[biker joe]

Hi,
I really need your help.

I have an Abit NF7-S2G with XP/SP2 installed on an EIDE drive; two additional 35GB SATA drives are connected in a striped RAID. I have/had 60GB worth of family photos on it.

I reinstalled XP/SP2 today and after reinstall I cannot access the RAID drive.

During boot the RAID shows as "Healthy, striped, 68 GB"

In "My Computer" it shows the drive but there is no size indicator. When I click on it the error is "D:\ is not accessible". The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable"

When I open "Computer management"

- In the device manager, the "NVIDIA NForce ATA RAID Class Controller" is OK

- In disk management, it does show as "Disk 3, Basic, 68.95 GB Online Healthy (active)", but there is another drive which listed as "Disk 2, Basic, 34.47 GB Online, Unallocated"

When I right click on Disk 3, the file system reads as "RAW", Capacity 0 bytes.

Please tell me how I can access the content of the RAID drive. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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First, let me admit that I don't have much experience with raid arrangaments. However, it looks to me as if you are missing the correct raid or chipset drivers. Try to use this link to download the nVidia Raid manual. Use this link to download the drivers.

[The Skeptic]

First, let me admit that I don't have much experience with raid arrangaments. However, it looks to me as if you are missing the correct raid or chipset drivers. Try to use this link to download the nVidia Raid manual. Use this link to download the drivers.

[biker joe]

First, let me admit that I don't have much experience with raid arrangaments. However, it looks to me as if you are missing the correct raid or chipset drivers. Try to use this link to download the nVidia Raid manual. Use this link to download the drivers.

Right after I reinstalled XP I installed the raid driver from the Abit CD ROM. As noted in the original post, in "Computer management" device manager, lists the "NVIDIA NForce ATA RAID Class Controller" as OK - -the driver is fine. The BIOS also

My question is whether the data on the Raid drives is retrievable now, and how to do it?

For example, if I were to reinstall XP and use the F6->load driver option, would that make a difference?
Many thanks.

[Benzooor]

Whatever you do, do NOT break the RAID array or the drives will be unreadable;

Loading the RAID drivers on XP install should not matter if you have an onboard RAID controller; but it shouldn't hurt to give it a try; You'll need the RAID drivers on a floppy.

[The Skeptic]

What atrracted my eye in your first post is this: (quote) "NVIDIA NForce ATA RAID Class Controlle". Since the raid on your computer is raid 0 (striped) and consists of two SATA drives I thought that something was amiss. I strongly recommend that you download the user manual from the first link in my previous post. It's very detailed (I downloaded and read some parts) and you may find an answer to your problem there.

[biker joe]

Whatever you do, do NOT break the RAID array or the drives will be unreadable;

Loading the RAID drivers on XP install should not matter if you have an onboard RAID controller; but it shouldn't hurt to give it a try; You'll need the RAID drivers on a floppy.

What do you mean "break" the raid array? Thanks.

[jac7]

Ok, I had the same problem.

Run the nforce4 installation. It does not properly set up the raid by default, but does install the drivers

Reboot

The unknown device that windows want to install is the raid controller. (If windows doesnt prompt you go to system | device manager and look for a yellow ? marked unknown). Point the driver to the nvidiadriversnForceWin2KXP\6.86\IDE\WinXP\sataraid

Reboot.

Windows will now recognize the Raid controller but you will still probably not see your raid

Go to system | device manager & remove the yellow ? that are identical (your 2 drives)

Reboot

Windows should now recognize your striped raid

The gotcha that hung me up for a while was the fact that you have to have the raid controller installed, THEN remove the yellow ? for your drives (otherwise they'll just repopulate like that), THEN reboot in order for windows to recognize them as part of your raid config and not some unkown seperate devices.

[biker joe]

Ok, I had the same problem.

Run the nforce4 installation. It does not properly set up the raid by default, but does install the drivers

Reboot

The unknown device that windows want to install is the raid controller. (If windows doesnt prompt you go to system | device manager and look for a yellow ? marked unknown). Point the driver to the nvidiadriversnForceWin2KXP\6.86\IDE\WinXP\sataraid

Reboot.

Windows will now recognize the Raid controller but you will still probably not see your raid

Go to system | device manager & remove the yellow ? that are identical (your 2 drives)

Reboot

Windows should now recognize your striped raid

The gotcha that hung me up for a while was the fact that you have to have the raid controller installed, THEN remove the yellow ? for your drives (otherwise they'll just repopulate like that), THEN reboot in order for windows to recognize them as part of your raid config and not some unkown seperate devices.

Thank you very much. In the meantime, through (much) trial and error I fixed the problem. The solution was along the lines that you proposed. Just in case anyone has a similar problem in the future: it is not isufficient to install the NVRaid drivers. There is an NVRAID utility on the factory disc and that utility is needed to "activate" the RAID.

Thanks again jac7 and everyone.