Boot drive failure, but RAID is okay
I had to replace my boot drive. Reinstalled Win XP. System found all the drives, but I can not access the RAID. BIOS loads the Adaptec 1200 Raid, I guess from the PCI Card. In Device Mgr, it sees two identical drives RAID 0, but I can not access them. What am I doing wrong? How can I get the two Raid drives (my storage) to show up and act as one again? Thanks VERY MUCH in advance. TNchicklet@aol.com
Software/Hardware used:
Software/Hardware used:
ASKED:
June 23, 2008 3:00 AM
UPDATED:
August 28, 2008 6:07 PM
Answer Wiki:
What error are you getting when you try to access them? Have you installed the drivers for the Adaptec 1200 card in Windows? They are probably going to be required before you can access the RAIDed drive.
When you reboot the computer it should give you a key combination you can use to enter the Adaptec RAID card BIOS and make sure that the RAID is still intact.
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If the Adaptec drivers were not available, the OS (WinXP) would see an unknown device (the RAID HBA) but not the drives. The fact that the drives are seen indicates the HBA drivers are there and working.
What is happening is that the new XP install sees the RAID 0 logical disk(s) as a foreign volume. What you’ll need to do is go into computer management (Right click on “My Computer” and select “Manage”), and click on Disk Managment in the LEFT pane. In the RIGHT pane, LOWER window, you should see the RAID 0 volume shown as a foreign disk. You’ll need to right click on the left part of the RAID 0 volume entry and select “Import” so that your current installation can write a digital signature to the volume and address it as you’d like.
I would almost guarantee that the RAID volume is intact, as the RAID metadata is written to the volume members, not the parent OS disk (in the situation you describe above), so the data your storage volume contains should be intact.
PS – I’m very familiar with this particular adapter, having used it in production at an R&D facility for data backup/recovery purposes (configured as RAID 1), and having supported this HBA live for a while at the manufacturer’s help desk.
Yes, you were absolutely correct…100 percent. I did as you suggested and it now works perfectly. I’m so happy. I thank you, my wife thanks you. If we didn’t already have five daughters, we would name our next child after you! Seriously, Pressler2904, we sincerely appreciate your time and talents for helping out with this.
Steve and Lori Sanderson