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raid0 troubles

A

afoctober2

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 13, 2004
Messages
68
hey, i just turned on my computer after installing a cold cathode light well after i turned on computer I got a error loading operating system. Its a raid0 array in the raid bios both the drives show up but when i click f4 to actually go in the raid bios says i have an invalid raid array.

Yes i opened case checked my connections unhooked drives and plugged in again to make sure any other ideas? I'm running on a seperate drive on ide with back up os. When i go to My Computer the problem harddrive appears but when double clicked says its not formatted. The drives are two maxtor 60gb drives hooked up to sata on a dfi infinity with sata adapters.
 
Smells like a power supply problem. Cold Cathodes can do weird things to PSUs can cause fluctuations on the +12 rail, vitally important to the operation of your hard drives. Disconnect the cathode and try again. If that fails, run manufacturer diagnostics and hope you have backups.
 
i already did that unhooked the cathodes psu is good its a 480w enermax. Bad thing i didn't have a chance to back up I was about to order a dvd burner before this happened but now won't do anything. Any way of recovering or repairing this?
 
You have to get the RAID BIOS to recognize the drives again, or your only option is pro data recovery. If one of the drives is damaged and no longer works, your data is toast, once again lost to anything except pro data recovery.

Strip the system of all non essentials (boot with vid card, these two HDDs, CPU, and one stick of RAM) and see what happens. Remove any lights or other bling, expansion cards except for video, and all fans except CPU and see if you can get it going again. Also, if you can, run manufaturer diagnostics on the drives, the Ultimate Boot CD may be of help.

There's no way you're getting any data back until the RAID BIOS recognizes the array again. Sorry, but it's one of the pitfalls of RAID you accepted going in.
 
the raid bios does show both drives shows there make and model just said the array is invalid
 
If the metadata about the RAID array on the disks is inaccessible or corrupt, you're pretty well screwed. See if you can run a read only diagnostic on the drives in a different system.
 
I used maxblast went into the part about prepareing hardrivers and it list drives no matter what i did switching sata cables switching sata adapters on both drives and only 1 drive shows up all the time and its the same one
 
Sounds like the other drive has failed. It is extremely unlikely that you will ever be able to get it going again with resources available to you if the diagnostic utility does not even detect it. If it spins up (do both drives spin up?), a PCB swap may get it running normally again.
 
I can't tell for sure if the other one spins up I can't really tell. What is available to recover the data what kind of prices?
 
Generally, you are looking at at at least $1000 for professional data recovery from a firm such as OnTrack. Seagate DRS will look at the drive for free, and you only pay for what they recover that is also A) what you want and B) what they promised.

I would verify that the drive is totally dead before resorting to Pro data recovery - that's a lot of $$$$.
 
what would your recommend what other steps can i take ? I really don't know what else to do
 
Install the drives on a new motherboard w/ the same RAID controller/RAID BIOS, PCB swap on the drive that isn't detected, Pro Data Recovery, those are basically your only options in that order.
 
For the PCB swap, you will need to acquire a drive that is the exact same make/model, and ideally, firmware revision. You may get lucky and find a drive that has a mechanical problem but a PCB that is still good that you can get cheap, but you will most likely have to pay close to full price for a working one. Once you get a donor, unscrew the PCB on the drive you want to try and get working, carefully disconnect the cable between the PCB and spindle, and connect the new one using the reverse of the above steps. After that, reinstall the drive, and hope it spins up and still works.

It's been done successfully before, and isn't very "difficult," you just need to be very careful when handling hte ribbon cable that connects to the spindle. I have never done one, perhaps you should ask someone who has. I can't remember any off the top of my head, maybe someone who has wil lread theis thread and offer more insight. You might also try searching this forum for PCB swap and see what comes back.
 
this is what i did I pulled out both the drives set them on my desk and both of them do spin. Now i had a little error in typing before ok heres what it says when i go in the raid bios it displays both drives and model numbers in a box to the left then in the second box to the right it displays the working drive but for the drive we think is dead it says invalid raid drive.


sorry earlyer i said raid bios said invalid raid array it actually says invalid raid array for that one drive and to confirm they both spin so what does this mean?
 
hey douglite you been great with your help just i guess kinda bumping this up so you can see that last update i posted and tell me what you think
 
PCB swap, if you can pull it off, should get the array going again. Sounds like there is some sort of controller level problem with the drive that isn't detected properly. Is it detected when hooked up to a different SATA port in a different system, if one is available?
 
nope i already did that yesterday i put it in a differant sata port and in maxblast its not detected
 
my luck didn't turn out good i ordered that drive and the company sent me the wrong drive they sent me a 80gb drive !! although not upset they screwed up sent me a larger drive but its of no use for what i need it for
 
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