Actually, I know "why", I just don't know what is dead exactly. Last night the damn power went out and was off for a few minutes. It came back on and my PC was fine. But an hour or so later the power went out again for about an hour. The power came on, but I was tired so I didn't bother turning my PC back on.
This morning I turn on my PC and got an error screen. Not the usual BSOD, but some black screen with an error message. Sorry, I don't remember what exactly it said, but I think it had to do with not being able to locate some file(s). The key point here is that the RAID controller didn't report any errors with the RAID 0 array (two 80 GB SATA drives).
I reset the PC hoping it was a one time hang up. No luck. I just get a black screen after POST. Still no problems reported from the RAID controller. So I log onto the Anandtech forums from a different PC to begin looking for some advice thinking at this point that there I have something corrupted with my boot files or something of that nature. I find a couple of informative posts and proceed to boot off my XP Pro disc, load the RAID drivers, and enter the recovery console. I get to the C:\WINDOWS\ prompt just fine and attempt to run chkdsk and it reports that the volume appears to have unrecoverable errors. So now I'm getting a bit worried. I try to follow some of the repair tips in a post I found on Anandtech by accessing some of the files in the C:\WINDOWS\repair\ directory but find that I can't access any files there.
So now I'm thinking that my Windows install is just fvcked and I will need to reformat and install again. Within the recovery console Windows can still see both partitions (C: and G: ). G is where I stored all my media files and I'm hoping it is OK. So my plan was to reformat C: and reinstall Windows and my files on G: will hopefully be OK. So I go ahead and reboot again with this plan in mind. No luck.
This time when I reboot my RAID controller pops up a warning that the array is damaged. So I enter the RAID set-up utility and it reports that one drive has "failed or is disconnected". So now is where I'm really worried and start some testing. I want to figure out which drive is damaged. So I'll try to expalin what I have found as clearly as possible.
I have two SATA RAID channels on the controller. The utility refers to them as channel 1 and channel 2. And I will refer to the two identical drives as A and B.
So I begin testing the drives by changing the cables around. Here are the results:
Chan 1 connected to drive A only: Controller sees drive A and not B (as expected)
Chan 1 connected to drive B only: Controller sees drive B and not A
Chan 2 connected to drive A only: Controller sees drive A and not B
Chan 2 connected to drive B only: Controller sees drive B and not A
On the above tests I'm trying to weed out the bad drive or see of one of the SATA channels is bad for some reason. As you can see, all goes as you would expect for healthy drives.
Chan 1 connected to A and Chan 2 to B: Controller sees drive A and not B
Chan 1 connected to B and Chan 2 to A: Controller sees drive A and not B
So now we have some interesting results. In both set-ups the controller reports drive B as "failed or disconnected". So that would normally lead me to believe that drive B is dead... but then why does the controller see drive B just fine when it is the only drive connected? Also, I did try switching the power plugs in those last two set-ups and got the same results, so that should rule out a bad power plug. I can also hear both drives spin up.
So what is the problem? Is drive B dead, or is there a problem with the RAID controller? Also, I'm kind of limited on the testing I can do. I'm not ready to give up on the data on the drives yet, so I don't want to try and reformat them yet. Also, they are true SATA drives so I have no way to connect them to a standard IDE channel nor do I have any adapters to do so. My second PC doesn't have SATA so I can't try them there.
I have nothing overly critical on my PC and much of the stuff I do have backed up, but I have been lazy and haven't back-up any files in maybe the last two or so months. So I would be losing some media files, some recent saved e-mails, and some recent bookmarks ...nothing critical, but still a PITA. But if anyone has any ideas on something else I can try please let me know. If I get no good info by the afternoon tomorrow I'll likely just say, "Fvck it" and attempt to reformat and redo everything.
If anyone thinks specifics about the controller and drive hardware will help I can post that information too.
Thanks to those who took the time to read this much information!
Cliff notes:
1. Power outages
2. RAID Array dead
3. RtFP
This morning I turn on my PC and got an error screen. Not the usual BSOD, but some black screen with an error message. Sorry, I don't remember what exactly it said, but I think it had to do with not being able to locate some file(s). The key point here is that the RAID controller didn't report any errors with the RAID 0 array (two 80 GB SATA drives).
I reset the PC hoping it was a one time hang up. No luck. I just get a black screen after POST. Still no problems reported from the RAID controller. So I log onto the Anandtech forums from a different PC to begin looking for some advice thinking at this point that there I have something corrupted with my boot files or something of that nature. I find a couple of informative posts and proceed to boot off my XP Pro disc, load the RAID drivers, and enter the recovery console. I get to the C:\WINDOWS\ prompt just fine and attempt to run chkdsk and it reports that the volume appears to have unrecoverable errors. So now I'm getting a bit worried. I try to follow some of the repair tips in a post I found on Anandtech by accessing some of the files in the C:\WINDOWS\repair\ directory but find that I can't access any files there.
So now I'm thinking that my Windows install is just fvcked and I will need to reformat and install again. Within the recovery console Windows can still see both partitions (C: and G: ). G is where I stored all my media files and I'm hoping it is OK. So my plan was to reformat C: and reinstall Windows and my files on G: will hopefully be OK. So I go ahead and reboot again with this plan in mind. No luck.
This time when I reboot my RAID controller pops up a warning that the array is damaged. So I enter the RAID set-up utility and it reports that one drive has "failed or is disconnected". So now is where I'm really worried and start some testing. I want to figure out which drive is damaged. So I'll try to expalin what I have found as clearly as possible.
I have two SATA RAID channels on the controller. The utility refers to them as channel 1 and channel 2. And I will refer to the two identical drives as A and B.
So I begin testing the drives by changing the cables around. Here are the results:
Chan 1 connected to drive A only: Controller sees drive A and not B (as expected)
Chan 1 connected to drive B only: Controller sees drive B and not A
Chan 2 connected to drive A only: Controller sees drive A and not B
Chan 2 connected to drive B only: Controller sees drive B and not A
On the above tests I'm trying to weed out the bad drive or see of one of the SATA channels is bad for some reason. As you can see, all goes as you would expect for healthy drives.
Chan 1 connected to A and Chan 2 to B: Controller sees drive A and not B
Chan 1 connected to B and Chan 2 to A: Controller sees drive A and not B
So now we have some interesting results. In both set-ups the controller reports drive B as "failed or disconnected". So that would normally lead me to believe that drive B is dead... but then why does the controller see drive B just fine when it is the only drive connected? Also, I did try switching the power plugs in those last two set-ups and got the same results, so that should rule out a bad power plug. I can also hear both drives spin up.
So what is the problem? Is drive B dead, or is there a problem with the RAID controller? Also, I'm kind of limited on the testing I can do. I'm not ready to give up on the data on the drives yet, so I don't want to try and reformat them yet. Also, they are true SATA drives so I have no way to connect them to a standard IDE channel nor do I have any adapters to do so. My second PC doesn't have SATA so I can't try them there.
I have nothing overly critical on my PC and much of the stuff I do have backed up, but I have been lazy and haven't back-up any files in maybe the last two or so months. So I would be losing some media files, some recent saved e-mails, and some recent bookmarks ...nothing critical, but still a PITA. But if anyone has any ideas on something else I can try please let me know. If I get no good info by the afternoon tomorrow I'll likely just say, "Fvck it" and attempt to reformat and redo everything.
If anyone thinks specifics about the controller and drive hardware will help I can post that information too.
Thanks to those who took the time to read this much information!
Cliff notes:
1. Power outages
2. RAID Array dead
3. RtFP