PLEASE HELP!!!

[Guest]

According to Partition Magic 8.0 I have an error in the boot sector of my
RAID 1 HD (2 hd’s mirrored). Of course, Partition Magic thinks it’s a single
drive, and it wants me to run chkdsk /f to correct the problem.

When I boot from the XP CD, it asks for third party disc drivers, which I
have the newest copy of from the motherboard manuf., and I hit F6 and load
the driver when prompted. When I get the that prompts me to hit R to get to
the recovery console, it says there are no HD’s…

I believe all my data is still safe n both HD’s – they just will not boot,
and I can find no way to run chkdsk /f on them.

I have a second system with another RAID 1 setup on it, running fine. Is it
possible to install one of the corrupt HD’s in the other system either to run
chkdsk /f on it or just retrieve the data ?


You have no idea how thankful I will be if anyone can fix this.

 

[DL]

I suppose your raid is mobo onboard and as such there are no raid test
utilities?

If its a mirror it will be seen by PM and win as a single disk you can
therefore run chkdsk c: /f

You might want to run the disk manu diagnostics first.

You can connect the disk on another sys as a 'slave' and recover data first

 

[Guest]

For the life of me, I can NOT get the system to SEE the drives - both /
swapped / or just one, so I have no idea how to run chkdsk /f on them, and I
have no idea how to connect the drive as a slave in another machine...

 

[Jerry]

Try skipping going to the Recovery Console and opt for REPAIR instead. If
things are still there XP should now ask if you want to repair an existing
installation.

 

[John R Weiss]

According to Partition Magic 8.0 I have an error in the boot sector of my
RAID 1 HD (2 hd's mirrored). Of course, Partition Magic thinks it's a single
drive, and it wants me to run chkdsk /f to correct the problem.

When I boot from the XP CD, it asks for third party disc drivers, which I
have the newest copy of from the motherboard manuf., and I hit F6 and load
the driver when prompted. When I get the that prompts me to hit R to get to
the recovery console, it says there are no HD's.

I believe all my data is still safe n both HD's - they just will not boot,
and I can find no way to run chkdsk /f on them.

The best solution may be to "break the mirror" and run a single HD for
troubleshooting. Since each HD is "complete" in RAID 1, you should be able to
boot from either HD independently.

Disconnect (power and data) one of the HDs, reboot, and run any required
diagnostics. Run Partition Magic if desired, and see if you get the same boot
sector error. Run chkdsk /f if desired.

If that HD checks out OK, try the same routine on the other HD. If you can
identify the bad HD, rebuild the mirror from the good HD. You may have to
format and/or delete the partitions first. Read the docs for your RAID
controller.

If both HDs are "bad" you may want to recover one using chkdsk, SpinRite, and/or
other utility. Once you have one good HD, then "fix" the other and rebuild the
mirror as above.

 

[Guest]

I have broken the RAID - but I believe my MB (Se7505VB2) Bios may be screwy,
because In the ADVANCED section of the BIOS under ONBOARD SERIAL ATA, the
ONBOARD SERIAL ATA MODE is set to RAID, and you can NOT change it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I thought I would try flashing the BIOS to the latest version hoping that
would solve this problem, but you have to boot to DOS in a NON HIMIM
environment, and I have no idea how to do that

 

[John R Weiss]

I have broken the RAID - but I believe my MB (Se7505VB2) Bios may be screwy,
because In the ADVANCED section of the BIOS under ONBOARD SERIAL ATA, the
ONBOARD SERIAL ATA MODE is set to RAID, and you can NOT change it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My Promise controller is permanently set to RAID, too. However, the docs tell
how to set up a single HD as a "striped set of 1 disk" or somesuch...

I thought I would try flashing the BIOS to the latest version hoping that
would solve this problem, but you have to boot to DOS in a NON HIMIM
environment, and I have no idea how to do that

Get a bootable DOS floppy -- a simple DOS system disk. Remove or rename the
config.sys and autoexec.bat files if they exist. Add the flash files
(executable, BIOS data, and batch file if provided). Boot it up. Run the flash
utility using the provided batch file or command line provided in the
accompanying docs.

If you don't have a DOS system disk handy, you can make one on a Win9x machine
or download a FreeDOS image (http://freedos.sourceforge.net/freedos/files/) and
install it to a floppy.

 

[DL]

If I may buttin;
If your data is important to you, you might want to connect a disk as a
'slave' on your other sys, *before* you try anything with the faulty sys.
At least then you will have a copy of the data in case the repairs go
horribly wrong.