XP not recognizing RAID file system

[mrr2534]

Last week my computer with a RAID5 system started mysteriously/randomly shutting down. The RAID files were available. Not finding a solution, I took the 'puter back to the shop that built it. He reinstalled the operating system which was getting a disk error... but now is unable to rebuild/access the RAID files. It is not recognizing the file system. And XP wants to format the RAID drive. At any rate, he wants to delete everything and start over. This alternative sickens me b/c I have about 1TB of data on it. I'm trying to find alternates before I give him the go ahead. Any suggestions? Could it be a partition issue...?

 

[wahnula]

Assuming the RAID drivers were supplied during OS re-installation, the RAID array should have been confirmed as available via RAID BIOS. Is the machine back in your possession? Can you see the array in RAID BIOS?

There is a "RAID Reconstructor" available at

http://www.runtime.org/

It has been proven to recover broken RAID arrays.

I am curious about the mysterious "disk error". Is there another, separate disk with the OS on it? Your RAID 5 array should have been backed up by the tech before reinstalling the OS, or doing anything serious to the PC. At least you should have been warned about the possibility of data loss.

As you have painfully learned, RAID 5 adds fault tolerance, but it is not a replacement for regular backups.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[mrr2534]

Tony, the machine is still in the shop. There are 3 disks - the C drive with the operating system, a 500 GB drive for backups, and the RAID 5 array (4 500 GB drives). This was connected to another computer via ethernet. And, no, the data was not backed up and I wasn't warned about data loss. As I said... before taking the machine to the shop the RAID array was (seemingly) working fine. The issue was the computer shutting down randomly. I believed at the time the problem was with the disk w/ the operating system. At this point, is there anything else I can suggest to him... or that I can do on my own if/when I *rescue* the machine? Thanks!

 

[mrr2534]

Addendum: The tech said that he doesn't think the issue is a RAID one... only that XP is not recognizing the file system and wants to format the drive.

 

[Freestone]

Let me guess...your RAID5 drive was formatted NTFS.

And I doubt this, but I'll throw it out there: were you using a program called GoBack prior to the OS reinstallation?

 

[mrr2534]

Yes, it was formatted NTFS. And I don't know if the tech used GoBack prior to reinstallation.

 

[Freestone]

No, were YOU using GoBack?

 

[mrr2534]

No, I didn't. He did the reinstall.

 

[mrr2534]

One more thing, when the random complete shutdowns started happening, I got the following warning:

(System)
Event ID: 262
Type: Warning
Source: Promise Disk Contoller
Error Description: "Disk1 timeout at device path \card\port1"
Followed by:
Event ID: 260
Type: Information
Source: Promise Disk Contoller
Error Description: "Retry access on disk1 at device path \card1\port1