Seagate Barracuda 500gb (2) in Raid 0, can't find OS

[markjohnsonii]

I have an Alienware Aurora, running (2) Seagate Barracuda 500gb in Raid 0.

Everything was fine, until I tried to turn the PC on yesterday, and it just won't boot.

It boots off a CD, and detects the drives, etc, and even SEES THE RAID!

When I go into the RAID options, and select the correct RAID to boot from, I just get a black screen, when I push the power button, the PC instantly restarts, showing me it is not getting into the software... BUT IT SEES THE RAID!

Is there a way to repair the raid boot, or is that not the problem?


Thanks so much!

[DR-Kiev]

I have an Alienware Aurora, running (2) Seagate Barracuda 500gb in Raid 0.

Everything was fine, until I tried to turn the PC on yesterday, and it just won't boot.

It boots off a CD, and detects the drives, etc, and even SEES THE RAID!

When I go into the RAID options, and select the correct RAID to boot from, I just get a black screen, when I push the power button, the PC instantly restarts, showing me it is not getting into the software... BUT IT SEES THE RAID!

Is there a way to repair the raid boot, or is that not the problem?


Thanks so much!

I think one of your hdd in poor condition. Check them separately

[lcoughey]

Is the data on the drives important? If so, make sure you have a sector-by-sector backup of each of them before playing further. If in doubt, get is assessed by a data recovery professional first. If the data isn't important, play for a while.

[granaryloaf]

There are a number of potential problems it could be. You may have a damaged file system or bad sectors on one or both drives or it could be something else entirely. Either way the process of cloning should help to highlight the problem and protect you against further data loss.

[hddguy]

At this point the RAID is surely recoverable. If the problem is because of degraded member, maybe bad sectors or poor heads etc, then continued atempts to load OS will cause further problems.

You need to (at your own risk) create sector copies of both RAID disks, then attempt reconstruction with appropriate tools.

If you are not comfortable with this, or if RAID array condition gets worse, then you should consider professional help.

[ppumkin]

Any tools included in the bios raid to check raid? It could possibly be a virus stopping your os from loading. seen that many times and tricked me into thinking hdds where knackered. Try and boot with mini xp with hirens boot and see if you can access the hard drive and see your files- im not sure but you might need a driver/or not-

if you running vista/7 insert your winedows disc boot it and press repair pc - if it shows your hdd then it finds the os and that means virus / if not then whatever was mentioned higher..

[granaryloaf]

if you running vista/7 insert your winedows disc boot it and press repair pc - if it shows your hdd then it finds the os and that means virus / if not then whatever was mentioned higher..

Viruses get blamed for a lot of things, they are rarely the underlying problem when storage devices behave like this.

[warnerr]

had three machines go down at the same time (three different networks) about a year and a half ago with microsoft vista & intel chipsets in raid mirrors. Mirrors all broken by the updates- one of the two would go out of sync- likely the boot sectors, and both drives dont natuarly boot. I screamed bloody hell over that one- intel blames microsoft, ms blames intel. Lost a week figuring them out. Vistas repair did not help.

[ppumkin]

The facts are that raid bios reports raid is ok-

Some viruses replace dll's with 0kb filesize and the typical black screen with cursor happens.

*You need to load a live a cd and see whether the data is is ok- if you try to access the drives and it says it needs to be formatted then its most likely corrupt or on media has gone down-
-- If you can access the drives and browse the windows direcotry and your documets - BACK THEM UP!
do a fromat and start again. or you will have to load error logs and try to tace why the os does not boot.
-- If you cant access the data and you 101% sure the driver is loaded then its possible your raid has crashed and you will need some real help there, especialy thats its sripped with no parity

[ppumkin]

had three machines go down at the same time (three different networks) about a year and a half ago with microsoft vista & intel chipsets in raid mirrors. Mirrors all broken by the updates- one of the two would go out of sync- likely the boot sectors, and both drives dont natuarly boot. I screamed bloody hell over that one- intel blames microsoft, ms blames intel. Lost a week figuring them out. Vistas repair did not help.

I hear about that - caused mahem in many companies... From what i gather it ws neither windows or intel - but it was caused by the update and an incompatibility in some software corrupting the mbr.