Fixing a PC with a broken RAID

[jemagirl (imported)]

Hi every one,

I am trying out some new animation software which for now only runs on a PC. I don't have a PC of my own so my sister is letting use her old one. The problem is that one of the hard drives in the RAID went bad. Now I don't know too much about PC's having always used Macs since I got my first computer back in the early 90's, but I understand there is something called a BIOS that I have to run to determine which hard drive is bad. One I find the bad hard drive remove it and reformat the remaining drives then I should be good to go.

Can any one recommend a website with well written instructions???

[IbPervert (imported)]

When you start a PC one of the first things to start up is the Bios, and it gives instructions to the rest of the hardware.

What little i know about RAID's is that the data is replicated across the drives in order to speed up access to the data. The computer software is unaware of all the individual drives and just sees one drive.

This looks like a good briefing on Raids...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

I have never had access to RAID, so I do not know much more then the above. Never had the spare change to purchase more then one hard drive at a time.

If you are not very careful you could end up losing all your data. My suggestion is to hunt around for a local smaller computer repair shop and ask them. Stay away from the big box computer sellers like Best Buy's Computer Geeks! Actually Run away from them!

You could try contacting a local computer club and see if they can recommend someone.

Great now I have to go to bed thinking of that CUTE Mac man!

:hearthrob

ahhh Justing Long! what a stud!

[jemagirl (imported)]

Thanks IbPervert,

I'm not worried about loosing any data since the reason I have the computer is the failed hard drive

All I need to do is find out which hard drive is bad and reformat the rest. I'm wondering if they shouldn't all be replaced since they must be about the same age any way?

[skivvynine (imported)]

I do not know that much about RAID. You must have at least two hard drives connected to the RAID for it to work. I have a FIC AN11 motherboard in one of my computers and it has IDE slots for two additional hard drives. In older PCs the hard drives are controlled by the IDE controller. The BIOS is accessed by pushing the DEL key at start-up. Unless you know what you are doing you can screw up things. My advice is to take the computer to a qualified technician. Some will come to your house to do the repairs. Look them up in the yellow pages.

[kibble (imported)]

What RAID setup do you have? Raid 0 or Raid 1? Maybe Raid 0+1? You can find out by opening the Raid-BIOS by pressing a series of keys at boot (will prompt you at boot which keys to use) and see if there's anything in there which will give you a clue. The Raid-BIOS and the System-BIOS are sometimes (not always) two different systems, so be sure you know which menu you are at.

If you are running a Raid 0 setup only, then you can not recover from a hard disc failure.

If you have some form of Raid 1, what you can do is replace the broken drive with an identical one and then in the RAID setup re-build the array. If you can not replace the hard drive with an identical one, just get one that has the same number of sectors/bits so when it replicates the Raid (from source to destination) it won't fail.

If you are unsure about the terminology check out the wiki link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

If you do have Raid 1 (but no spare disc), just remove the broken drive and see what happens when you boot. I suggest in either case, if you manage to get it up and running, backup what ever you need, replace the drive(s) and perform a clean install.

My top tip is having enough power to run your machine to prevent click-of-death and other hard drive related problems issues. Remove PCI cards, expansion units or other devices you really don’t need or haven’t used in more that 3 months. Hard drives often fail because of their environment and/or lack of power to them.

[IbPervert (imported)]

Thanks IbPervert,

I'm not worried about loosing any data since the reason I have the computer is the failed hard drive

All I need to do is find out which hard drive is bad and reformat the rest. I'm wondering if they shouldn't all be replaced since they must be about the same age any way?

A failed drive does not mean the drive is bad, but could be bad. Sometimes the problem could be related to the operating system in which case the drive is fine. If you know how turn off the computer and disconnect the drives from the motherboard. Pick one of the drives and make sure it is set up to be the master drive (IDE drives only Sata does not support this) and then connect it to the motherboard. Once connected turn on the motherboard (you may or may not have to go into the BIOs to make sure the drive is reading right -- be careful because you can make changes that will keep the computer from starting). Once the drive is hooked up install Windows and at some point Windows should ask if you want to reformat the drive....say yes!

Once windows is installed turn off the computer and hook up the other drives. IDE can handle two drives one as the master and the other as the slave.

[IbPervert (imported)]

Also, if you have an old dos boot disk you can try running the chkdsk and the defrag. The chkdsk (check disk) looks at each sector of the drive looking for problem spots and if one is found it marks them as no good. Defrag just organizes the drive for fasting access. You might be able to dig around the net for boot disks and download it to an old floppy disk

[fhunter]

As far as I know - you do not need to replace the drive with identical one - it just need's to be as big (or bigger) as existing. But that may be wrong - I only played with software RAID on linux - so not much experience here.

As for the hard disk checking - there is program called Victoria - http://hdd-911.com/

It can do almost everything with hard drives - from remapping bad sectors, to checking for bad blocks and access speed.

But it is in russian, and it is as userfrienly as rattle snake.

[jemagirl (imported)]

Well the good news is this. The hard drives appear to be good at least as far as well can tell at the moment. It turns out there are actually two hard drives and not four as I had earlier thought. My mistake since I haven't seen a floppy drive in so long I had forgotten what they look like. LOL

There is an issue with the RAM however and that will have to be addressed later. For now it will be enough just to get things up and running.

Thank you every one for all the great advice and help.

Jema

[YankeeClipper (imported)]

Hi every one,

I am trying out some new animation software which for now only runs on a PC. I don't have a PC of my own so my sister is letting use her old one. The problem is that one of the hard drives in the RAID went bad. Now I don't know too much about PC's having always used Macs since I got my first computer back in the early 90's, but I understand there is something called a BIOS that I have to run to determine which hard drive is bad. One I find the bad hard drive remove it and reformat the remaining drives then I should be good to go.

Can any one recommend a website with well written instructions???

Is there a reason that you need to use a RAID set, or can it be replaced by one of the large, inexpensive Hard Drive, USB or SATA?

A RAID may be hardware controlled, or software controlled. With your limited experience with PC's, I agree with several other posters that you refer this to a PC server shop. RAID concepts are just complex enough to make it difficult for beginners to understand.

If you are at all concerned that any of the data may be of an illegal nature, FORMAT the RAID set. Failure to do that has resulted in more than one successful prosecution of "possession cf pornography" charges. Don't risk it. (The tech comes across the material and refers it local law enforcement.) You may want to FORMAT the RAID set in any event.

Read the rest before proceeding further.

If there is any data on the RAID set that you want to retain, then, before doing anything else, do a FULL back of the data is currently on the RAID set. Buy a USB external (this is given that the system you are using has USB, which few systems lack nowadays) that is at least as big as the RAID set. DO NOT make any changes to the data or the RAID set

Use a program like Paragon Hard Disk Manager Suite that can do a "live" copy of the existing RAID set to any other Hard Disk partition (in this case the USB Hard Drive). A Hard Disk does have to be mounted (show up as a drive letter) to used by HDM. Once the backup is completed, shutdown th system and disconnect the external.

One other note: If you are at all concerned that any of the data may be of an illegal nature, make a second copy of the data, and FORMAT the RAID set. Make sure that the data you want to keep is on the USB drive(s) before either replacing the failed drives yourself, or take to a PC service shop.

Since you can still access the data it is not RAID 0. Two drives would mean it is a RAID 1. Move that two drives can be of any of several RAID types. Without having either to either the RAID set or the name and model of the RAID set, I provide not any other recommendations that above.

Make sure to do the backup NOW, as in many cases, loss of a second drive will cause complete loss of all data on the RAID set.

-YC