PC Experts needed!!

TK1

TK1

TK1

Associate
Joined
28 Mar 2006
Posts
74
My PC "all of a sudden" after 3 weeks of now use will not boot up at all, it worked fine before i went away but now its faulty.

The problem lies with my HDD's i have 2 in Raid and when the PC boots up it stops and says that

Disk Array is "Off Line"

Basically my PC does not recognise my HDD on start up and stops and then asks to insert a bootable drive.

Im completly lost on this one as i cant see how something can break when its off?

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

TK
 
You havent mentioned what RAID you are using. RAID 0 or 1 I would have thought. If it's RAID 0 then it sounds like you're not gunna have much luck. Run your disk manu's disk checking utility to confirm drive death (providing both are being detected).

If it's RAID 1 then maybe your raid controller is a bit weak when it comes to a drive failure and you need to check something out in the raid bios/setup.

Check power/sata cables. reseat all of them.
 
Also if the drives are dead check the date they were manufactured and see if there still in warrenty if so, send the drive off to the manufacturer and get a replacment.:D
 
Thanks for the reply im not sure which Raid they are in but it does seem that my PC is dead?

One last question will my HDD be recoverable if i plug them into another PC? will i have any problems doing this?
 
i wouldnt plug them into another computer, if its raid 0 then its already lost if 1 of the drives is gone, if its raid 1 then you need to identify which HDD has the issue. I believe it might be worth doing things like chkdsk /r in recovery console and seeing if it sorts the problem
 
I really hope you had backups!

Try some basic troubleshooting first. Exhaust the simple solutions first. If you are lucky it is just a loose cable and thats why one of your drives has stalled. Double check everything in your case. Then do it again. Swap power cables. Maybe one went bad. Unlikely, but your alternatives are complete data loss.

If you were running RAID 0 the failure of either drive means you have lost everything as data is shared between the 2 and cannot be rebuilt with only one. RAID 0 is basically stupid for your OS. Doubles your chance of failure for negligible gains. It's ok for scratch files, for your games, but not your OS.

If you where running RAID 1 you can just remove the failed drive - replace it with a similar (preferably identical one*) and choose restore in the RAID bios. RAID 1 is smart, gives you the read speed advantages of 0 but not the write speed. However each disk has an identical copy of everything. Expensive but smart.


*Slightly OT but this received wisdom has recently been challenged - something for another thread though.
 
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