failed RAID

DarkMeerkat

My laptop - Fujitsu Amilo Xi 3670, running Windows 7 - suggested i use the dual hard drives in a RAID array, i agreed to it. i recently got an error message saying one of the hard drives had a problem and i should back up. i got some of the important files off, then ran dskchk to see if that would fix the problem. now the computer wont open windows, it just freezes during boot up. i can access boot options, but cant seem to find any kind of safe mode to open up in, and any boot changes i make dont make any difference. Windows was built into the system, and the backup disk i made when i got the machine doesnt allow me to boot up or run anything from it. any suggestions/advice?

millwalll

It sound like you got bad sectors on one of the hard drives you can download seagate tool and do hard drive scan this will confirm the problem. http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

JasX

Did you setup RAID 0 or 1 ?

if RAID 1 you should be able to physically remove one of the drives and recover your remaining data

if RAID 0 your only likely chance of data recovery is rebuilding the array with exactly the same block sizes/settings as before or specialist (expensive) data recovery.

If you just want to rebuild you need to track down how/where your RAID controller is located, was it built into BIOS (read your manual) or did it need a separate driver loaded during windows install (the press F6 if you have additional drivers to load bit).

if the former I've successfully rebuilt a few and they come straight back to life, if the latter probably looking at a reformat/rebuild from my (fairly limited) experience with RAID.

Finally if rebuilding go read a wiki page or article about RAID and work out exactly how you'll be benefiting from it if you opt for it again and put a little thought/effort into it rather than "I did this because a lump of plastic and silicone with copper trimmings told me to"

RAID 1 has almost as good read performance as RAID 0 with improved reliability but at the expense of disk space, RAID 0 has slightly better read performance as RAID 1, much better write performance, preserves total disk capacity but at the expense of reliability (you double your failure rate leading to data loss)

DarkMeerkat

IT was RAID 0, sounded like the best when i set it up, wishing it was 1 now though! Thanks guys, i'll try all this and may well be back with more questions if i make any progress...