All files missing from desktop possible RAID problem

[100_Percent_Juice]

My wife called me and said she turned the computer on and all her files and folders were missing from the desktop. The only thing remaining was the empty recycle bin and the background image. I restarted the computer and this is what I saw when booting...

I don't remember it ever saying "degraded". I am running windows 7 off my solid state drive and I have 2- 2TB drives setup in raid1.

The computer started at normal speed and everything seems to work fine other than the deskop files being gone.

Windows action center gave me a message "Your hard disk controller has stopped working properly because a compatible driver isn't available for this version of Windows."

Can anyone tell me what might have happened? My computer details are below.

Thank you

 

[drescherjm]

Just a guess. One of the 2 drives got kicked out of the array (because its going bad) then a reboot happened and the raid picked the bad drive over the good drive.

 

[drescherjm]

I would take both drives out of the PC and put each in some other PC booting off a linux livecd / usbstick to look at the filesystem on each disk. I would at this point avoid running chkdsk or writing and data to the disks including avoiding running windows on either drive.

 

[100_Percent_Juice]

I would take both drives out of the PC and put each in some other PC booting off a linux livecd / usbstick to look at the filesystem on each disk. I would at this point avoid running chkdsk or writing and data to the disks including avoiding running windows on either drive.

I have a second PC but its also running windows 7. When you say to avoid running windows on either drive, do you mean booting from the drive or just having it hooked to the computer when its running?

 

[100_Percent_Juice]

Just a guess. One of the 2 drives got kicked out of the array (because its going bad) then a reboot happened and the raid picked the bad drive over the good drive.

If I simply unplug one of the drives and restart, would I be able to tell if it was the bad drive or not? I didn't know that the OS would select one of the drives over the other, as its booting from my SSD, not of those drives. I am very novice when it comes to this so I could have no clue what I'm saying.

 

[drescherjm]

I have a second PC but its also running windows 7. When you say to avoid running windows on either drive, do you mean booting from the drive or just having it hooked to the computer when its running?

Don't boot from either drive until you examine them. I would put 1 drive in the other PC 1 at a time in non raid mode. RAID1 should be mountable as a normal disk and see if either of the drives has your missing files.

 

[apopleptic]

setting aside the failing drive, this happens when your user profile gets corrupted.
Usually you can create a new user profile and just copy the data over from the damaged profile.

 

[drescherjm]

setting aside the failing drive, this happens when your user profile gets corrupted.
Usually you can create a new user profile and just copy the data over from the damaged profile.

Good point. OP check the c:\Users folder for additional profiles.

 

[100_Percent_Juice]

I found which drive was bad and plugged it into my second computer. Looks like it has been bad for months based off of the most recent file dates. I replaced the drive and repaired the RAID during boot. However it doesn't say "healthy", it just says "repaired'. Is there any way to change the status of the RAID back to Healthy? Also, how do I know that the files have been copied to the new drive?

My desktop folder is actually located on my SSD. I assumed that it was on the RAID 1 drives but I was wrong. I believe that the missing Desktop files are unrelated to the RAID failure but simply a red light that made me look closer at the computer and recognize the failed RAID.

setting aside the failing drive, this happens when your user profile gets corrupted.
Usually you can create a new user profile and just copy the data over from the damaged profile.

Good point. OP check the c:\Users folder for additional profiles.

I only created one profile when I built the computer so there weren't any others. I turned on the guest profile and logged into that but there were still no files on the desktop other than the "standard" desktop icons. Is there a way to copy them over if my main User account has been corrupted?


Thank you all for your help

 

[drescherjm]

Does your other profile exist in c:\Users. Login as an admin and check. If it exists you need to take ownership of the user folder and then you can view and copy the files.