"Missing operating system" - sudden failure of RAID 0 array

Participant · 22 Jul 2008 at 14:00

Hi all

I have three hard drives, two of which are in a RAID 0 array with Vista etc. and one of which is standalone for backups and media storage. Luckily I had the important stuff backed up so I'm not totally screwed; however I'd like to not have to reinstall Vista if I can help it.

Anyway this is what happened. My partner shut down the PC and I switched it back on very soon afterwards. All the BIOS settings had gone back to factory, i.e. RAID was not set to "yes", SATA was set to IDE etc. etc. I've tried resetting the options to RAID and SATA but when I boot up, the RAID BIOS whilst recognising all the hard drives, now says that the status of the RAID volume is "failed".

Below this it says :

Port____Drive / Model / Serial #___Size________Type / Status
0________WDC - XXxxXXX___________298.1 GB_____Non-RAID disk
1________WDC - XXxxXXX___________298.1 GB_____Member disk
2________WDC - XXxxXXX___________465.8 GB_____Non-RAID disk

Now the top two drives should both me member disks.

When I allow it to go beyond this screen, it says verifying DMI pool data or something as normal, then it says "Missing operating system.".

Does anyone have any ideas as to what troubleshooting process I should be following here? If I reinstall Vista could it re-recognise the RAID array and allow me to access the hard drive?

As I say this simply amounts to a mild PITA rather than a full blown disaster, apart from the fact that my wedding speech is on this drive and I haven't backed that up :eek:

. I can remember most of it but I'd like to get everything back if possible!

rpstewart · 22 Jul 2008 at 14:11

Not sure if the option is available with Intel RAID but I rember having something similar happen with an old nvidia RAID array a while back and I managed to get it back by recreating the array but selecting not to wipe the drives.

bledd · 22 Jul 2008 at 14:13

i'd remove the 500gb drive and see what it can do from there mate..

always a good idea to keep an acronis true image backup.. (last thing you want to read, i know)

Participant · 22 Jul 2008 at 16:03

Ok cheers guys I'll try tonight. Something else I read was to try repairing the installation using the Vista x64 disk, so I think I'll give that a shot also. However I thoroughly anticipate that I am shafted!

Also found this: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=187723, which seems to suggest another possible avenue I could go down, just in case someone with similar troubles is reading this.

Participant · 23 Jul 2008 at 08:38

Everything I tried failed, so I deleted the array and reinstalled Windows to one of the two formatted drives. I have to accept the small amount of data that I have lost, but since I should be on 10Mb cable fairly soon, I'm not that concerned

. I'm now abandoning RAID and buying a couple of Raptors!

Thanks for the help all.

FoldGish · 23 Jul 2008 at 13:30

I had a similar problem with a customer's PC. I had taken one of the two 1TB drives out to test it with Seagate tools (non-RAID). When I plugged it back in I had left a test disk from a broken RAID array connected and it overwrote the config for my original array.

I used the second solution from the link above:

*I am not responsible for any data loss blablabla, I'm just giving you a possible sollution; from my experience it tends to work*
1) Enter the Ctrl-I configuration utility. Write your raid level, array size, stripe size and everything else that can be configured on a piece of paper, you'll need this info later.
2) Delete the Raid-array. Yup, that's right, just throw it away.
3) Reboot and create a new array just like your old one. If you do not use the full disk for your array, make the array slightly (0.5GB or so) larger than the old one, so you're sure the old one fits on the new one.
4) Reboot. Don't enter the drive system manger panel in windows. Download and install testdisk. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
5) Start testdisk. The program ask you whether or not it should create a log file. It doesn't matter for all I know, so choose whatever you like. Select your brand new raid array. Select 'Intel partition' if you have a regular
Windows partition. Next choose 'Analyse', then 'Quick search'. If your old array doesn't show up, try 'Deeper search'. Now your partition should show. Select the old partition and press Enter, then 'Write'. Testdisk now
writes the old partition table on your new array.
6) Close the program, reboot and everything should be fine.

I had used the default stripe size, full disks RAID and booted from a TestDisk floppy. I found that I needed to boot from the Vista CD and start a repair. This fixed some remaining boot issues (maybe missing MBR).

Anyway, it worked and I suddenly had Vista booting and 800GB of data back.