly 200 gigabytes I DEFINITELY do not want to lose, b/c they might not be as easily replaceable if at all.

If you need any more information, let me know. Even if I have to get an external hard drive to back it up or whatever. At this point, short of paying some data recovery firm, I'm willing to try almost anything!

HELP!! [BLUSH] [SMILE]

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[Freestone]

A longshot, but it has bitten more than a few before. Were you using a program called GoBack on your old XP install?

 

[kjv1611]

No. It was just a standard Windows XP Pro Installation. as best I can recall, I did not use any sort of disk imaging software during the time I had the last Windows installation (when both RAIDs were originally setup).

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[wahnula]

kjv1611,

First, are the exact same PNY drivers installed into Windows as before you got the Raptors? Is there a PNY utility that needs to be installed to see and rebuild the RAID 3 array? Are you SURE the RAID 3 drives are all plugged into their original ports? If not, try switching them around systematically (label cables). Since you have parity and the drives are good you should be OK, not time to panic yet.

Any chance you can re-assemble the RAID 0 array on the original 80 GB drives, even if just to boot into Safe Mode with a stripped down PC (1 stick RAM, no optical drives, no extra cards, no peripherals) and get the RAID 3 data?

Finally,

http://www.runtime.org

has a recovery utility that claims to reassemble corrupt RAID volumes. At $100 it's cheap if it works. Restoration:

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

is free and MIGHT see into those drives, but RAID is a different beast.

Not to pour salt in the wound, but, once you get your Windows back up and seeing the RAID 3 array (which I am confident you will do), image your OS array to another drive or partition to prevent future problems. I sincerely wish you the best of luck.

wahnula

 

[kjv1611]

No drivers necessary for the PNY RAID cards. I had no drivers installed at the time, it is all on the hardware - the PNY cards are setup for driverless installation.

The RAID card for the RAID 3 configuration recognizes it all 100% correctly, so I don't want to go swapping cables and stuff.

Windows recognizes the RAID 3 array as one big disk (as it should), BUT it is only giving the option to format the disk.

I do have the original 80 gig drives that were setup in the RAID 0 configuration, but I'm afraid that if I put those drives back in, and take the new drives out, that will mess up the RAID setup on that card, since it is all done on the BIOS level.

These hardware RAID cards need no software for the RAID configurations. As a matter of fact, I did once install the RAID software after everything else was working, and decided I didn't care for it too much, anyway, so I just removed all of that, and stuck with the BIOS for the RAID setups/configurations. In my opinion, it's much simpler, and that way it takes 0 CPU cycles from my machine.

I can try the software sollutions to getting the data back, but the problem is that I've got way more data there than I have space on the RAID 0 array or any other "spare" hard drive available at the moment, so I'll have to buy a new drive.

I was wondering if there were a utility such as one of the Disk manager utilities that would just "fix" the array in Windows so that I can see all of the data. But, if worse comes to worse, I'll just have to get an external hard drive, I guess, and transfer all the data over that way.

Any other suggestions?

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[Freestone]

I'm betting that your RAID 3 array was formatted NTFS. If this is the case, despite numerous posts to the forums here by people who've reinstalled XP (RAID and non-RAID) and can't get access to former healthy partitions, no fix has been submitted other than data recovery, as wahnula suggested.

 

[kjv1611]

Thanks, that is just what I wanted to hear! [/blush]

I was hoping, and still have a very lingering hope, of getting this fixed outside of data recovery software, as that means I'll have to buy at least one more hard drive!

Let's see, I COULD use the recover software to recover a fairly large chunk at a time, but I really don't want to do it that way.

Oh well, please post away if anyone has any other suggestions!

Yes, the data was formatted in NTFS. Why would NTFS be so difficult to use by Windows when in a RAID configuration?

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[kjv1611]

Does anyone know if I were to boot from Linux instead of Windows, that there may be a way for me to see all of those files, and somehow recover them that way? I tried booting a live disk of UBUNTU, but could not see the RAID 3 setup that way, either.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[kjv1611]

Another thought. Does anyone know anything about these programs?

http://www.goldsofts.com/soft/801/25858/RAID_Reconstructor.html

http://www.runtime.org/diskexpl.htm

Does anyone know if there would be a way for me to use these to re-setup the RAID array for the drives, where Windows would recognize the drives without formatting?

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[kjv1611]

Here's another program I would almost think might help:

http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/...Repair_Utilities/Omnixray_Disk_Utilities.html

Any thoughts?

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[Freestone]

It's not that XP has a hard time with RAID, it seems to have a hard time recognizing NTFS formatted volumes after a reinstall. I wish I could answer WHY this occurs, but I only know that after spending time here in these forums that many users have sought the answer to exactly your dilemma.

Here is a free DOS NTFS reader . I wonder if it'll see your files?

http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm

 

[kjv1611]

Well, at the least, I think that's a new program I've not seen before. I'll see if I can give that a try first thing on my lunch break or after work if I get time at either of those.

But, I guess even that will be just recovering the data, which still leaves me at needing an extra hard drive.

And though I didn't want to buy anything else for a while, this probably does give ample reason to go ahead and get an external backup sollution, so that I can first transfer the files there through a backup utility, and second have my files backed up to prevent like issues in the future!

If anyone has any other suggestions for just "fixing" the partitions to be recognized by Windows that'd be great! Otherwise, I guess I'll just be buying an external hard drive of some sort.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[kjv1611]

Yay! I got my data back! I knew it was there, but that the partition was just not visible by Windows.

I found the solution: Active Partition Recovery.

I would guess that all the products from this company are good, with as good as this one worked.

http://www.active-undelete.com/products.htm#partition

Is a program listing of their various offerings.

It took a really long time - I'd say at least 3 hours - just for it to do a "super scan" of the RAID 3 partition. But, it did complete that task, and then I was able to just "recover" the partition - that took less than 10 minutes. There was also an option to build an image of the partition, but I did not try that, as it first was seeming to take a really long time, and it seemed that the image file was going to include the entire partition (including free space!) So, that file would have been almost 1 terabyte as apposed to what I found to be 425 Gigabytes.

I've not used it yet on my additional 500GB hard drive, but I'll probably get around to that one tonight or tomorrow.

I'd highly recommend this software to anyone! Oh yeah, by doing the recovery instead of building the image, I really didn't even need an extra hard drive. So, to build an image, yes you need an extra hard drive, but to just recover the actual partition where it is, no extra drive necessary!

I used the Windows version of the product, not the DOS version, since my Windows installation was working without a hitch.

Now that I found this to work so well, I think I may try it out on the crashed RAID 0 which I had Windows on to see if it can recover it as well. Then, I could get the few files that I had left on my desktop!


--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me