Help HARD DRIVES/ No Format/ No workie!

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suhrdaddy

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Long story. Ready??? Any and all help is appreciated.

We will start with labels. I have 2 80 G Seagate HD's. We will call the one I have been using forever #1HD and the one that was the back up #2. Both hard drives are partitioned into 3 separate partitions C/D/E. Running XP Alienware with RAID (I think). System is almost 4 1/2 years old.

About 2 years ago I had a buddy array and mirror the two hard drives. Something happened about a year ago and the mirror fell off line. I didn't notice it and it continued that way until 6 or so months ago. Then I called my buddy and told him. He said that if I wasn't worried about a mirror then just to make a new array and that everything would be alright and I would have 80 G of extra hard drive space. Cool. So I did that. Then I started it up. Well on first start it booted to #2. (neither HD is set up as a slave). So I thought cool I will just swap wires and off I go.

Not so much. Well it booted up to HD#1 because some of the old users weren't there, but once I got into my user it went to my old desktop with all the old stuff. It had renamed #1 HD F/G/H and had made the #2 C/D/E even though I swaped the wires. So utterly confused I disconnected HD #1. I just wanted to wipe the #2 HD. But now it will only start up and run in windows for a minute or so before initiating a shutdown/restart. I turned off the automatic shutdown feature in the properties and at the point where it shuts down it just freezes.

Ok so I will try #1. It still should work. Nope it won't even boot up to where the user accounts are it just freezes at the blue screen small windows ICON. Out of ideas and my buddy doesn't have the time. Any thoughts or suggestions would help.
 
suhrdaddy said:
Long story. Ready??? Any and all help is appreciated.

We will start with labels. I have 2 80 G Seagate HD's. We will call the one I have been using forever #1HD and the one that was the back up #2. Both hard drives are partitioned into 3 separate partitions C/D/E. Running XP Alienware with RAID (I think). System is almost 4 1/2 years old.

About 2 years ago I had a buddy array and mirror the two hard drives. Something happened about a year ago and the mirror fell off line. I didn't notice it and it continued that way until 6 or so months ago. Then I called my buddy and told him. He said that if I wasn't worried about a mirror then just to make a new array and that everything would be alright and I would have 80 G of extra hard drive space. Cool. So I did that. Then I started it up. Well on first start it booted to #2. (neither HD is set up as a slave). So I thought cool I will just swap wires and off I go.

Not so much. Well it booted up to HD#1 because some of the old users weren't there, but once I got into my user it went to my old desktop with all the old stuff. It had renamed #1 HD F/G/H and had made the #2 C/D/E even though I swaped the wires. So utterly confused I disconnected HD #1. I just wanted to wipe the #2 HD. But now it will only start up and run in windows for a minute or so before initiating a shutdown/restart. I turned off the automatic shutdown feature in the properties and at the point where it shuts down it just freezes.

Ok so I will try #1. It still should work. Nope it won't even boot up to where the user accounts are it just freezes at the blue screen small windows ICON. Out of ideas and my buddy doesn't have the time. Any thoughts or suggestions would help.


boot to your xp cd and see how it reads #1
 
Sorry I left that out of the story. When booted up with the XP CD with only #1 or #2 HD's connected in both cases the CD boot won't recognize that there is a Harddrive connected. Also I tried to run Scandisk on #2 HD because it was the only one that I could and it wouldn't finish it. It came up with 0000218 Hard Error. Thanks for the reply.
 
suhrdaddy said:
Sorry I left that out of the story. When booted up with the XP CD with only #1 or #2 HD's connected in both cases the CD boot won't recognize that there is a Harddrive connected. Also I tried to run Scandisk on #2 HD because it was the only one that I could and it wouldn't finish it. It came up with 0000218 Hard Error. Thanks for the reply.

does your bios reconize the drives properly
 
Not sure. How do I check? Oh but I do have an array manager that comes up after the bios checks its stuff and before windows starts up. Don't know if that matters or not.
 
suhrdaddy said:
Not sure. How do I check? Oh but I do have an array manager that comes up after the bios checks its stuff and before windows starts up. Don't know if that matters or not.

so did you make a new array sounds like you need to load you raid drivers
 
How do I do that when I can't get windows to run for more than a minute before it auto shutsdown
 
suhrdaddy said:
How do I do that when I can't get windows to run for more than a minute before it auto shutsdown

boot to your xp, load you raid drivers when you see that at the bottom of screen and do a repair
 
boot to the xp CD?. If that is what you are saying then I can't once it boots up and gives me the options of installing or repairing. Upon choosing any option it says that it doesn't recognize a hard drive connected to my computer. But when not booting from the CD it tries to boot off whichever drive I have hooked up.
 
suhrdaddy said:
boot to the xp CD?. If that is what you are saying then I can't once it boots up and gives me the options of installing or repairing. Upon choosing any option it says that it doesn't recognize a hard drive connected to my computer. But when not booting from the CD it tries to boot off whichever drive I have hooked up.

that's because you haven't loaded you raid drivers
 
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