ARRRGHHH has setting up Raid killled my hard drives?

jmbrailsford

Prominent Member
Joined
May 21, 2004
Messages
4,508
Reaction score
371
Points
959
Location
Fife, Scotland
Hi,

have been running my HTPC for last few months with only one Seagate 16ogb SATA drive, although when built I had set up the Raid software via floppy disk I had bothered to install the 2nd drive.

Bored the other evening ( always fatal with PC's I know !! ) - so thought what the heck it can't be that hard to set up the 2 drives..... or can it? I Went into Raid setup via CTRL (S) and then set up RAID 0, rebooted computer and both drives showed up on boot screen no problem, however nothing once I got into XP Media Centre edition, only 1 showing.

So rebooted and back into Raid setup and changed to RAID 1, still same once back into desktop, only 160gb showing up, which I figured was ok as RAID 1 is only for mirroring data, still not what I wanted as I wanted more room for movies, music etc.

Right I thought let's try that again, back to Raid setup but this time tried RAID 0 again but when it asked if I wanted to split files across both drives I said 'YES' - that's when the real problems began, it wrote the files ok and after about 30 minutes it was done and I rebooted the computer, this time however DISASTER !

The drives showed up on the boot screen but it wouldnt load windows all it did was ask me to insert boot disc and hit a key.

I tried the XP Media disc and the hit a key, it then began just to install all the XP drivers again, ie: atapi, adaptec, usb etc you know the ones prior to XP install, it then got to the 'TO INSTALL XP ON THIS DRIVE HIT ENTER' - this I did and all it did was tell me that it couldn't detect any hard drive and that if I had a the hardware installation or confirguration disc that came with my hardware that I might need to use that ????

Needless to say I was welled P*****D off as I had lost all 150gb of stuff on the original drive.

Downloaded Seagates Diagnostics CD Rom via my laptop and then tried to format the original drive with that, this took about 8 hours to complete and still made no difference.

Even if I try the drive in my Dell PC it gives the same 'NO HARD DRIVE FOUND' message, the HTPC is still ok as I swapped my Dell PC drive into it and it worked, well up until it loaded XP ( it crashed as obviously all the drivers were wrong ).

To recap I have tried all of the following.

JBOD - RAID 0 ( wrote to both drives - and actually had the total showing as 320gb in the hardware properties if I right clicked on the C drive and told it to 'POPULATE' the volume but C in MY COMPUTER would only show 160gb ) - RAID 1

All of the above setting show up in Bios no problem and allow me to set any one of them as the first boot device but XP will not install.

Anyone any ideas as to what to do to rectify the problem as I don't want to just bin the 2 Seagate 160gb SATA drives that I was using to set up RAID as I am sure they are fine and I am sure it is operator error ( ME ! )

Thanks,

Mike.
 
I assumed you backed up all your data first?

when you install XP, more than likely you'll need to press F6 and use the floppy with the SATA RAID drivers on.
 
I assumed you backed up all your data first?

when you install XP, more than likely you'll need to press F6 and use the floppy with the SATA RAID drivers on.

Backed up .... your kidding right LOL no I didn't.... didn't anticipate any problems and anyway nothing on the HTPC that I don't have on the Dell PC or DATA dvd anyway.

I did wonder about the F6 option, no floppy in HTPC but can use the one I robbed from an old PC to install the RAID software in the first place. By the way thanks for a super fast reply :smashin:

Now thinking that if I can get at least the original drive up and running again will forget about RAID and just use an external drive for all my movies so can move it between HTPC, Dell PC and Laptop.

Thanks,

Mike.
 
did you use software raid built into windows, or hardware raid where you need to do a fresh install of windows and use a raid driver installed by pressing f6 and inserting a floppy disc?
 
did you use software raid built into windows, or hardware raid where you need to do a fresh install of windows and use a raid driver installed by pressing f6 and inserting a floppy disc?
Hi,

when I built the HTPC I installed the RAID drivers from a floppy using the drivers supplied on the motherboard CD Rom, never set it up properly after that as only used the one drive.

I now assume from both the above replies that a floppy drive, the RAID setup disc and F6 should sort out the problem. To be honest all I want now is to get the one drive working and buy an external one to add my dvd's to.

Will have a go later on if I can find that old floppy drive.

Thanks for your help,

Mike.
 
By the sounds of it, you did software RAID from within Windows, then tried to do hardware RAID, which is why you lost your OS install.
 
By the sounds of it, you did software RAID from within Windows, then tried to do hardware RAID, which is why you lost your OS install.
Hi,

you could be right, not easy being this stoopid you know :D

I will have a go tonight at sorting it out via the floppy disc and F6 and see if that helps. As I said above as long as I can get the original drive functional again and re-install MCE on it I will go the external drive route for my dvd collection.

Thanks,

Mike.
 
As I said above as long as I can get the original drive functional again and re-install MCE on it I will go the external drive route for my dvd collection.

Can't you leave both drives in the PC but access them as separate drives & put your DVD collection on the 2nd drive?

I also reckon its a good idea to partition your primary disk & stick windows/MCE in a small partition & leave the remainder for data. There are lot's of reasons why you sometimes need to trash & re-install windows (as you're finding!) so it's safer to keep the data on another partition or disk.

Personally I've never been a fan of RAID 0 in a PC. You're at least doubling the risk of disk failure for a marginal gain in performance.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom