Serious HD Failure

[Justintoxicated]

Well I just got done reformatting my Primary partition due to a virus that snuck its way onto my machine from a dialer that I have no clue how it got one there..

I was jumping into a game of battlefield vietnam when suddenly the HD started starting and stalling over and over. Like it was losing power! I quickly shut down the computer.

Low and behold I can no longer boot up. The Raid 0 array recognizes all 3 disks and I get to the windows start screen but it hangs right there. Tried starting in safe mode, no dice. I played around with the connector and noticed it started to do the same thing. Pushed the wires around in the connector from my Enermax 550 watt PSU and it went away. All drives start booting like normal, still no dice!

I can't get past the splash screen!

Ok well I did not get around to backing up everything on the 120 gigs on the storage partition due to graduating college next month I have no time.

I had documents on there from my ENTIRE college career!

I NEED these documents, alonf with about 2 gigs of pictures I had taken with my digital. I was planning on backing all this up over summer and switching to a raid-5 array.

So I put the windows CD in and tried the recovery console. I cannot even do simple dir to list files on the computer..

What can I do, some of this information is priceless.....

 

[Falls Included]

download the WD tools and run an extended test on each of the drives... if they pass.. go into the raid array and use the resolve confilcts option (if it has one..)

tha fact that it boots to windows and just hangs there at the xp screen tells me that the array is intact, just windows is fucked.. try installing a clean install onto another hard drive or just to a different partition and back up

[edit]
if the HD was being written to while it was losing power then the array could be in trouble. but a new install of windows and a prayer that the important data is still intact should do the trick


this is the reason that people dont reccomend raid -0 arround here. due to its higher failure rate. dont get me wrong, its a great tool, but for data that CANNOT be lost, its like burning to cd and then leaving the CDs on your dashboard on a sunny day. it might make it, it might not. its a risk you take

 

[Justintoxicated]

I'll try to get the tools tomarrow. Problem is I don't have any floppies, and my Dads computer has a virus on it.

I tried to re-install windows over the old partition (not the one with my data on it) and it says it fails to access the partition and that something is up with Disk 0.

If I need to I guess I may have to pay 1000 or so to recover the lost data? Anyone know of a reasonable place that can do this? If im going to spend my lifes savings I need to make sure it will be done correctly.

I think this is going to interfear with my graduation

 

[Falls Included]

are you trying to install to the raid array or a different disk... use a different disk if possible

 

[Justintoxicated]

All I have as far as other disks are concerned is a 10 gig IBM that has been having some trouble but still works. I suppose I can rip it out of the other machine and give it a shot....

I ran the diagnostics, i found them on a disk I have from one of the 5 or 6 WD 80 gig drives I have purchased...

Quicktest on all drives reports 0 errors. Extended tests recomends I backup my data before running?

Tried the Highpoint rocketraid Firmware but there is nothing to repair. It does show the array in tact and functioning. However I think it is messed up...Nothing seems to be able to actualy find a usable partition.

I don't understand how this could have possibly happened, or why it is happening @ such a critical time for me!

God this sucks! First my monitor blows up, then my DVD stops reading DVDs and now years of pictures and documents are lost!

I'm If I can't get this data back I had may as well change my major!

 

[Ice Czar]

sure, only come to my forum
when you whole digital life is in jepoardy

long time no post

Id ask how youve been but
it doesnt sound like your having too good of a day

First fallsincluded has been giving you some good advice there
you shouldnt need to resort to a data recovery lab in any event

if you can get an OS installed to another HDD and boot into it
more than likely youll be able to just
load the RAID drivers and get it recognized, disable simple file sharing and take ownership of files and folders, and then your in business again (at least for backup)

I see no reason why the array might be borked (based on the above)
I think the filesystem or critical system files have been compromised however (normally NTFS will autorecover the filesystem)

try the new install first
if you cant directly access the partition (after doing the above)
use File Scavenger to directly scan it for data
then save small portions of it at a time to the new install and burn them to CD\DVD

after that we can try repairing the old OS (with chkdsk which might lockout stuff filescavenger potentially recover) and or DiskPatch,

this is based on the assumption that rescue of the data itself
is the primary concern

PS which virus was it? Might as some bearing

 

[xdviper]

you can always to take it too a harddrive recovery place and they can recover it for you.

 

[Justintoxicated]

hey thanks everyone!

Ice Czar, I have been ok, but really buisy. I have not been messing with computer things much at all...I had my second monitor blow up and my DVD fail, so i just run it like it is...

Goods news everyone, when I rebooted last night everything was Magicaly back to normal!

I was not able to access the data from windows recovery console, even after I installed the raid drivers!, In fact it told me I basicaly had a corrupted raid array or an invalid partition. Low and behold everything suddenly magicaly started working again. Crazy thing is after I got my HD working my internet went out last night but that is magicaly working again too...

This was about the scariest thing I have had happen to me in a long while, as well as the strangest thing I have ever sceen...