Broken RAID 0 array HELP!!!

[KODE]

Hi fellas,

A friend of mine here at work just had a broken RAID 0 array this morning. He doesn't made any back-up of his work and he's totally desperate. Is there any way to rebuild the broken array? or at least save the data?

Info:

Abit KD7-R with HPT 372.

Regards, KODE.

[Player0]

Yep, you can recover a broken stripe with great success. Ive done it a few times.

I dont remember the exact method tho, its on this board somewhere, Im gonna look for it.

[Player0]

Try this:

[KODE]

Hi Player,

Thanx a lot for the file, but I'm a little lost here and have some dumb questions if you don't mind :)

Does it work for on-board RAID HPT372 controller too?

Should I use a boot disk to run the program?

Thanx m8!

[Player0]

Yeah, it should work for any HPT controller.

Yeah, use a boot disk (is there a choice? :))

[KODE]

I told you it was a dumb question! :) thanx anyway m8.

[KODE]

It didn't work... :(

[Player0]

Note that running the disk benchmark program HDTach with Advanced Size Check enabled is a frequent cause of broken stripe sets! Another likely cause of broken strip sets is a defective IDE ribbon cable - be sure to replace your ribbon cables if you suffer from a broken stripe. Some people have had particular problems with rounded IDE cables (although not all: I use them without problems).

The simplest thing to try first is to clear your CMOS and/or reflash the BIOS. This has been reported to fix reports of broken stripes in some circumstances. If this doesn't help, fear not! There are several means of repairing your disks. I advise that you try them in the order given here, as once you try one method there is a danger it will prevent other methods from working.

Users of the NTFS file system may also want to read Microsoft's knowledge base articles on How to Recover From a Corrupt NTFS Boot Sector and Recovering NTFS boot sector on NTFS partitions and Description of the Windows Recovery Console.

Use of Highpoint's raidrb utility

Highpoint technical support kindly sent me an early version of their new utility to fix broken stripes on their HPT370//372A controllers. In this early version of the tool it is only possible to fix a RAID-0 array comprising two disks, or a RAID 0+1 array. It will not repair four-disk RAID-0 arrays. The utility raidrb is available on the downloads page. To use the utility do the following:

Remove all IDE devices apart from the broken RAID array
Copy the utility onto a DOS floppy disk, boot from floppy into DOS and then run the utility by typing "raidrb" at the A: prompt (without quotes). You will be presented with four options.
For the first attempt at rebuilding the RAID array, select option 1 "Create the bak file.And then rebuild!". This will save the configuration of your RAID array and then attempt to rebuild the array.
For any subsequent attempts at rebuilding the RAID array, select option 2 "Don't create the bak file.And rebuild!". This will rebuild the array using a previously saved bak file.
If the rebuild fails, use option 3 "Resume these disks' information!" to restore the original disk configuration. This uses the bak file created when you ran option 1.
After running the utility, reboot, and see if you can access the disk from DOS (eg. type DIR). If you can, your disk is repaired!
If the utility fails to rebuild the array, Highpoint recommend you contact their support department. Alternatively you can try one of the other methods below - but be aware that these may prevent Highpoint from offering you an alternative solution to the above. Your choice.

Alternative approach using mrecover2

Another user reported a slightly simpler restoration method, using the utility mrecover2 (available on the downloads page). If the Highpoint controller reports a broken stripe then simply:

Delete the RAID-0 array in the Highpoint BIOS
Recreate the RAID-0 array using identical settings
Boot to DOS from floppy
Run mrecover2 to rebuild the partition and file access tables
Reboot
Alternative approach using Norton Disk Doctor for DOS

Delete the broken RAID-0 array in the Highpoint BIOS
Recreate the RAID-0 array in the BIOS using identical settings
Boot to DOS from a floppy also containing Norton Disk Doctor for DOS
Run Norton Disk Doctor and and let it rebuild all the partitions and file allocation tables (FATs). Answer "yes" to the various questions asked.
Alternative approach using Symantec's Diskedit and Norton Disk Doctor

Diskedit and Norton Disk Doctor can be found on the Symantec Systemworks 2002 CD (these only support FAT16 and FAT32 - not NTFS). The steps to take are as follows:

Use Diskedit to view absolute sector 0 on the first of the HD
on the broken array as a Partition Table sector. Record the numbers shown.
Delete the broken RAID-0 array in the Highpoint BIOS
Recreate the RAID-0 array in the BIOS using identical settings
Use Diskedit to re-write the sector 0 numbers found in step 1
Use Norton Disk Doctor to put the media descriptor back to F8, then FDISK and MBR to make it boot again.
Under WindowsXP use the repair facility of the installation disc to run CHKDSK, FIXBOOT and FIXMBR. Similar tools are available for other Windows versions.
Alternative approach using testdisk

If that fails, the following solution is very successful for most people. Many thanks to Yasin Abbas (YaZ) for this - the solution is all his: I've just altered the wording here and there! In his case, he accidentally broke the stripe configuration by connecting the Secondary striped hard disk in a different IDE configuration. Upon booting the Highpoint Controller declared the stripe broken. Even after placing the hard disks back into their old configuration the to Highpoint controller continued to say that the stripe was broken. The first hard disk was indicated as a broken stripe Array#0; the second was indicated as HDD1 (standalone). The following solution has worked for him on two occasions, but is quite involved. It may not work under all circumstances but it's certainly worth a try. Here goes.

Ensure disks are correctly installed. Place the hard disks into the configuration you want, making sure that they both remained in the same orientation. By orientation we mean that the first hard drive in the broken stripe remains as the first hard drive in the "to be fixed" stripe regardless of where it is on the IDE channel and the second hard disk in the stripe remains as the second hard disk in the "to be fixed" stripe, regardless of where it is on the IDE channel.
Delete broken stripeset and create a new stripeset. Now enter the Highpoint BIOS and set up your stripe again, by deleting the old broken one and starting again from scratch. The BIOS will tell you that it will erase your drives, don't worry, let it do so. You have nothing to lose - your data is currently inaccessible anyway!
Analyse the partitions using testdisk.Once it has created the new stripe set, boot into DOS. You now require testdisk (Yasin used version 3.4) - an excellent program written by Christophe Grenier available from his site at http://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.html or on the downloads page. Run testdisk and you will be presented with a list of logical hard disks, the CHS values and the size. Usually your stripe set will be shown as "Enhanced BIOS mode". Select the stripe set that you created and choose to "Analyse" the partitions.
MBR new stripe set.Sometimes stripe corruption will remove the Master Boot Record (MBR) and testdisk will give you an error. To replace the MBR run: fdisk /MBR or better still use bootpart (Version 2.20) another highly recommended freeware utility by Gilles Vollant to replace the MBR. Documentation on how to do this is provided with bootpart.
Use testdisk to recreate the partitions.Upon completion of the analysis if your original stripe set wasn't too garbled you'll be presented with a list of your old partitions and their various values and types. You can't do anything with this list, just select your only option "Quit". The next screen shows you the list of partitions, structures and their types. In this list you are able to set-up each available partition as one of 5 different types: Primary bootable, Primary, Logical, Extended or even deleted. At this point try to make sure you set things up as they were before. This screen may not appear on very badly damaged stripe sets. After doing this select "Ok". The next screen allows you to arrange partition ordering. The usual order is Primary bootable = 1, Extended = 2, etc (assuming you have no other primary partitions or any other type, so this may differ in your case). Right and left selects different orders, up and down different partitions. I don't think the ordering actually matters too much as long as each partition is ordered consecutively (1,2,3 . . .) and no partitions have the same order (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, . . . but I haven't tested this myself!). After doing this select "Ok". This is the crucial stage, the point where; if you've set things up correctly you should get access to your data. A list is shown with the modifications. Your only two options are "Quit" and "Write". At this point in time if you think you have chosen your previous ordering and other values correctly, then select "Write". Otherwise choose to "Quit" and restart the procedures again.
Copy accessible data to another drive.Upon writing the partitions hopefully you can access your data. Usually your partition tables are still garbled. YOU MUST COPY ALL YOUR DATA OFF OF THE STRIPE SET AND REPARTITION YOUR HARD DISK. Although your data is now accessible, your disk is still in a very bad state and cannot be relied on!! The partition tables are only given "best" values and not "actual" values. However, now that you can access your data you have the chance to backup your essentials (or everything) and rebuild you RAID array from the beginning.
Rebuild RAID array and restore data.Once you have accessed all your data and copied everything off of the broken stripe set you can safely erase your hard disks and start from scratch, create your RAID-0 array again and then create your partitions. (Yasin recommends Partition Magic for this, or you could use FDISK or freeware tools like FreeDOS FDISK or Ranish Partition Manager . If you know of any other good freeware partition manager please email me!)

[Player0]

I have always used the mrecover2 method to fix the stripe.

[KODE]

Tom,

I´m wordless... I just can´t tell how am I feeling right now. I navigate through a lot of forums and posts over the web and I can count on my fingers the number of posts like this one. It is not everyday that you see a person beeing so friendly with you.

Once more I would like to say thank you Tom.

P.S.: On monday I will give it a go.

Respect,

KODE.

[Player0]

Oh, no problem, Ive been there before, I just hope it works out :)

I will try to post that mrecover2 program this weekend here if I remember it. Sudhian downloads dont seem to be working.

I just wish I could help more. Its been nearly 2 years since Ive recovered a broken stripe. So im a bit rusty :)

[KODE]

Hey Tom, you can bet you´re being more than helpful, sometimes you don´t realize how important you´re being to someone. Rusty? I don´t think so! :)

Have a nice weekend my friend!

Take care,

KODE.

[Think]

Nice information Tom !.

Have a stripped array as well and have never had a problem other than the original corruption on the famed drivers for the Asus boards - now resolved.

I'm definitley going to keep this information for my records.

VERY NICE.

One thing that does worry me was this:

HDTach with Advanced Size Check enabled is a frequent cause of broken stripe sets

Scary since I've been using HDTach for testing purposes:eek:

BTW...here's the Sudhian link:

http://www.sudhian.com/showfaqs.cfm?fid=7&fcid=7

[Player0]

You cant use HDTach for RAID benchmarking, or ANY windows benchmarkng because it access the hard drives via its own DLL. WHich means it skips RAID, SCSI, Windows, Intel, Via and AMD chipset drivers!!! So its not reliable, and there are many other reliable programs out there. Atto, IoMeter, WinBench99.

[Think]

Originally posted by Player0
You cant use HDTach for RAID benchmarking, or ANY windows benchmarkng because it access the hard drives via its own DLL. WHich means it skips RAID, SCSI, Windows, Intel, Via and AMD chipset drivers!!! So its not reliable, and there are many other reliable programs out there. Atto, IoMeter, WinBench99.

Scary and thanks:)

[sptw]

Originally posted by Think:
Scary since I've been using HDTach for testing purposes

What Player0 said is to avoid to use the "Advanced Size Check" option on HDtach with Raid0 setup.I'm one more here that second Player0 on it.It uses to break the array.For a single drive, no problem :)

[Player0]

Actually, I beleive HDTach creates unreliable scores, well documented at storagereview.com. But, as for the specific details of what it does to break a stripe, im not sure, so ill take sptw's word for it :)

[sptw]

Yes Tom, "Advanced Size Check" option on HDtach can break an array.It happened to me in the past.About the reliability of HDTach scores, sure you're right, it's a old benchmark program.There are more reliable programs like IOMeter and WinBench99, but most of the times people feel unconfortable to use it :( .BTW, i don't believe in ATTO numbers too :D

[Think]

Wouldn't it make sense to have a program that works on initial boot-up, such as memorytest86?

[Player0]

No. So much more goes in to accessing disks than the physical hardware itself. There are many many drivers that Windows uses to access data on the disks. By bypassing any of those drivers, you simply cant get an accurate picture of how well that drive will perform in real life. Things like write caching and random accessing vs burst mode are SO driver dependant.

[Think]

That makes sense:)

[KODE]

HELP FELLAS!!

Raidrb and mrecover didn't work! :(

When I ran mrecover It couldn't found any partition sequence. Could it be due to fact that I'm using NTFS?

I also changed the IDE cables, flashed BIOS, but nothing seems to work Tom... I'm almost trying YaZ method.

[Synthohol]

i probably missed it but is there an option in the raid bios to rebuild the array? there is one on my promise 20265 bios.
does it show a broken array at boot?

[Player0]

The most important thing here is deleteing the old RAID array in HPT BIOS, and creating a new, exact duplicate. The stripe size needs to be exactly the same.

Once you have the new array (which obviously wont have any data), you have to get the MBR to recognize the old partitions.

Now. If you boot to dos and run FDISK /mbr, the boot record should be restored, even if the partitions are NTFS. Please dont quote me on this though...it may cause harm. I cant be sure. But I beleive this has worked for me.

Now that you have MBR, you need to find the partitions. mrecover2 should see at least some partitions. Is it not showing any data? Might be a different stripe size.

Or the data is just gone. Can you try norton disk doctor for dos? It fixes alot of problems. Worth a go?

[KODE]

Thank you for the reply guys.

No there's not any option like that Synthohol :(

Tom,

I deleted and re-created an exact duplicate of my old array, that's for sure. These are the messages that I got when I ran mrecover:

"The following physical drives have been found in the system:

Drive Heads Sectors Cylinders Size(inMB)
1 255 63 1024 8032.5

"Please enter drive number to show partition info of:"

Then:

"The hard disk currently does not have any valid partition. Please proceed with the operations if you want to recover.

Did you have more than one partition in your hard disk (y/n)?"

So I pressed Y followed by:

"Please input estimated size of first partition (in megabytes). [input minimum size. Give 0 to search from the beginning]:"

I pressed "0" and was greeted with:

"No partition chains were found. You can try by reassigning all space to one partition. This will not alter the contents of data in your hard disk. If this does not work, you can still try other software.

Do you want to reassign all the space to one partition (y/n)?"

And I'm stuck in there, I really dunno what to do...

[Player0]

Synth, you can only rebuild in RAID1 or 5 modes.

Kode,

It sounds like the MBR was completely thrashed. So theres no real way to recover partition information.

However, this option:

"Do you want to reassign all the space to one partition (y/n)?"

Sounds promising. At this point, no harm to trying it. It will recover any data and throw it all in to one big partition. Which means you will beable to recover data.

However, thats about it. Its unlikely this drive array will boot. I suggest try the single partition recovery (which sounds like the only option).

Then, find a third hard drive somewhere, and install an OS on it. Install it on this machine on a regular IDE channel, and just get something to boot. Then copy all of the data from the RAID array on to a spare hard drive or the network. Then completely wipe and reformat the RAID array and start from scratch, and then just copy the backed up data back on to the fresh array.

You will probably loose a little data. Sounds like you lost most of the MBR and maybe FAT tables Maybe some NTFS tables too. I think you can recover some of the data, but I dont think the machine is going to boot from that array. Not with a screwed up partition table. Do the single partition thing with mrecover, and then install XP or 2k on a seperate third drive just so you can boot. You should beable to see the signle partition in windows. But whatever you do, dont install anything else on that array. best not to touch it, use a third drive for booting and to backup whatever you can fro the array, and start from scratch.

[Player0]

Why did this die in the first place?

[amdrules770]

I think this is one of those sticky threads!!!

[KODE]

Tom,

He was working with a CAD based software, and then all of a sudden, windows crashed. After the reboot the stripe was gone.

Back to mrecover steps:

OK, I assigned all the space to one partition and now I can boot to the W2K "loading screen" but I got a blue screen saying "inacessible_boot_device".

We are looking for another HDD to install the OS like you said Tom (Fingers crossed).

[Synthohol]

F6 add scsi/raid driver?? windows needs this in order to access the raid device

[Player0]

"OK, I assigned all the space to one partition and now I can boot to the W2K "loading screen" but I got a blue screen saying "inacessible_boot_device"."

Thats a very good sign actually. There is no way in heck Windows is going to boot like that. You COULD try installing Windows 2000 from the CD on to that array, and it *might* work. But I realllly dont recommend that. Find an old HD (anything will do), and back any data up to a different source. Then just wipe the array and start over.

Oh...and youll want to run a GOOD disk recovery program on that array once you can see it in windows. You should use Norton Disk Doctor, it will recover any lost chains or files on that lost partion. Do that before trying to back up anything on the array.

I also recommend using that array as LITTLE as possible until you can recover the lost data. Then, before creating a fresh array, run low level disk utilities on those drives to make sure that they are really okay.

[KODE]

Hi Tom,

I have the Norton System Works 2003 CD here at work, I will give it a go m8.

Thanx for the tips!

[Jester]

Many thanks to Player0, followed his instructions to fix a broken stripe on my HPT370, on board controller on my ABIT KT7A-RAID.

Following his instructions about resetting the BIOS, raidrb, mrecover2 and finally testdisk & bootpart made the contents of my disks available.

I completely skipped the Norton Utilities procedures.

I am now copying all my useful data like mad so I'm a happy man!
:D

Many thanks again Player0!:cool3:

[typo91]

my problem which brought me here...
I NEED HELP..
I am running the P4C800 Deluxe with 1011 bios. I am using the Fasttrak 378 for two Raptor WD drives (RAID-0). Which has been a computer geek's dream for the last 6months... Its soooooo fast, if you have the means I highly recommend getting it setup this way! Here is every RAID-0 user's worst nightmare... Here i am playing along in a game (homeworld2) and Poof, I get the blue screen of death siting a file NSLIP.SYS has caused an exception, system has been halted to prevent coruption and will reboot. System reboots... POST test completes then the Promise controller can not bring "Array 1" online. (I take a deep breath in fear) Promise BIOS ver is .37 (lastest Sep 4th BIOS) It lists the First Drive which is Identical to the drive on the second channel as assigned to "Array 1" the Second Drive is listed as "Free" (as in "not assigned to an Array") When I plug Each drive one at a time to either channel it lists each drive by itself as "Array 1" however when Both drives are pluged in (even switched) one of the drives is always listed as "FREE" no matter which of the two drives plugged to either channel... I have replaced SATA cables, reseated power plugs, checked both drives in the normal POST tests on the IDE SATA channels supplyed on the Motherboard. Tommorrow I will go get and try using the 40pin 3rd connecter with an SATA adapter for the second channel... There has got to be something I can do? It still detects the drives, just won't assign both to ARRAY 1...
What could Cause a drive in RAID 0 to Lose its ARRAY Assignment ??
how can I tell it to use this drive for the other half of the ARRAY again ?

It functed flawlessly since I set it up in June. I reflashed the bios... I loaded Defaults... still same thing...

I sent this same description to ASUS support form seeing as the board is under warrenty, but I don't know if they even support Faithfull Asus buyer's...
Someone with Promise Bios knowage should know something about this.

I am open to ideas.... I havn't done anything to the drives... (write wise)

and I am not going to give up...

I would rather eat my SATA cables then give up RAID-0 due to no more trust...

I never though I would really loose a whole DRIVE when I set up RAID-0 with RAPTORs, jesse and NTFS is pretty fault toalerate if I did losse a data sector, I never even had a bad sector before. But in this case the conntroller won't bring up the other Drive or even try on the other both channels

I don't know. I may try the drives in another system and see what comes up...

(MORE TESTING LATER)
One of the drives Assignment is "FREE" and not "Array 1" moving one of the drives around will cause the Channel to follow it in the VIEW Assigments" screen. HOWEVER pluging that Drive to the Array [BY ITSELF] the "VIEW ASSIGNMENTS" screen shows it "ARRAY 1" ..... so if I hook up one of the one... (Either one) by itself it shows "ARRAY 1" assignment.... however Both will Force one of the Drives to "FREE"

if that helps anyone on the theroys...

Ok now I have downloaded a program to VIEW ONLY the MBRs of the to drives, which i can only look at in normal IDE mode... one MBR appears to be full of a bunch of HEX Code and words that say something to the effect of Missing Boot Files... (I asume this is a normal boot partition) and the other MBR on the other Drive is mostly Blank but for 2 chars between 000 and 400

Still no luck... I havn't seen any tools yet that would use my Fasttrak 378 chip.
HELP ????

[sptw]

Hi typo91,

Welcome to the board :)

Your problem is very similar for those one that have been affected Western Digital Drivers in a Raid0 configuration.Drives disappear from the IDE RAID array or system after a short period of error-free operation.I have seen people complain about it, but never with raptors.Western Digital claims that it only occurs on drives with capacities between 40GB & 120GB and drives between 120GB and 200GB capacity with manufacturing date codes earlier than 3/25/03.The problem is a result of a feature that reduces idle acoustic noise in desktop drives. This feature may cause a timeout likely (though not exclusively) in an IDE RAID environment.There's an utility to disable the feature, that turn off a single bit in the drive’s run-time configuration.The problem is that i'm not sure if raptors carries this feature, probably yes.I don't think it will hurt your drive, maybe it worth to try it.
Maybe it can be a problem totally different than this one, but the similarity is enough.

Edit: sorry, here it is the utility: WD IDE Upgrade Utility (http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_admin=1&p_faqid=913&p_created=1047068027)

[typo91]

the program took one look at each drive, spit back the Model, Serial, and Firmware Revision numbers and then said
"NO DRIVES NEED TO BE UPDATED"

dam... I have found one SHOT in the dark fix... but its expensive... i can order two NEW Raptors and set them up the same way then mirror the MBRs to the old drives ? its a shot in the dark but I will do that before I give up... dam things are $112.00 buckaziods

[typo91]

I posted the problem to Western Dig... they seam to have a good support section... I sent them everything more or less that I know plus the pics...

thanks for lookn out!

[sptw]

I hope WD support can do something for you.
Good luck!

[typo91]

OMG IT WAS SOOOOO SIMPLE!!!!!!!

There i was, just about to cry... wondering what I am gona do... thinking how much crap I had on that system.... Software... Work... Games... Saved games... more games... and about 20gb stuff I can't mention here. Any ways... i am glazed EYED at what I think is a USELESS ASUS mobo manual thinking... I bet it doesn't even mention anything about the RAID control... and then I see it... in a One line sentence next to a picture of Mirror setup if you mess up.

"Delelte Array (4) this commanddeletes an array to reconfigure the system. Deleting an array does not remove information on the hard disks, if an array is deleted by mistake, recover it immediatley by redefining it as the deleted array."

and it hits me! I take a gamble and turn the ***** on, (what have I got to lose?) I delete the array from the "Array 1" assigned drive and re-create the array... POOF I get NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND, but the array was functional... I think the worst... then "Did I reverse my SATA Drives in my testing?" I reverse them, POOF NO OPERATING SYSTEM! dam... so I think... maybe switching them isn;t enough, it followed the unassigned drive before... so I delete it again, and re-do it... POOF WINDOWS XP BABBY!!!!

I was never so happy to see that microsoft XP logo... everything booted up fine... no problems... nothing... (I did a scan disk and defrag just to put it all behind me)

Dam i should get paid for this shizzy!!!

THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT!! I would have been much more said and "Giveup like" without this!
WHOO HOOO! Theres no data like my data! Theres no data like my data!!! (KANSAS)

Regards
Jason

[sptw]

:D :D Good to know you sorted it out typo91.Congrats, and do an image now m8, maybe in the second time.....

[Drax21]

I can't access my raid drives. The problem progressed thusly:

The bios apparently reset to defaults. I discovered this when the system wouldn't boot with "Wrong CPU" error. I went into the bios and ONLY adjusted the cpu setting.
The system was unstable after that, with poor performance and lockups. Two days ago this became so frustrating that I snapped off the power, without a proper shutdown. When I tried to restart, the system posted without error but seemed to freeze after the XP loading bar.
Back in the Bios, I finally discovered the full extent of the default reset, which included making HDD0 the boot drive (should be Raid Controller). I adjusted all settings back to my optimals. On reboot, the system halts at "Verifying DMI pool".
I can enter the raid bios settings window and it recognizes my drives, but if I boot to dos, no hard drives are found. So I can't do fdisk/mbr, or really, access the data on those drives at all.
I ran raidrb to no effect.

I hate losing all the "stuff" on those drives and I desperately need to get my Quicken data (yes, I backed-up to the same drive....stupid a-hole).

Abit KG7 Raid (onboard High Point 370 controller)
AMD Athlon XP 1900+
512mb Crucial 2100
2 WD Caviar 40 gb
Abit Geforce 3
Santa Cruz sound
Linksys lan

[typo91]

DMI pool information is due to improper memory/speed/cache rate..

Load Fail safe or Bios Defaults...

your Highpoint is a controller i don't know.. but if you havn't edited your MBR on the harddisks you should be able to reconstruct your Array settings without any data loss... make sure you do it with the correct Drive 0 and Drive 1 .... IE
HARD DRIVE A -- drive 0 in array
HARD DRIVE B -- drive 1 in array
the moment anything writes so much as a byte to your MBR you lose all data. for the most part.

This should not be a data recovery operation it should be a Settings Recovery Operation. Just Dont try to "Tweak" anything in your Bios... set all settings (or load defaults) as SLOW and compatable as possable. then Tweak things one at a time after you get your computer booting again. Your lack of DOS acces may be due to your controller not supporting it without a memdriver... or something... My promise controll Emulates just one C: drive so the computer does not "have to" have the drivers to access the array... but its a big preformance jump when XP gets those drivers.

[Drax21]

With bios settings at lowest/slowest (heck, I turned off the IDE bus and FDD controller, only the raid controller is active), systems boots thru to XP loading bar, then goes to a blank screen. A few seconds of disk activity, then nothing.

This is an improvement, oddly. Previous attempt to boot to raid stopped at the DMI thing. I just attempted to boot safe mode with command prompt. It processed several files and hung at "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS\System 32\DRIVERS\amdagpxp.sys". Is this a clue?

[typo91]

Yes... well it looks not good my friend... either your files are bad, or your system is loading them wrong, or your AGP card doesn't like you anymore.

Now you gota Trouble shoot. goto memtest.com and get mem checker... that never hurts to knock that out of the way. just in case... then I would replace your Drive cables... thats the next thing you just want out of the way of possablies. then if thats a no go. you need to start booting into Recovery Console in XP and start poking around there....

one thing I like to have on my is KNOPPIX linux CD boot disk...

in your case your best bet is XP boot disk... and try to repair... it should replace that file. you could try getting another copy somewhere.

I wont bullshit you though... it doesn't look good if you got bad files on hard disk like that in Raid 0. Hopefully its memory error. The memtest will give you boot disk that will boot your computer and integerity check your ram. try that first and formost.

[Drax21]

Thanks for your hints and help. I've tried to stay busy...hopefully not destructively busy.

I loaded the Recovery Console and ran "Fixboot"...no change. Nothing else there looked applicable so I moved on to another approach. I hooked up an old drive with Win 98 installed. Got that to load and run properly and installed all the proper drivers, including the raid controller drivers.

The High Point 370 raid controller shows up in Device Manager and is working properly. So is the WD hard drive (actually 2 drives) attached to the raid. But I can't make it assign a drive letter to the raid drive. I installed the HP Raid Administator software and it recognizes the controller and shows all details of the 2 drives. But that doesn't say anything about data.

I booted to the Win 98 startup disk....no raid drives found. I loaded the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tool and it doesn't see any WD drives.

So, basically my bios sees my raid controller, the raid bios sees the two WD drives, Win 98 sees the controller and the raid stripe and nothing lets me affect these drives in any way. I can't read or write to them...I can't fdisk `em and start over....they're dead to me...ghost drives, holding all my treasures and laughing at me from the depths of computer hell.

"Villians! Disemble no more! I admit the deed. Here...here...tear up the planks! It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

No....I'm fine.......really.....................thump-thump......thump-thump ...hahahahhhahahahahhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaghghpht!

[typo91]

Hold on there buddy now wait just a sec before you get all huffy!

itn't your Raid array Formated in NTFS??? Win98 wont ever see the partition... not with out some tweaking... (which i don't recommend)

If you just want the data back... try the same thing you did with the seperate drive, only install XP on it. it can and will read your NTFS... lets just hope you didn't use the NTFS secure files option.

Win98 will see the drive... but won;t show you anything in My Computer cause Win98 dosnt play nice with NTFS.

Fixboot just rewrites your Raid's MBR... Try Chkdsk in the recovery console

there are ways to Read NTFS in win98... but I would not install anything that can Write to NTFS in win98... but I don't recommend using the read method either as its not very stable.

remember .... RELAX... deep breaths... if there is anything important on the drive you can always imaging what it looks like in your mind! :)

keep me posted

[typo91]

PS if its really immportant i could recover the files for you.

[Drax21]

So I decided to stick that extra drive into the rack..(I had it propped up on top of the case while I tested). I unplugged the power supply connectors from all components and moved my raid drives down to make room. I installed the drive and started hookng power back up, but discovered I was now short one connector, so I didn't hook up the cd rom. Also, a couple of the leads were stretched pretty tight in the new configuration.

Satisfied the everything was okey dokey, I flipped the power switch and.... well, now it won't post. There seems to have been some kind of transient event....thought I detected an unusual sound at power up...but I'm not sure. No beeps or codes, but no video signal and no drive activity. And I can't get into the bios. I tried reseting the cmos jumper...three times... without success.


I intend to remove everything from the case and test one thing at a time, but I think this might require a trip to an actual tech-guy.

But thanks again for your attempts to save me from my self.

[typo91]

~sigh

[Wickedlou9]

Looks like this is related.

I am at the end of my rope with my computer.
Between work, buying a new place, trying to get a mortgage, and this.. I think I am going to have a heart attack. ( and I am turning 26 today )

I'll try to keep this brief and to the point.

Configuration:
Asus A7V-266E most recent bios revision (1011 I believe)
512 megs PC2700 DDR 333mhz
AMD XP1900+
ATI Radeon 8500 64MB
80 GIG WD 7200rpm IDE hard disk ( Storage drive )
Adaptec stand alone RAID controller card
- Two WD 40gig 7200 RPM IDE hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration
CDRW drive
Windows XP professional

Ok. So I had installed windows ontop of windows 2 or 3 times.
Windows started becoming fruity on me. Freezing ALL the time.
I bought a new HD so that I wouldnt loose all the files I wanted to keep.
Installed that. No problem.
Began copying files over. Windows freezes. and dies. kaput. no booting.

Re-installed windows on top of windows again. Didnt want to loose my data.
worked fine.
Copied all files over to new storage drive without issue.

With that done I wanted to re-format the RAID array and install windows on a clean slate.

went through my 6 setup disks. formatted the raid Array. completed initial setup and copying of files from CD.

Computer reboots

Upon completeion of BIOS load...

"Missing file NTLDR" press any key to reboot.

great. Boot sector is fux0r3d.

Go into Raid array config. delete array. re-create array, select boot drive, blah blah.. done.

try again.

this time after intial setup and reboot, BIOS finishes. Screen goes blank with the exception of one line. " Press any key to reboot"
press a key, it reboots, and repeats the cycle.

I went into the setup again, and chose repair instead of install. I tried fixing the MBR. ( command FIXMBR ) Same results. The only thing I have not tried yet was another command FIXBOOT. which I guess is my last resort.

After that I will have to install windows onto my storage drive. which I really don't want to do.

[typo91]

well from hearing what you have tryed... its safe to say your data on the RAID0 array is toast... getting it back is gona... you sound like you are shooting off random MBR altering operations, that Post is about the most destructive thing you can do to a hard drive. When you recreated the array... DID you reInitailize it too?

it sounds like it.

Ok.. it also sounds like you are installing windows from Disks?? thats your first no go right there... second... here is why you can't install windows to the RAID array... YOU HAVE to create and OEM install disk for XP or whatever version of windows you are installing, for the Array controller.

FIXBOOT probably raped your bootsectors.. Cause it doesn't know how to talk to your array.... YES windows will install to an array drive but it will reboot and do what its doing if you dont make an OEM Floopy for your Controller.

SECOND... How the hell do you have 1011?? verision on a stand alone? What card are you using?? You need to give more details... and bios settings... what is primary boot in bios?? if you Card is stand alone, then you are going to have to find a setting in your bios that Sets the non-integrated board as the primary boot device...

Which is questionable if you have that option... here is the easyest way to do it... Set your primary boot drive as your 80gb thats on the mobo's IDE. then begin the install process of windows... hitting the F6 key any installing your OEM Array controller Disk (which you can abtain by either the driver disk, or the manufactor website) then after that you should be able to install windows to your 40x40gb array... your computer will still boot the MBR from the 80 gig, but all the files will be on the array... thats what Microsoft recemends in cases where the ARRAY can not be detected without drivers.

good luck... but stay away from my computer FIXBOOT happy man!

[Wickedlou9]

Well, i'm not sure what exactly happened. I removed the IDE drive, and started over.
I deleted the array, re created it, went through the 6 disks, and viola, it worked! I have a suspicion that windows didnt want to write to the boot sector of my array when the IDE drive was present. But I really don't know. Anyway, I got the system back up and running, then re-added the IDE hard disk, and it works fine.

The RAID card doesnt require a third part driver actually, so I don't have to press f6 during installation. Some motherboards have onboard raid controllers and those are mostly software controlled, so they DO require those drivers. BUt with the card I have in there, I have never needed one. Windows recognizes it and will use it right away. I am booting from it now with no special boot disk or anything.

[typo91]

ok well thats good... I would have still used a CD BOOT disk to install windows.. cause Floppys are just not trustworthy nowadays. I still recommend getting the Drivers for your card... like my Promise integrated card I didn't NEED them... however installing the NT_Kernerl Device Opertional Driver set is almost manditory. The systems boots in a sort of compatibality mode, it doesn't use any special drive functions or in some cases full bus access untill the Device is setup properly to use all the availabily resourses... in some cases you make experience data erroer and system crashs from stressing the array without the proper access driver codes for the kernal...

Its basically telling Windows how high the I/O card can jump and where. OR windows my just treat the card as a Standard Disk and not use it to its full potental.

So still use the lastest Card drivers when you get the OS up and running, for best results.

[Synthohol]

Originally posted by Wickedlou9
Looks like this is related.

Asus A7V-266E most recent bios revision (1011 I believe)
512 megs PC2700 DDR 333mhz
AMD XP1900+
ATI Radeon 8500 64MB
80 GIG WD 7200rpm IDE hard disk ( Storage drive )
Adaptec stand alone RAID controller card
- Two WD 40gig 7200 RPM IDE hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration
CDRW drive
Windows XP professional

first off, i like your board, i have 2 of them, 2nd the onboard raid works fine, 3rd there is a new bios that makes the onboard raid both channels instead of "lite" see my sig, fourth, i created the raid first, fdisk'd then formatted fat32, i hit f6 when prompted, ran the driver disk i had to make off the CD from asus, then the install worked without a hitch. check your boot.ini file, ill bet there is a 0 where a one should be describing the boot partition as yours is scsi as far as windows is concerned because its on a controller card.
it's probably something simple:)

[Wickedlou9]

Originally posted by typo91
ok well thats good... I would have still used a CD BOOT disk to install windows.. cause Floppys are just not trustworthy nowadays. I still recommend getting the Drivers for your card... like my Promise integrated card I didn't NEED them... however installing the NT_Kernerl Device Opertional Driver set is almost manditory. The systems boots in a sort of compatibality mode, it doesn't use any special drive functions or in some cases full bus access untill the Device is setup properly to use all the availabily resourses... in some cases you make experience data erroer and system crashs from stressing the array without the proper access driver codes for the kernal...

Its basically telling Windows how high the I/O card can jump and where. OR windows my just treat the card as a Standard Disk and not use it to its full potental.

So still use the lastest Card drivers when you get the OS up and running, for best results.

You know, I probably should see if there are updated drivers for that raid card. I do get strange system freezes on occasion. It happend last night when I was running a virus scan. I woke up this morning and the PC was frozen.. and thats on a fresh clean install of XP.. that really shoudlnt be happening. I'll try that. I am also running a memory check on the PC. It will probably run for most of today.. but I have suspected bad RAM in this PC from day one. INfact, I have one of my sticks out on my desk.... I removed it after a few months because I was having constant problems... and that actualy did the trick. I wonder if another one of the sticks could be partially bad. Hmm.

[Wickedlou9]

Originally posted by Synthohol
first off, i like your board, i have 2 of them, 2nd the onboard raid works fine, 3rd there is a new bios that makes the onboard raid both channels instead of "lite" see my sig, fourth, i created the raid first, fdisk'd then formatted fat32, i hit f6 when prompted, ran the driver disk i had to make off the CD from asus, then the install worked without a hitch. check your boot.ini file, ill bet there is a 0 where a one should be describing the boot partition as yours is scsi as far as windows is concerned because its on a controller card.
it's probably something simple:)
Wierd. When I was using the onboard RAID controller, I was getting alot of data corruption.. so finally I gave up and bought the card.. which really seemed to make a difference.
maybe I DO have bad memory though. maybe the bad memory effected the onboard raid controller more than the stand alone card...

[Drax21]

Update to my previous post: I'M BACK BABY!

When last we met, my array was hopelessly lost and I had apparently fried my mobo trying to recover it. I had begun to quote Poe and and quietly make tiny cuts in my forearm.

Ha! Bought a bigger, better power supply, reset my bios against it's will, and followed the advice of the good people on this forum and...honey...I'm home.

The final, magic answer was the "testdisk" program from page one of this thread. That puppy worked so easily I'm still a little afraid I might be dreaming. After almost three weeks of dread and frustration....I've already copied half the data I desperately needed (now I can balance my checkbook!) and the rest is transferring as I type.

Something is beeping furiously and I keep getting an "error found!" box, but I'm IN! Grab the goodies, scrape these drives and start over.

I'm happy. Thanks, guys!
:)

[corenhaplo]

I'm in trouble, I'm using an Asus A7N8X Deluxe Motherboard. I have a Serial ATA RAID array using the integrated: "Silicon Image(R) Sil 3112A Controller with 2 ports Support RAID 0/1" It now when booting up says Drive 1 is no longer a Valid RAID drive. It still consider's Drive 0 a valid drive. I don't have any backups. I need much of the data off the Drive. I'm using Windows 2000.

For more details surrounding the issue. I had just installed a new PCI TV Tuner card. Windows was not booting properly, so I booted in safe mode. It locked up on a file so I assumed the file might be corrupt. So I pulled out my Windows 2000 CD and I forgot to load the Raid driver and it failed after not detecting a Drive. So I restarted and loaded the Raid Driver and it initialized and I went to the reapir option and went through the Repair process as much as possible without a Windows Emergency Recovery Disk and it claimed that it could not find a Windows installation. So at this point I rebooted one more time to see if it would boot planning to remove the card next. This time on reboot it came up and and said that Drive 1 was not a valid RAID drive.

Most of the things listed here are for different motherboard/RAID controllers and they don't have the RAID controller claiming one of the Drives is not a Valid RAID Drive. So does anyone have any ideas?

[Drax21]

I'm not familiar with the SATA raid and I'm assuming you have a Raid 0 setup.

Go back to page 1 of this thread and look at Player 0's long post with the various options. Try to rebuild your array and then use one of the recovery methods described there. The "testdisk" version saved my butt. But work thru all of them. It's solid advice from knowledgeable people. Be brave!

[robmichael]

typo91,

I had the exact same problem you did. I was a bit wary about deleting an array until I had exausted all my other options. I had read through Player0's suggestions and I gave mrecover2 a try, but it found nothing on my array. So I decided I was at the point of deleting the array anyway, even if I was going to try any of Player0's other suggestions. I did just as you had: delete the array and then re-define it. I rebooted and to my surprise & excitement, my XOSL screen came up, I booted into XP, and here I am writing this reply.

I don't know if this is a Promise specific problem/solution, but I'm glad that it worked. I have a Promise TX2 controller with 2 IBM Deskstar 40GB drives attached in a RAID 0 array with 4 partitions on it (XOSL, Win98SE, WinXP, and a FAT swap partition). My array came unglued spontaneously in the middle of working in XP; it blue screened and when it rebooted, the array was offline. Luckily I have a laptop as well to connect to the Internet, so I was able to find this thread on LN.

Thanks for taking the plunge for the rest of us; now I know that option is out there.

Rob

[sptw]

:D Welcome to the board Rob :D

[zzz]

Ouch!! Guess how I got into this forum/thread? My RAID 0 in my laptop is broken!!
One of the drives failed after being frozen and shut down last night...
I almost sent my drives to data recovery for $2000 to $20000, and the recovery is NOT guaranteed!!
Dam... My wallet is not that fat at this moment... I just turned on and off the laptop to try to jump start that sick horse. Surprisingly, the array showed up on the list again after being deleted for rebuild, despite the array is still sick.
I have booted the system using WinPE. Hopefully RAID Reconstructor will get me some good news.

[zzz]

Quick update: I opened the case again. There is some kind of powder on one of the chips beneath the hard drive rack. I am not sure if this means the chip burn. Is there an external RAID controller for laptop hard drives?

[unacceptable_risk]

Probably not what your looking for, but there are these sort of things about...
http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/ast4.asp

[christophocles]

Ouch!! Guess how I got into this forum/thread? My RAID 0 in my laptop is broken!!
One of the drives failed after being frozen and shut down last night...
I almost sent my drives to data recovery for $2000 to $20000, and the recovery is NOT guaranteed!!
Dam... My wallet is not that fat at this moment... I just turned on and off the laptop to try to jump start that sick horse. Surprisingly, the array showed up on the list again after being deleted for rebuild, despite the array is still sick.
I have booted the system using WinPE. Hopefully RAID Reconstructor will get me some good news.

Welp, I might be able to help... This forum was a great help to me to figure this stuff out and I actually freaking did it. Unbelievable.

What really helped me a lot was Microsoft's Resource Kit for Windows 2003 (found here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9D467A69-57FF-4AE7-96EE-B18C4790CFFD&displaylang=en)). First, follow player0's post ("from sudhian") which is found on the first page of this thread. Delete your array and re-create it with the same stripe size as before. Then, go into winxp diskmgmt.msc and initialize the array and create a partition of the same size as before, but do not format. Last, carefully follow the instructions here (http://www.z-a-recovery.com/recover-ntfs-backup-boot-sector.htm) to use ZAR and Diskprobe to restore your backup MBR.

For some background on my case, look here (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/112239).

[greenmark]

I hope you guys could help me out here, mine is 2 x 250gbs western digital sata set as RAID-0, WindowXp, Asus P5nd2-sli delux motherboard.

I accidently DELETED the RAID-0 array and recreated a new RAID-0 array... I called asus CS and was told there is no way to reconstruct or create the same array once array is deleted or broken...

My RAID-0 was partitioned into 65gbs C: drive and 400gbs D: drive, after i accidently deleted and recreated I boot it up and i get black screen with "_" blinking at the top left corder of the screen...

All my files are intact, i haven't touch or alter any data on these two hard drives... I contact seagate.com data restoring team and they are charging $1200.00 to get the data recover, so that wasn't an option, and looking around for softwares that could analyze and reconstruct the RAID-0, and most of these softwares cost $500.00, I'm looking for a cheaper way to solve this problem, i had school video projects on these hard drives that i need to get it back.


From what i've read from the starting of this thread, most issue is due to broken, errors or corrupted RAID-0, I'm not sure if this apply to me, so i'm looking for confirmations, OR is there any other suggested way to REBUILD or RECREATE my or even retrieve my data from manually deleted RAID-0 array?


Thanks

[christophocles]

@greenmark

It most certainly *IS* possible to recover. Do not write ANY data to your drive until you are very sure of what you are doing. Hopefully when you re-created the array you used the same stripe size. You need to create partitions that are the *exact* same size as what they were before. Since you probably do not remember the sizes, and Windows disk manager tends to round numbers off, this may not be so easy.

The first thing that comes to my mind is browsing the empty, unpartitioned drive with DskProbe around the 65GB mark and trying to find the NTFS Backup Bootsector. Once you know the sector number where this is located you should be able to back-calculate the size and create the partition accordingly. You then simply write the backup bootsector over the new bootsector of the partition you created. You could recover C: and then move on to recovering D: in much the same way.

There may be an easier way to find the size. Unfortunately, Microsoft gives almost no instructions in how to use DskProbe or how to "traverse partition tables" as they put it. You will have to refer to 3rd party sources of information, as I did. I'll dig into this a bit more later when I have time. Google it a bit more and check my post on ubuntu forums here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/112239

Good luck

[greenmark]

unsuccessful results,


MRecover v2.01
Found a valid partition table
Total Partitions found: 1

No. Type Active Begining | Ending Size
Head Sector Cyl | Head Sector Cyl (inMB)
1 HPFS Yes 1 1 0 254 631023 67013.3

Do you want to search for partitions (Y/N)?
.
.
chose N
.
.
next screen:

The first partition is not marked as FAT32
MRECOVER will not try to recover that partition.

if you will want to try, or have accidentally selected the

wrong type of another type during Phase 1 recovery, please use

MRECOVER2 /F option to forcefully try to rcover the first

partition after marking it as FAT32.

Press enter to continue...
.
.
Should i Try MRECOVER2 /F? seem like good news, but i have two

Partitions and only one is found. eventhough, the partition is

found i does not boot into windows, i'm still getting "_"

blinking





TESTDISK v6.6
-----------------
I did not get any errors, Proceed to [ANALYSE] and chose

[Write] to write new MBR, ok

reboot with noresults, still getting "_"blinking

[greenmark]

update:
with TESTDISK v6.6 procedure, its can only see the 1st partition (65gb),

christophocles,

DskProbe, I found the window version and not sure how to use it or how it works. Is there dos version of this?

Since, you suggested to use DskProbe to search unknown range of the 1st partition, to be able to recover data, how is it down could you instruct step-by-step on how to achieve this?

as the result of MRECOVER v2.01, i can see the 1st partition how do i get data from here?

thanks

[greenmark]

I've Installed WinXP on a separate Hard Drive and trying access raid 0 and maybe recover some data from there...

1st thing i did was enter Computer Management
RightClick My Computer -> Manage -> +Storage > DiskManagement

I can see
Disk0 [Local Disk (C:)] 298.09GB - This is my newly boot windows disk
Disk1 [(F:)] 65.44GB - my corrupted Raid0 disk, with two Partitions, that is the 1st Partition, SECOND partition is marked as Unallocated and its only 167.44GB, it should have been 400GB
Disk2 Unknown 232.88GB - This disk2 should have been part of 2nd partition of Disk1 above, i don't know why are is recognized as two separate disk.