Alienware M17x R3 - Hard Disk Giving Error

[thebetaguy]

I have an Alienware M17x. I have installed Windows 8 64 bit on it.

My Hard Disk is now giving error on Boot. I have to reboot 3-4 times for it to start otherwise it just keeps saying "Boot Device Missing". I have attached a screenshot of the initial boot page above.

My computer has become too slow - and my HD utilization is close to 100% always.

What to do?


I have an Alienware M17x. I have installed Windows 8 64 bit on it.

My Hard Disk is now giving error on Boot. I have to reboot 3-4 times for it to start otherwise it just keeps saying "Boot Device Missing".

My computer has become too slow - and my HD utilization is close to 100% always.

What to do?



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Here are the screenshots:

[northwind]

Well, your RAID has failed / is failing because drive #2 has problems.

Do you have backup of the files? If not, then since, as you said computer booted a couple of times.

If you do not care about the data, simply replace drive 2 and rebuild RAID from scratch.
If you care about the data, either pray your machine will boot again and immediately backup your data, but that could permenantly damage your drive, or consult a pro who will recover the data for you.

[thebetaguy]

Thanks for the reply.

My machine boots every time after 3-4 tries. I am able to access entire 1000 GBs of Data.

So, what to do?

[lcoughey]

Step 1 - get a full backup of your data while you can
Step 2 - replace the second drive

If you have issues with Step 1, you may need to seek the assistance of a data recovery pro. If Step 2 doesn't resolve the issue of the second drive going to a failed state, you will likely need to replace the controller and/or system.

[warnerr]

BACK UP IMMEDIATLY!!!! me , I would replace BOTH drives if I wanted to retain spaned array or get one very fast larger drive for performance. If reliability and speed - consider two very fast drives in mirror array.