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Need help with SATA RAID 1 failure on A7N8X Delux



 
 
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  #1  
Old August 22nd 04, 06:33 AM
Cameron
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Need help with SATA RAID 1 failure on A7N8X Delux

My system "had" two Seagate 80mb SATA drives set-up in a RAID 1
(mirror) configuration on an ASUS A7N8X Delux motherboard, using the
on-board Silicon Image Sil 3112A RAID controller. Several weeks ago my
system crashed and I was unable to boot or otherwise access my disk
drives. I did not have everything backed up, because I stupidly
thought the mirror would protect against a disk failure. I have a
years worth of digital photos on the computer and if I can't get them
back then my wife will probably never let me spend another cent on
computer hardware and other things. I'll basically be in hell for the
rest of my life. One more thing, I reside in a small and slightly
isolated country and I am the only one I know with SATA hard disks.
This is what has happened to date.

1. The disk was formatted in NTFS with three partitions; the lost data
is not on the partition with the operating system.

2. The RAID array has been working for about 12 months, albeit with
some problems.

3. On three occasions the PC would not boot. I would open the box and
disconnect one of the RAID drives. The machine would then boot. I
would shut down and reconnect the disconnected drive. The computer
would now boot with both drives and the Primary drive would be
rebuilt. I take it I had an intermittent problem with the Primary
drive.

4. Late one night a few weeks ago I noticed Windows XP had frozen.
Before going to bed I used the Power on/off switch to shut down. Next
morning the PC would not boot and my trick of disconnecting one of the
drives did not work. The PC was reporting Disk Boot Failure, insert
system disk and press enter.

5. The RAID utility screen was reporting Set0 Invalid RAID drive.

6. I tried to recover using the Windows CD, using F6 and S, inserting
floppy with drivers, etc. However, after loading drivers Windows
reports that no hard drive is available.

7. Use of DOS boot disks failed because the RAID drivers could not be
installed and the hard drive is therefore never visible.

8. I spent several days surfing forums and trying everything possible
to have the system recognize the disks without using the RAID utility
to delete the RAID array and start from scratch, presumably losing all
data in the process (not much help from the manuals on what happens
when a RAID array is deleted – for example, does mirroring stop and
each disk convert to stand alone hard disk?).

9. There are four options in the RAID utility:
Create RAID set (would kill all data?)
Delete RAID set (I don't dare)
Rebuild RAID set (cannot, invalid RAID drive)
Resolve conflicts (there are no conflicts to resolve)

10. By this time my kids are driving me crazy being on school holidays
and fighting over the remaining PC so I decided to buy a new IDE hard
drive and reinstall Windows onto it while I troubleshot my SATA
problem.

11. This is where I made a big mistake. When removing the disk drives
to install the new IDE drive, and reconnecting them on the bench, I
accidentally shorted out the Primary RAID drive. How do I know it is
shorted? When the drive is connected the PC will not power on. I did
not tell my wife about this. I am still assuring her the baby pictures
are safe. I had been telling her I had two drives from which to try
for a recovery. So now I must recover data from only a single SATA
drive, once part of a RAID 1 mirror!

12. I was hoping that with Windows XP installed on the IDE drive with
the SATA RAID drivers, the remaining RAID drive would be visible. No
such luck.

13. I sent an on-line message seeking guidance from Silicon Image tech
support and received no reply.

After searching the Web for a solution these last few weeks, I am
still uncertain of the following:

a) How is a single SATA drive connected to the ASUS A7N8X? Is it to be
configured as RAID 0 striped array? There is no help in the manual on
this.

b) What happens when a RAID array is deleted, is all data lost? I am
hoping that if I delete the array then the disk would be seen by
Windows and I can at the least recover the data in the secondary
partitions. On the other hand, this option may not even work since the
utility reports Invalid RAID drive.

c) Will all data be lost forever if I Create a new RAID array using a
single disk?

d) What about the security of the NTFS file system, will I be able to
see my files if I do recover the disk and can see it after booting on
the IDE disk?

e) Can the data be recovered and NTFS defeated with disk recovery
software? How much would this cost from a professional Company.

f) It did occur to me that the problem with my RAID drives was a
corrupt BIOS and I have been thinking of flashing the latest BIOS,
which is stated to have resolved some SATA bugs. I've never flashed
before and some advice on the net is to do this only if essential. The
advice if a problem occurs is to seek professional help. Where I live
there is no tech support in this respect and so I have been loath to
flash the new Bios. Should I do it and what is the chance I will run
into an unrecoverable problem?

g) What to do with the shorted out RAID drive? Can it be fixed or
should I bin it?

h) Can anyone offer any an alternate way to recover the data and save
me from a life of everlasting hell as I'll constantly be reminded that
my $2000 home built PC lost the family snapshots?

I very much appreciate everyone's time in reading through my problem
and all advice will be very gratefully received.
  #2  
Old August 22nd 04, 10:39 AM
Paul
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

In article ,
(Cameron) wrote:

My system "had" two Seagate 80mb SATA drives set-up in a RAID 1
(mirror) configuration on an ASUS A7N8X Delux motherboard, using the
on-board Silicon Image Sil 3112A RAID controller. Several weeks ago my
system crashed and I was unable to boot or otherwise access my disk
drives. I did not have everything backed up, because I stupidly
thought the mirror would protect against a disk failure. I have a
years worth of digital photos on the computer and if I can't get them
back then my wife will probably never let me spend another cent on
computer hardware and other things. I'll basically be in hell for the
rest of my life. One more thing, I reside in a small and slightly
isolated country and I am the only one I know with SATA hard disks.
This is what has happened to date.

1. The disk was formatted in NTFS with three partitions; the lost data
is not on the partition with the operating system.

2. The RAID array has been working for about 12 months, albeit with
some problems.

3. On three occasions the PC would not boot. I would open the box and
disconnect one of the RAID drives. The machine would then boot. I
would shut down and reconnect the disconnected drive. The computer
would now boot with both drives and the Primary drive would be
rebuilt. I take it I had an intermittent problem with the Primary
drive.

4. Late one night a few weeks ago I noticed Windows XP had frozen.
Before going to bed I used the Power on/off switch to shut down. Next
morning the PC would not boot and my trick of disconnecting one of the
drives did not work. The PC was reporting Disk Boot Failure, insert
system disk and press enter.

5. The RAID utility screen was reporting Set0 Invalid RAID drive.

6. I tried to recover using the Windows CD, using F6 and S, inserting
floppy with drivers, etc. However, after loading drivers Windows
reports that no hard drive is available.

7. Use of DOS boot disks failed because the RAID drivers could not be
installed and the hard drive is therefore never visible.

8. I spent several days surfing forums and trying everything possible
to have the system recognize the disks without using the RAID utility
to delete the RAID array and start from scratch, presumably losing all
data in the process (not much help from the manuals on what happens
when a RAID array is deleted – for example, does mirroring stop and
each disk convert to stand alone hard disk?).

9. There are four options in the RAID utility:
Create RAID set (would kill all data?)
Delete RAID set (I don't dare)
Rebuild RAID set (cannot, invalid RAID drive)
Resolve conflicts (there are no conflicts to resolve)

10. By this time my kids are driving me crazy being on school holidays
and fighting over the remaining PC so I decided to buy a new IDE hard
drive and reinstall Windows onto it while I troubleshot my SATA
problem.

11. This is where I made a big mistake. When removing the disk drives
to install the new IDE drive, and reconnecting them on the bench, I
accidentally shorted out the Primary RAID drive. How do I know it is
shorted? When the drive is connected the PC will not power on. I did
not tell my wife about this. I am still assuring her the baby pictures
are safe. I had been telling her I had two drives from which to try
for a recovery. So now I must recover data from only a single SATA
drive, once part of a RAID 1 mirror!

12. I was hoping that with Windows XP installed on the IDE drive with
the SATA RAID drivers, the remaining RAID drive would be visible. No
such luck.

13. I sent an on-line message seeking guidance from Silicon Image tech
support and received no reply.

After searching the Web for a solution these last few weeks, I am
still uncertain of the following:

a) How is a single SATA drive connected to the ASUS A7N8X? Is it to be
configured as RAID 0 striped array? There is no help in the manual on
this.

b) What happens when a RAID array is deleted, is all data lost? I am
hoping that if I delete the array then the disk would be seen by
Windows and I can at the least recover the data in the secondary
partitions. On the other hand, this option may not even work since the
utility reports Invalid RAID drive.

c) Will all data be lost forever if I Create a new RAID array using a
single disk?

d) What about the security of the NTFS file system, will I be able to
see my files if I do recover the disk and can see it after booting on
the IDE disk?

e) Can the data be recovered and NTFS defeated with disk recovery
software? How much would this cost from a professional Company.

f) It did occur to me that the problem with my RAID drives was a
corrupt BIOS and I have been thinking of flashing the latest BIOS,
which is stated to have resolved some SATA bugs. I've never flashed
before and some advice on the net is to do this only if essential. The
advice if a problem occurs is to seek professional help. Where I live
there is no tech support in this respect and so I have been loath to
flash the new Bios. Should I do it and what is the chance I will run
into an unrecoverable problem?

g) What to do with the shorted out RAID drive? Can it be fixed or
should I bin it?

h) Can anyone offer any an alternate way to recover the data and save
me from a life of everlasting hell as I'll constantly be reminded that
my $2000 home built PC lost the family snapshots?

I very much appreciate everyone's time in reading through my problem
and all advice will be very gratefully received.


I have no idea whether it is safe to "Delete Array Set" and
"Create Array Set". Unless someone can come up with a better
solution, this is what I would try...

*****
This web site has a link to a driver for the SIL3112, that runs
it in non-RAID mode.

http://www.syba.com/us/en/support_do...73-0203-1.html
http://www.syba.com/us/bin/silicon_i..._v1.1.0.52.zip
"; This INF file installs the Silicon Image Serial ATA non-Raid
; driver for the SiI 3x12 controllers on systems running Windows
; 98/ME, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows
; Server 2003."

Install WinXP on the IDE drive, then the syba driver. Then, reconnect
the remaining good SATA drive (only the IDE should be present during
the install of WinXP, for safety sake). If you can see partitions, back
them up. If you cannot see partitions, see if a program like the
following, can at least make an image of the entire drive at the
sector level. This way, you'll have a backup copy of your RAID drive,
in case something goes wrong in any further attempts to recover
the data.

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/englis.../UserGuide.pdf

Another way to attack the problem, would be to buy a separate
SATA controller card that can operate in non-RAID mode and put
the remaining good drive on it. That is, if the syba driver
above doesn't work for you.

If the partitions cannot be seen, and you manage to back up
the whole drive, using DriveImage7, then you can do whatever
you want in the way of experiments to the drive, as you can
always restore the image and try again.
*****

This site discusses RAID in a general manner, and points out
that a mirror doesn't protect against a power failure while
the mirror is in use. Backups are required, whether you are
using a mirror or a RAID5, because the computer could burn
up, or the power supply could over-volt all the drives in
the computer, in which case, all your data is gone.

http://ldp.c-s-p.com/HOWTO/Software-...x-HOWTO-4.html

As for flashing the BIOS, with your luck so far, would this
be a wise idea ? If you want to plan ahead, a BIOS Savior,
from ioss.com.tw, is available for $25 and has a duplicate
BIOS chip on it. You can flip between "A" or "B" flash chip,
so you always have a good one to fall back on. Once the
BIOS Savior is installed, you can go crazy with the flashing.

HTH,
Paul
  #3  
Old August 22nd 04, 01:49 PM
LeeBos
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

As far as I know when you build a raid array the config info is written to the
hard drives. If you delete the array this info and all data on the drive will
be lost.

As the old saying goes: "There are only 2 kinds of computer users, thoes that
have had a catastrophic failure and thoes that are going to." ALWAYS BACKUP
YOUR IMPORTANT DATA!

Your best bet is to get an identical SATA drive and try rebuilding the array
with the old drive that MAY still be good.



Subject: Need help with SATA RAID 1 failure on A7N8X Delux
From: (Cameron)
Date: 8/22/2004 1:33 AM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id:

My system "had" two Seagate 80mb SATA drives set-up in a RAID 1
(mirror) configuration on an ASUS A7N8X Delux motherboard, using the
on-board Silicon Image Sil 3112A RAID controller. Several weeks ago my
system crashed and I was unable to boot or otherwise access my disk
drives. I did not have everything backed up, because I stupidly
thought the mirror would protect against a disk failure. I have a
years worth of digital photos on the computer and if I can't get them
back then my wife will probably never let me spend another cent on
computer hardware and other things. I'll basically be in hell for the
rest of my life. One more thing, I reside in a small and slightly
isolated country and I am the only one I know with SATA hard disks.
This is what has happened to date.

1. The disk was formatted in NTFS with three partitions; the lost data
is not on the partition with the operating system.

2. The RAID array has been working for about 12 months, albeit with
some problems.

3. On three occasions the PC would not boot. I would open the box and
disconnect one of the RAID drives. The machine would then boot. I
would shut down and reconnect the disconnected drive. The computer
would now boot with both drives and the Primary drive would be
rebuilt. I take it I had an intermittent problem with the Primary
drive.

4. Late one night a few weeks ago I noticed Windows XP had frozen.
Before going to bed I used the Power on/off switch to shut down. Next
morning the PC would not boot and my trick of disconnecting one of the
drives did not work. The PC was reporting Disk Boot Failure, insert
system disk and press enter.

5. The RAID utility screen was reporting Set0 Invalid RAID drive.

6. I tried to recover using the Windows CD, using F6 and S, inserting
floppy with drivers, etc. However, after loading drivers Windows
reports that no hard drive is available.

7. Use of DOS boot disks failed because the RAID drivers could not be
installed and the hard drive is therefore never visible.

8. I spent several days surfing forums and trying everything possible
to have the system recognize the disks without using the RAID utility
to delete the RAID array and start from scratch, presumably losing all
data in the process (not much help from the manuals on what happens
when a RAID array is deleted – for example, does mirroring stop and
each disk convert to stand alone hard disk?).

9. There are four options in the RAID utility:
Create RAID set (would kill all data?)
Delete RAID set (I don't dare)
Rebuild RAID set (cannot, invalid RAID drive)
Resolve conflicts (there are no conflicts to resolve)

10. By this time my kids are driving me crazy being on school holidays
and fighting over the remaining PC so I decided to buy a new IDE hard
drive and reinstall Windows onto it while I troubleshot my SATA
problem.

11. This is where I made a big mistake. When removing the disk drives
to install the new IDE drive, and reconnecting them on the bench, I
accidentally shorted out the Primary RAID drive. How do I know it is
shorted? When the drive is connected the PC will not power on. I did
not tell my wife about this. I am still assuring her the baby pictures
are safe. I had been telling her I had two drives from which to try
for a recovery. So now I must recover data from only a single SATA
drive, once part of a RAID 1 mirror!

12. I was hoping that with Windows XP installed on the IDE drive with
the SATA RAID drivers, the remaining RAID drive would be visible. No
such luck.

13. I sent an on-line message seeking guidance from Silicon Image tech
support and received no reply.

After searching the Web for a solution these last few weeks, I am
still uncertain of the following:

a) How is a single SATA drive connected to the ASUS A7N8X? Is it to be
configured as RAID 0 striped array? There is no help in the manual on
this.

b) What happens when a RAID array is deleted, is all data lost? I am
hoping that if I delete the array then the disk would be seen by
Windows and I can at the least recover the data in the secondary
partitions. On the other hand, this option may not even work since the
utility reports Invalid RAID drive.

c) Will all data be lost forever if I Create a new RAID array using a
single disk?

d) What about the security of the NTFS file system, will I be able to
see my files if I do recover the disk and can see it after booting on
the IDE disk?

e) Can the data be recovered and NTFS defeated with disk recovery
software? How much would this cost from a professional Company.

f) It did occur to me that the problem with my RAID drives was a
corrupt BIOS and I have been thinking of flashing the latest BIOS,
which is stated to have resolved some SATA bugs. I've never flashed
before and some advice on the net is to do this only if essential. The
advice if a problem occurs is to seek professional help. Where I live
there is no tech support in this respect and so I have been loath to
flash the new Bios. Should I do it and what is the chance I will run
into an unrecoverable problem?

g) What to do with the shorted out RAID drive? Can it be fixed or
should I bin it?

h) Can anyone offer any an alternate way to recover the data and save
me from a life of everlasting hell as I'll constantly be reminded that
my $2000 home built PC lost the family snapshots?

I very much appreciate everyone's time in reading through my problem
and all advice will be very gratefully received.









  #4  
Old August 22nd 04, 09:07 PM
Danny Sanders
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

On 21 Aug 2004 22:33:14 -0700, (Cameron) wrote:

e) Can the data be recovered and NTFS defeated with disk recovery
software? How much would this cost from a professional Company.


Assuming the data still exists on the magnetical disks themselves,
professional companies should be able to retrieve it. But that is
extremely expensive. About two years ago I looked into that when
one of my drives had crashed. Costs were in the range of $1000 just
to get started and then about $0.10 for each megabyte. Prices may
vary though, depending on how badly the disk is damaged. You can
always mail a couple of companies and ask them for a quote.

Companies doing data recovery:

http://www.ontrack.com/
http://www.ibas.com/

So it all depends on how much your data is worth to you. If you are
able/willing to pay the money for professional recovery you should
stop trying to get the data back yourself. Every attempt you make
can damage your drive and thereby make it harder to retrieve the
data.

accidentally shorted out the Primary RAID drive.


Two things can be wrong he the spindle motor died, or the PCB
with all the control logic got fried (or both). Since the PC won't
power up when this drive is connected, I guess some parts on the
PCB are broken. If so you might be able to revive the drive by
getting hold of an *identical* unit and swapping the PCBs. This
usually only takes a couple of screws and one or two connectors.
There is of course a risk associated with this. You can lose the
data on your drive if the new PCB decides to start writing to the
disk to initialise something. And theoretically the new PCB can
also break down if the mechanical parts of the old drive happen
to be broken too. So you can lose the old and new drive this way.

Good luck!
Danny Sanders www
(o o)
,---------------------------------------------------oOO--(_)--OOo-.
| This message is printed on 100% recycled electrons. |
`-----------------------------------------------------------------'
  #5  
Old August 23rd 04, 03:25 AM
Andrew
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

I do not know all your answers, but I will try.

a) How is a single SATA drive connected to the ASUS A7N8X? Is it to be
configured as RAID 0 striped array? There is no help in the manual on
this.


It can be done, I am doing it at the moment (two SATA without raid).
The question is more along the lines of getting the SATA controller to
use the drive as a single drive. In a ideal implemntation of RAID
mirroring. each drive should be possible to be removed and run by
itself. The problem arrises if the controller implements the mirror in
it's own fashion.

It was done by not creating any RAID arrays, I just ignored the
option.

b) What happens when a RAID array is deleted, is all data lost? I am
hoping that if I delete the array then the disk would be seen by
Windows and I can at the least recover the data in the secondary
partitions. On the other hand, this option may not even work since the
utility reports Invalid RAID drive.


Deleting the RAID array depends on how it was created ie: is it usable
when not on the sata controller.

The option may work but it depends on which drive the utility is
refering to.

c) Will all data be lost forever if I Create a new RAID array using a
single disk?


can not be done. The raid controller will say can not create raid
without two disks (or something to that effect)

d) What about the security of the NTFS file system, will I be able to
see my files if I do recover the disk and can see it after booting on
the IDE disk?


I have not had any problems with the NTFS file system. Only time I did
I was testing a few otions out, one being to encrypt the data. It was
lost that time so I do not use it. If it is just a plain NTFS
partition, there should be no problems reading the drive.

I had once though that having the wrong / different Admin password
might stop me accessing a drive, but it did not happen.

e) Can the data be recovered and NTFS defeated with disk recovery
software? How much would this cost from a professional Company.


Cost of a professional company, very high. Exact cost I do not realy
want to know.

secondaly, if a recovery software could get around NTFS's security,
there is a lot of people that would not be very happy. Just hope you
sis not have the security enabled as you will need more help that I
can give.

just a note for next time, if you do not need the NTFS, format your
drives with fat32. A lot easier to recover problems from. (Use to be,
not idea if the recovery tools for NTFS have caught up).

f) It did occur to me that the problem with my RAID drives was a
corrupt BIOS and I have been thinking of flashing the latest BIOS,
which is stated to have resolved some SATA bugs. I've never flashed
before and some advice on the net is to do this only if essential. The
advice if a problem occurs is to seek professional help. Where I live
there is no tech support in this respect and so I have been loath to
flash the new Bios. Should I do it and what is the chance I will run
into an unrecoverable problem?


I would hold off doing that for now, get the data back first.

g) What to do with the shorted out RAID drive? Can it be fixed or
should I bin it?


depends on the problem. If you damaged the circuit board, getting a
replacement might work. If the motor was samaged, it is a paper weight
as I do not know of any way to replace them without paying a lot of
money. at a guess i would say that you could by a few new drives for
the cost)

overall. it might be easiest and quickest to bin it. Best wait until
your current problem, is fixed first.


h) Can anyone offer any an alternate way to recover the data and save
me from a life of everlasting hell as I'll constantly be reminded that
my $2000 home built PC lost the family snapshots?



OK, now on to what I would do in your shoes (besides get some flowers
for the other half).

two ways I see this working. It assumes that the remaining drive is
good

1) - get a second replacement drive for the one that died and connect
it up. THe controller should copy the good drive onto the new drive
and all should be well. If the wrong one is imaged (ie the newer
drive) onto the old drive, the information will be lost for good)

2) - disconnect both SATA drives from the controller and start the
computer. When you get to the configuring of the sata controller,
disable the raid array / delete it. Do this with the drive
disconnected incase there is some information it tries to write to the
hdd (or tries to format them, I am only guessing what it will do).

Then turn off the computer, attach the working drive and boot again.
do not acess the controller (as it should not be needed). If it asks
to do anything to the drive, click no or turn the power off (so
nothing is done to the drive).

if it works, you should get into windows and see the drive. If not,
you will have to try option 1



the best plan would be to plug the drive into someone else's sata
controller and get the data.

Hope this helps, and next time, back the stuff up.

A

  #6  
Old August 23rd 04, 12:24 PM
Cameron
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

First of all, may I thank everyone for responding and please keep the
ideas coming. I've tried a few of the suggestions without success and
here are my comments:

Andrew,
"1) - get a second replacement drive for the one that died and connect
it up. THe controller should copy the good drive onto the new drive
and all should be well. If the wrong one is imaged (ie the newer
drive) onto the old drive, the information will be lost for good"

I thought of this but I am not to keen to invest in more SATA drives
when the chance of success is low. Consider, if the mirror drive is
still fully intact and can be imaged to a new drive then why can't I
boot from the drive now stand alone.

"2) - disconnect both SATA drives from the controller and start the
computer. When you get to the configuring of the sata controller,
disable the raid array / delete it. Do this with the drive
disconnected incase there is some information it tries to write to the
hdd (or tries to format them, I am only guessing what it will do).

Then turn off the computer, attach the working drive and boot again.
do not acess the controller (as it should not be needed). If it asks
to do anything to the drive, click no or turn the power off (so
nothing is done to the drive).

if it works, you should get into windows and see the drive. If not,
you will have to try option 1"

Worth trying, assumes RAID info is written into the BIOS and not just
onto the drive. However, when I tried it the result was that the RAID
utility could not be accessed, i.e. with no drives attached.


the best plan would be to plug the drive into someone else's sata
controller and get the data.

This comes back to the question of whether a single SATA drive can be
configured on the A7N8X because if it can then I should be able to
plug the drive in and view it as well as I could on any other machine.


Paul,

I downloaded the Syba driver but could not get it to work with my
onboard SATA raid controller, i.e. shown as not enabled in the device
drivers dialogue screen

"Another way to attack the problem, would be to buy a separate
SATA controller card that can operate in non-RAID mode and put
the remaining good drive on it. That is, if the syba driver
above doesn't work for you."

Might work but again why doesn't the SATA controller on-board work
with a stand alone drive?


To round this off with yet more questions. The solution to this would
seem to be to understand more of how RAID works. It is not well known.
I want to know if the RAID instructions are located in the
hardware/BIOS or whether information is written to the disk itself. If
on the disk then it is possible my problem is caused by these
instructions being corrupted. If you think about it, some RAID
information must be written to disk because if the instructions were
on the MB and CMOS was reset there would be no flag to tell the
controller if the disks were a RAID 0 or 1, stripe size, etc.

So the controller cannot find the information it needs and somehow
consequently Windows is not able to see the disks. So what I want to
know is how to delete or re-write the RAID instructions to the disk
without deleting all my data. I also want to know for sure how a
single SATA HD is configured on the A7N8X.

BTW, I am very grateful for every ones advice on maintaining a
back-up. You would think after many years of tinkering with PCs I
would know this by now. Actually, I had all my normal data backed up
on another networked PC but was running out of space for the family
pics, the space taken by which was expanding at a great rate. I knew I
should write them to a CD but kept putting it off. I was thinking to
myself, no worries, it can wait a few weeks or months. I have RAID1!

Cheers and thanks again.
  #7  
Old August 23rd 04, 12:47 PM
Arj
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Hi,
Have you considered using someting like Knoppix Live CD or
MandrakeMove. These are Linux OS CDs that can run the OS from the CD
and read NTFS and can burn to CD to recover the pixs.

I have done a recovery using Knoppix from a FAT32 partition but not
RAID.

I can´t test it as I am in here because my RAID0 with 2 WD 80GB
crashed, looks like it has killed the HDDs.

Arj
***************************************




(Cameron) wrote in message . com...
My system "had" two Seagate 80mb SATA drives set-up in a RAID 1
(mirror) configuration on an ASUS A7N8X Delux motherboard, using the
on-board Silicon Image Sil 3112A RAID controller. Several weeks ago my
system crashed and I was unable to boot or otherwise access my disk
drives. I did not have everything backed up, because I stupidly

  #9  
Old August 24th 04, 12:15 PM
Cameron
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

(Arj) wrote in message . com...
Hi,
Have you considered using someting like Knoppix Live CD or
MandrakeMove. These are Linux OS CDs that can run the OS from the CD
and read NTFS and can burn to CD to recover the pixs.

I have done a recovery using Knoppix from a FAT32 partition but not
RAID.

I can´t test it as I am in here because my RAID0 with 2 WD 80GB
crashed, looks like it has killed the HDDs.

Arj
***************************************




(Cameron) wrote in message . com...
My system "had" two Seagate 80mb SATA drives set-up in a RAID 1
(mirror) configuration on an ASUS A7N8X Delux motherboard, using the
on-board Silicon Image Sil 3112A RAID controller. Several weeks ago my
system crashed and I was unable to boot or otherwise access my disk
drives. I did not have everything backed up, because I stupidly


Chris,

First thing I did was to try connecting the drive stand alone. The
RAID utility can see it but Windows XP will not see it, even if a
fresh installation is conducted using F6,S, etc Windows cannot find
any hard disks attached. I may buy another SATA drive and try to setup
the array again, as a last resort. The thing is I don't think the
Primary drive was broken before I shorted it out and if everything
else was okay it should have rebuilt itself to start with. Thanks for
your advice man.

Arj,

I haven't tried the Linux CD's but I have used the Windows CD several
times and have also tried a Windows install with the SATA drivers onto
an IDE drive. Windows could only see the IDE drive. So, I doubt the
Linux CDs will see the drive either but could be worth a try if the
SATA drivers for Linux are all powerful and can see the disk where the
Windows drivers coluldn't. Thanks for your help.
  #10  
Old September 3rd 04, 12:11 PM
Steve E
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

I've had a similar problem but from another angle. I was running a
A7N8X Deluxe board with a single SATA drive (couldn't afford to get
two at the time of purchase) and was using that as my only drive. I
never had to configure any raid set to get it working - just plugged
it in and gave windows the drivers during the install - no problem.

The problem I had is that after 12 months of use (don't things always
fail after the guarantee period!) Windows then started to blue screen
and moaned about NTFS.SYS and wouldn't boot. I tried bunging in an old
ATA drive, installing XP and then booting from that and try to use the
SATA drive as a slave but XP moaned about that too. In the end, I
resorted to just having the single SATA drive plugged in and then
booting from a KNOPPIX (Linux) bootable CD. KNOPPIX supports the
READING of NTFS but won't ever write to the disk so the risk of
corruption doesn't exist. KNOPPIX recognised the SATA disk without any
problems and mounted it. I could then browse the disk at my hearts
content. It's also got CD/DVD burning software so I just burnt the
entire HD to loads of DVD's - instant backup (which I should have done
ages ago).

I've now coughed-up and bought 2HDs (Seagate 120Gb) which I've used to
create a mirrored set. Haven't had any problems so far (touch wood).
Needless to say, I'm now looking quite hard at disk/partition
management and backup software. Partition Magic got ruled out quite
early on as it doesn't support RAID sets. Now looking at Ghost and
Drive Image 7.
 




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