My RAID crapped out, cannot see the drive

[Newfie_Bilko]

Hey guys.

Well, I have 2 RAID drives, that have been stripped 0, so that they combine to be one. The drive is a Seagate drive, 80 GB each. I am running the A7N8X Deluxe mobo, which comes with a built-in silicon image utility, in which you can create or delete the raid set, you can do a low level formating on each drive (which i've done), and you can resolve conflicts. You cannot however do a format on the Stripped RAID drive when they are set.

ANYWAY. I've had these drives for awhile.. they were working great. I had to turn them off, take out there power cause i needed more juice for my fans. But last night , i got th e energy to put them back into place. Everything was fine, booted into windows and I could see my drive e:. Fine... I should have left it there :( but being the idiot that I am, i went into the Command Prompt, tried doing a Format E:, it then told me that i cannot do a format of the set, but if i wanted to force it to do it, i would have to "unmount"? the drive. So i hit yes, and yes, and it went ahead and started to format- 0%, 1%, but being the idiot i am again, i messed up, and CLOSED THE COMMAND PROMPT :( This stoped the formating, and now i cannot see my drive at all .. I restarted my computer, created a new raid set in the bios utility, i did low level formats on both drives in the utility, created another new set, still no avail. I cannot for the life of me see the drive in windows, it will not pick up. My drivers are still installed, so when i go to properties to Populate the drive, it does come up with correct info like 150GB, and such, but thats it. It just brings up the info. I tried re-installing the drivers , still no go.. ANYONE HAVE ANY SUGESTIONS? thanks.

[Newfie_Bilko]

I somehow need to Mount the drive again. Windows cannot see it at all though, so i have no options to mount an invisible drive.

[defakto]

I'd try uninstalling the drivers and rebooting, then going to drive management once the drivers are reinstalled comepletely and system is rebooted again, and scanning for hardware changes.

[acascianelli]

you fucked up the partition, try using a recovery program to recover the files off the damaged partition. other than that, there is nothing you can do. a recovery program should be very sucessfull in recovering your files because you only blew away less than 5mb off the partition.

[Newfie_Bilko]

you fucked up the partition, try using a recovery program to recover the files off the damaged partition. other than that, there is nothing you can do. a recovery program should be very sucessfull in recovering your files because you only blew away less than 5mb off the partition.



Ok, thats right, i did fuck my partition, the drive is fucked, but there must be a way to clear the shit and re-load a partition. Do you have any SYstem Recovery Programs that you could reccommend?

You say I will be able to get my files, but i dont care about my files, i care about the drives. I was thinking about using a Win98 boot disk, to do FDisk....

[Newfie_Bilko]

oh and about re-loading drivers.. Like i said, i have the A7N8X asus board, which has built in utility for SATA RAID. Even if i do delete the drivers from windows, when i re-load, there are drivers back in place...

[acascianelli]

i thought you wanted to save the data off of it, try just going into your raid setup and remove the array and make a new one.

[Newfie_Bilko]

I thought I already said, THat I already did do that..

I have removed the raid array, then LOW LEVEL formatted each drive by it self, then Re-created the raid set.. still nothing in windows.. i cannot access anything... i need to "re-mount" the drive somehow. But this setup in my silicion utility doesn't seem to affect anything.

[acascianelli]

reformatting the drives individually does no good, you need to initialize the array throught the raid utility, or format the array. go into your disk management see what it shows you in there.

[Newfie_Bilko]

I remmeber when i went to re-format in windows (turned it off half way),.. it made me setup an option to turn OFF all calls to that drive, it turned off all access to the drive so windows couldn't touch it while the format was going on. Dismounting the drive i think. Anyway, so i closed it half way through, and now i cannot see it in windows, nor command proopts.

[Newfie_Bilko]

I did, disk managment ONLY shows info on my ATA drive C:, i told you, EVERYWHERE IN windows, there is no sign of my E: RAID Array. No where, expect when i go into the driver and Populate.. info does come up.. So i am confused.. cause i have all options on, re-installed everthing, only thing i can think is when windows disabled acceess to the drive and dis-mounted it...

[Newfie_Bilko]

lol Help!!

bump

[Klync]

yeah, actaully you pretty toasted. When u format the drive intitialy, you already F up some partition already. Now RAID 0 has no redundant at all. I guess you need to redo everything over again. This time use RAID 1 :)

[defakto]

klyc, you're missing the point, he can't get it to recognize teh fact that there are even drives attached.

[Leadman584]

Raid0 is an insanely bad idea from the get go (you already know that). Assemble a new RAID block via bios. Write zeros to the array (faster than zeroing drives individually, but not by much). Reinstall OS onto new array, and back it up as soon as possible. If any of you're data is recoverable (not very likely) Knoppix will find it, if it can recognize the controller. This thing I got has windows and Linux drivers onboard, looks like 1 generic ATA drive to both. Sounds like you corrupted the MBR, thus no recognition. I did the same thing to a 120GB external HD, put an active MBR on a second system drive. Recognized occasionally as a corrupt drive. 39 hours of writing zeros to this USB2.0 drive, and partition during windows install, and all is well. Format of partition was a matter of right click drive, fast format. Apparently a partition, in this case the whole drive, made it recognizable.

[Newfie_Bilko]

ouch. :eek:

hmmm, when i get home from work, this weekend, I plan on downloading a win98 boot disk, and trying an fdisk. Considering this drive is not the one with windows on it, I dont see what re-installing windows will do. Maybe if i install windows onto my RAID , but I really dont think even the windows installer will see the drive.
Edit: I am also going to try Seagates Utilitys/Diaignostic tools downloadedable.

Or maybe your right.. Maybe I should do a re-format of both drives. Clear my CMOS battery , restarting the motherboard, re-lplug in my drives, and hope that the utility will give life to the drives again... :eek: im scared

[Newfie_Bilko]

ARG, i blame windows for fucking up my format,they should make ikt so if u quit half way it wont damage your fucking drive

[Klync]

klyc, you're missing the point, he can't get it to recognize teh fact that there are even drives attached.

Okay so, he goofed up on his E drive. And his OS stil bootable,right?
Dag, next time ghost that baby once a month. Thats what im doing, I just tired of re-installing all the crap over and over again :D I put my ghost image on in my dvd.

[Newfie_Bilko]

yea my OS is running off my old ATA drive. C:/

[Newfie_Bilko]

bump :p


help? :)

[defakto]

I would try loading each drive on the onboard ide channel, not use the raid card at all, see if i could get them by playing around that way, then if i couldn't run a manufacturer diagnostic and rma if it doesn't come back as good.

[Newfie_Bilko]

i have no way to tryt hem on the ide channel.. they only have hookups to SATA cords, and my SATA/RAID card is a built in chip on my ASUS mobo.

[dabiggoober]

Even though the MB has two SATA slots with onboard RAID drivers, can't you delete the partition entirely and boot to windows. Does this allow you to see both drives. BTW, it won't say E: etc... it will be not assigned in disk management, but should let you assign them and format them individually. Then you might be able to recreate array in next boot from bios, low format, load windows, see another unnassigned 160GB partition in diskmanagement, assign it and windows format ntfs.

[Newfie_Bilko]

WOW

Ok guys.. I just found an awesome utility.

If your an idiot like me, and have dismounted your drive, then fucked up the format, as well as the partition, and cannot get your RAID back even though u've created a new RAID set, and tried everything, then GO DOWNLOAD THIS PROGRAM:

7tools Partition Manager 2004

Its great.. I got total control over my drive, was able to use options like Create Partitio0n, then i MOUNTED the drive as E: , then even formatted.. AND NOW IT WORKS.. HURAY, thanks for all your help guys.

Mark

[Qwestman]

What exactly is the URL for that? Or you want me to Google it? heh

[Newfie_Bilko]

www.download.com