Failed Hard Drive and RAID

pookies

pookies

Pre-takeoff checklist
Joined
Nov 27, 2006
Messages
324
Location
New Orleans
Display Name
Display name:
pookies
A hard drive failed on my frankencomputer. It was the master IDE drive. I tried working on it last night. I took the slave drive and made it the master, but I have a SATA drive and it apparently is the prime drive for RAID. I fooled around in the BIOS to turn the SATA off and the only way I could get my computer to run is if I reinstall windows and I don't want to do that.

I was wondering if I got another IDE harddrive to replace the one that failed, if that will get my computer running normal again?

Sorry, if this doesn't make sense. I don't have great knowledge when it comes to computers.
 
pookies said:
A hard drive failed on my frankencomputer. It was the master IDE drive. I tried working on it last night. I took the slave drive and made it the master, but I have a SATA drive and it apparently is the prime drive for RAID. I fooled around in the BIOS to turn the SATA off and the only way I could get my computer to run is if I reinstall windows and I don't want to do that.
Click to expand...
Dani, I need a little more information.

  • What drive was Windows installed on?
  • Tell me how many drives you have and if they are SATA or IDE
  • What happens when Windows boots right now?
 
The windows that I was using was installed on the slave IDE drive. I had two windows installed. The other one was on the drive that failed. It was an accident that that happened. I tried to reinstall windows on the failed drive a while back and it somehow installed on the slave drive. When the computer was working, on boot up, it would give me the option of which windows to use. The one on the slave drive was the one that was on the top, so I always just hit enter.

What is happening now is that my drive that failed is making a "tick tock" noise and it won't go past the boot up screen. The drive keeps ticking for a bit then stops for a bit, then starts ticking again.

I have one SATA drive and 2 IDE.

When I boot up without the failed drive, I get a "BOOT FAILURE". It tells me to hit the tab button. On that I get a warning that I do not have enough drives for RAID and it shows the SATA drive on CH0 and nothing CH1.

When I boot up I and go to BIOS, it shows the IDE drive as master, nothing as slave and does not show the SATA drive at all.

The one thing that I have not tried is to make the failed drive the slave drive, cause I needed another jump pin for that and did not have one around.
 
pookies said:
The windows that I was using was installed on the slave IDE drive. I had two windows installed. The other one was on the drive that failed. It was an accident that that happened. I tried to reinstall windows on the failed drive a while back and it somehow installed on the slave drive. When the computer was working, on boot up, it would give me the option of which windows to use. The one on the slave drive was the one that was on the top, so I always just hit enter.

What is happening now is that my drive that failed is making a "tick tock" noise and it won't go past the boot up screen. The drive keeps ticking for a bit then stops for a bit, then starts ticking again.

I have one SATA drive and 2 IDE.

When I boot up without the failed drive, I get a "BOOT FAILURE". It tells me to hit the tab button. On that I get a warning that I do not have enough drives for RAID and it shows the SATA drive on CH0 and nothing CH1.

When I boot up I and go to BIOS, it shows the IDE drive as master, nothing as slave and does not show the SATA drive at all.

The one thing that I have not tried is to make the failed drive the slave drive, cause I needed another jump pin for that and did not have one around.
Click to expand...

Most likely your boot.ini is hosed now because it's referring to the Windows installation on the slave drive which isn't there. (The Slave is now the Master so the way it identifies it in boot.ini is wrong)

Try booting off of a Windows XP cd and then entering recovery console. From there you can redo the boot loader. See this for instructions:
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/ht/repairbootini.htm
 
I think I'm just gonna buy a new drive and replace it with the failed one. I'm remembering now that the drive that failed did not have windows on it. It had nothing on it at all!!
 
pookies said:
I think I'm just gonna buy a new drive and replace it with the failed one. I'm remembering now that the drive that failed did not have windows on it. It had nothing on it at all!!
Click to expand...
Maybe. It might have had your boot loader. Follow my directions above -- it should work.
 
Same thing happens when I disable the IDE and use the SATA. I use the boot cd and it acts like windows is gonna start up. I even get the XP start screen and right when it seems like XP is starting up and show my desktop, my monitor loses its signal and I don't hear that XP jingle. My hard drive makes noise like its actually doing stuff, but nothing will ever happen.


Edit: Ok, I am somewhat retarded! I forgot I had my computer hooked up to 2 monitors! :rolleyes: For some reason it would only show up on the regular monitor, which was turned off! So I was able to bring up my old version of XP on the SATA drive. Even without that bootcfg. I still have a problem with the other drive loading up. I'm not worried about it now!!

So now my plan is to move everything from the IDE drive to the SATA, reformat the IDE. Backup all the stuff on the SATA drive and do a fresh install of XP on there.
 
Last edited:
Wait..you raided two IDE drives and one SATA drive? Was this a "fake" software RAID, or was this accomplished by BIOS?
 
Arbiter419 said:
Wait..you raided two IDE drives and one SATA drive? Was this a "fake" software RAID, or was this accomplished by BIOS?
Click to expand...
I don't think she raided anything. The actual boot system got screwed up and since the OS couldn't boot from the IDE drives it went onto the SATA drives which has some sort of raid controller which is saying it needs more drives to use.
 
The only reason I said something about RAID was when I got a boot error and it asked me to hit the tab button, it showed RAID and the only drive it was showing was the SATA drive. The SATA drive is the primary drive. It is the C drive. I don't know anything about how the computer was set up. I took it to a computer shop to have the work done. I will never do that again!!! X_x
 
pookies said:
The only reason I said something about RAID was when I got a boot error and it asked me to hit the tab button, it showed RAID and the only drive it was showing was the SATA drive. The SATA drive is the primary drive. It is the C drive. I don't know anything about how the computer was set up. I took it to a computer shop to have the work done. I will never do that again!!! X_x
Click to expand...

What did they do that you'll never do that again?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top