serious Raid0 problem, anyway to fix it ?

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game14

[H]ard|Gawd
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yesterday i had a blue screen , dont know what it said since the text dissapeared very fast.Computer rebooted and everything worked fine for a couple of hours.During a regular spyware scan windows hang itself up, pc frozen.Well i shut down the computer and left for a while. Funny thing was the usb drive thats connected didnt shut down anymore like it always has.When i started the computer again it didnt load windows.Raid healthy.Trying to boot with the windows cd and repair windows with the repair option.It stated that there was no problem with the current windows installation, all fine.Rebooted again and everything worked fine for some hours.During a regular backup with acronis pc froze again.Now what happend when i try to boot it does find all the HDD in BIOS and they show up as working fine.But the raid array is not detected anymore.Its stuck at the screen "detecting raid..."and a blinking cursor.Will not go past there.Cant even get into the bios settings.
sytem is the first one in my sig with the two raptors in raid0.Using windowsXP sp2 and nvidia raid drivers.
Im pretty clueless what to do now or where the problem could be.:confused:
Is there anyway to fix that ? or to get the data on my raid array ?
Help really much appreciated,thx.
 
I'm not sure what the problem is, but I have a feeling one of your drives is having issues. If that's the case, you're pretty much SOL, since RAID-0 is not fault tolerant; if one drive dies, the entire array goes with it.
 
Scan your drives with Spinrite or HDD Regenerator.
They are OS and format independent so wont damage the data.
They will refresh any data and repair bad sectors / corrupt data / the format and move data if that area is too bad to use.
They are the best tools for repairing drives, I have had amazing success bringing drives back from the dead with both tools.

They retry a lot of times on bad areas to make sure it gets all the data so if the drive is bad, it can take a long time to run, ranging from hours to days.
 
Even if you could get to the drives you should not attempt any sort of repair on the individual drives of a Raid 0 SW array. But, as you cannot even get into the raid bios this is not an issue. It does sound like one of your drives is gone and the raid bios will not load because of that. You could put them one at a time on a regular SATA port and run Western Digitals data lifeguard utils to just check the drives. Its always better to run the manufacturers own utilities for error checking first.

Just make sure the SATA port you put it on is not in the MB boot lineup
 
Nenu said:
Scan your drives with Spinrite or HDD Regenerator.
They are OS and format independent so wont damage the data.
They will refresh any data and repair bad sectors / corrupt data / the format and move data if that area is too bad to use.
They are the best tools for repairing drives, I have had amazing success bringing drives back from the dead with both tools.

They retry a lot of times on bad areas to make sure it gets all the data so if the drive is bad, it can take a long time to run, ranging from hours to days.
Click to expand...

Yea great tools and worth a try but with a RAID0 your pretty SOL....This is why you need to back your stuff up.
 
great , now its stuck in the bootscreen, doesnt even find the memory anymore.Trying to reset BIOS , got the message cmos checksum error, cant load default value :confused:
guess i have to fix that first before i try one of those tools to recover the raid.
Anyways its not important data on the raid , i have all those on an external drive.Its just the game data im after , so i dont have to play thru all the levels again.
well thx for the help so far.I will keep posting what happends.
 
Nenu said:
Scan your drives with Spinrite or HDD Regenerator.
They are OS and format independent so wont damage the data.
They will refresh any data and repair bad sectors / corrupt data / the format and move data if that area is too bad to use.
They are the best tools for repairing drives, I have had amazing success bringing drives back from the dead with both tools.

They retry a lot of times on bad areas to make sure it gets all the data so if the drive is bad, it can take a long time to run, ranging from hours to days.
Click to expand...

which of them works better ?? its a $30 dollar price difference between them.
I guess theres no freeware outthere to recover HDD.
 
Soz, cant tell you.
Years ago I used Spinrite and it was amazing.
Now I use HDD regenerator and it is amazing :)
 
ok BIOS is fixed, everything shows up again. (good i always keep a copy of the BIOS on a floppy) my mobo really gives me a headache once in a while.
Still same problem that pc hangs in raid BIOS.
Downloaded the free trial of HDD regenerator and made a boot floppy.
Disabled raid in BIOS so that i can boot from a floppy to run HDD regenerator.All HDD show up in HDD regenerator , running scan of the first raptor now.....calculated time to finish scan around 12 hrs ....oh boy.
 
Good luck retrieving your files, hopefully these events is a lesson towards anyone considering the risks of RAID 0, especially on NVRAID. :(

Always keep your precious files backed up and never on a striped array! :eek:
 
Syntax Error said:
Good luck retrieving your files, hopefully these events is a lesson towards anyone considering the risks of RAID 0, especially on NVRAID. :(

Always keep your precious files backed up and never on a striped array! :eek:
Click to expand...

why "especially" nvidia RAID ?
 
Another person is going to learn the hard lesson of running raid 0.
 
game14 said:
why "especially" nvidia RAID ?
Click to expand...
My last attempt at doing RAID1 was on an nvidia RAID. It worked... at first. Then it started reporting random hard drive issues that didn't make any sense. I seperated the drives and ran a ton of tests on them and both seemed to function 100%.

After that, I remove them from RAID and used them as just seperate drives and haven't received a single error since.

nvidia RAID, in my experience, is junk.
 
Kris said:
My last attempt at doing RAID1 was on an nvidia RAID. It worked... at first. Then it started reporting random hard drive issues that didn't make any sense. I seperated the drives and ran a ton of tests on them and both seemed to function 100%.

After that, I remove them from RAID and used them as just seperate drives and haven't received a single error since.

nvidia RAID, in my experience, is junk.
Click to expand...

so it could be bad raid controller instead of bad drive.
I know i have some BIOS problems with my board, it starts acting pretty weird once in a while.Dont know if that has to do with the raid array failing.Where is that raid BIOS located anyways ?
 
game14 said:
thx ,very helpfull :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

You are welcome. I just find it amusing how warnings about raid 0 falls on deaf ears and then the victims of raid 0 arrys finds themselves stuck in that same position with no backups.

There isn't much to post here about, the others already gave you some options but basically you're SOL. You may be lucky and have it be a controller issue, but I am doubting it since you can sometimes access your array... which to me indicates a failing drive.
 
Ockie said:
You are welcome. I just find it amusing how warnings about raid 0 falls on deaf ears and then the victims of raid 0 arrys finds themselves stuck in that same position with no backups.

There isn't much to post here about, the others already gave you some options but basically you're SOL. You may be lucky and have it be a controller issue, but I am doubting it since you can sometimes access your array... which to me indicates a failing drive.
Click to expand...

u r really helpfull :rolleyes:
 
Ockie said:
same position with no backups..
Click to expand...
But he said he had a backup... just not of game saves (does anyone really copy their game saves? I know I don't; I've beaten Half-Life 2 about 4 times by now because of this).

Using RAID 0 isn't a big deal as long as you understand you keep your important data on other drive(s) (and the poster does). I see nothing wrong using RAID 0 for an OS / Game setup as everything can always be reinstalled.
 
Game saves and content for train simulation is exactly what im after.Thats what i was trying to back up when the array failed.As said ,all important data i keep on an external usb drive which as such might fail too (hope it never does).I never keep any important data on my OS/program drive for long , learnt that lesson long time ago when a virus wiped out my OS and almost all my files.
I surely know about risk of HDD failure in raid arrays , but many are using raid 0 without any problems at all.I dont see why a drive in a Raid array might live less time than one not used in arrays.
And as technology evolves there might be always a way or someone who knows how to fix things.
So there is no reason sending me pm calling me names, right ockie ?! :rolleyes:
Anyways lets get back on topic.
I scanned both raptors with HDD Regenerator....took almost 24 hrs and no bad sectors found.
During boot BIOS still hangs in detecting raid.... and a blinking cursor.
Now what ???:confused:
Bad raid controller ??? mobo ???
 
well problems with BIOS again , doesnt find my videocard...oh boy.:(
 
game14 said:
I surely know about risk of HDD failure in raid arrays , but many are using raid 0 without any problems at all.I dont see why a drive in a Raid array might live less time than one not used in arrays.
Click to expand...

its not that a raid array has a higher failure rate because its raid, it has a higher failure rate because now instead of having 1 drive that may fail, youve doubled the possible failure rate by adding a second drive. a 3-drive RAID0 array would be 3 times as likely to break than any 1-drive setup.
 
ok i scanned the HDD a second time , both are fine , no bad sectors . Run a seagate HDD diagnostic tool and no problems found.
Well i guess that means that the raid controller is bad , or am i wrong ?
Is there any way to test the raid controller or to fix it ?
Is the raid controller part of the mobo BIOS or... ?
 
game14 said:
ok i scanned the HDD a second time , both are fine , no bad sectors . Run a seagate HDD diagnostic tool and no problems found.
Well i guess that means that the raid controller is bad , or am i wrong ?
Is there any way to test the raid controller or to fix it ?
Is the raid controller part of the mobo BIOS or... ?
Click to expand...

Yes, the raid feature set of that motherboard is a built in function.

Three options:

Buy another motherboard
Buy a stand-alone raid controller
Run drives without raid
 
Ockie said:
Yes, the raid feature set of that motherboard is a built in function.
so the RAID controller of my board is part of the mobo BIOS , means same BIOS chip or different chip on the mobo ?

Three options:

Buy another motherboard
would just replacing the BIOS chip solve the problem ?
Buy a stand-alone raid controller
i have a PCI Raid controller in my HTPC (not using the raid function though) , but its not nvidia , would it work to connect the two raptors there to access the data or clone the whole raid to another drive ?
Run drives without raid
well since nvidia raid doesnt seem very reliable , i guess that would be the better option for the future if i keep my board
Click to expand...

if i decide to get another mobo (matx) , what chipset would be a good option for a reliable raid ?
 
game14 said:
Yes, the raid feature set of that motherboard is a built in function.
so the RAID controller of my board is part of the mobo BIOS , means same BIOS chip or different chip on the mobo ?
Click to expand...

It's part of your board, you can't just replace a chip and fix the issue.



game14 said:
would just replacing the BIOS chip solve the problem ?
Click to expand...

Nope

game14 said:
i have a PCI Raid controller in my HTPC (not using the raid function though) , but its not nvidia , would it work to connect the two raptors there to access the data or clone the whole raid to another drive ?
Click to expand...

That wont work, you will need a similar chipset.

game14 said:
well since nvidia raid doesnt seem very reliable , i guess that would be the better option for the future if i keep my board
Click to expand...

It's not nvidia, this is not uncommon with all of these types of consumer raid 0 devices. Consumer raid 0 does not yield the performance and reliability that people are expecting.

game14 said:
if i decide to get another mobo (matx) , what chipset would be a good option for a reliable raid ?
Click to expand...

If you want to save your data, get something with a similar raid chipset as you had.
 
ok , 4 days looking out for some software or other solutions that might help im tired of it now. Spending around $100 or more to save the data on my raid array without even a 100% security of recovery , i decided its simply not worth it.
Its just game data and OS , nothin that cant be recovered.
I dumped the array and gonna use the 2 raptors as independent drives since both are working just fine.
Well i have to play thru all the game levels again :(
At least i can keep my raptors :)
Just hope that my mobo will last till AMD comes out with a cpu worth to upgrade to or intel with a decent matx board at a reasonable price.
thx for your help guys.;)
 
game14 said:
Just hope that my mobo will last till AMD comes out with a cpu worth to upgrade to or intel with a decent matx board at a reasonable price.
thx for your help guys.;)
Click to expand...
Here's your decent mATX Intel board.

What are you waiting for? Unless, of course, you're waiting for a decent Intel-made motherboard, which we all know don't exist. ;)
 
ok ... finally got the answer what was wrong , southbridge went up in smoke 5 minutes ago ..... oh boy :(
 
sounds like your mobo upgrade is coming sooner than expected ;)
 
not really , dont have the spare cash right now for a new gaming rig , guess i have to rip apart my HTPC and use that mobo and cpu for a while....watchin movies or gaming ??? hard decision.
 
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