Now I have an error message stating that some data can't be retrieved from Raid 0 drive. It recommended backing up. I did but it went to my recovery drive ( dumb me ) Now the recovery drive is full and I get low disk space pop ups. I'm still using the computer, everything seems to be working, I'm just getting those messages. I opened the back to chk that the HDD might be loose, but no. I'm wondering if I can do a system recovery or if I may have destroyed the D drive altogether. I have 2 physical drives.

Any ideas? Thanks!

zookeeper

Where is the "Recovery" stored? It should be in its own recovery partition on the C: and the second physical D: is a separate drive you could use for data storage like back-ups etc.

If anything happens to that recovery partition ( on C: ?? ) , or if it gets modified somehow, you may lose the ability to recover to factory condition.

Not having the PC, I can suggest that if you know where the "backup" is, and you say it's in the recovery partition, to move it off there to that D: - the second physical drive. Then, once your sure your data is safe, see if you can run Recovery and start with a clean PC. Then you can restore your data from the back-up.

Recovery partitions are generally small in size and just contain an "Image" of the system when it left the factory.

Also - if you can move files back and forth between your C Drive and your D Drive, I suspect the drives are ok - ( no clicks, grinding noises, etc I hope )

Ya know zookeeper - just an afterthought..

If after you move the "backup" out of the recovery partition and free up that space, and you don't get error messages anymore , and your Laptop is operational with both drives working.... you may just leave it alone ... if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Just keep an up-to-date backup handy.

Hi sureshot, thanks for replying!

I've been scouring the internet for some ideas and what I've come up with is that I have a RAID0 array. I have 2 physical drives, D: being the recovery drive. The bootable, (I guess, C: ) is fine and it's D: that is failing from what I've been able to fiqure out.

When I did a backup it gave me the option of backing up to D: or to CDs. I chose D: and now it's full. And the back up didn't complete because D: became full. I ended up backing up to an external HDD. (Which I should've done from the get-go)

So I'm not sure how to proceed. Whether to buy a new HDD or somehow figure out if this one can be fixed. And I don't know how to move the newly backed up data off D: But even if I did get the backup moved, I still have the RAID0 error.

I ran a Seagate diagnostic and the drive didn't even come up as an available disk to scan.

I also looked through Intel Matrix Storage Counsole and it shows me which port the failing drive is in and it's serial #. So at least I can determine which drive to replace.

Have you thought of getting an external hard drive to back up your data on?

Karsten, Thanks, but yeah I've done that.

If you really have RAID0 and not RAID1, you'll lose everything on both drives if either of them fails. RAID0 is good for speed, not for preserving data.

You may see what looks like two drives in Windows Explorer, but the data on the drives is actually striped. You don't have the C: partition on one drive and the D: partition (restore partition in your case) on the other. Instead you have the C: partition spread across both hard drives and the D: partition also spread across both hard drives. That's why your C: is so much larger than your D:. RAID0 combines both drives into one big volume, then splits that volume into two partitions, with the smaller D: partition for a restore partition.

You've got your data backed up to your external drive. Are you able to back up the contents of the restore partition to the external drive also? You may be able to restore to factory defaults after replacing the failed drive if you can get the data for restoring Windows off of the restore partition. This person did it using an external hard drive enclosure and a Linux Live CD:
***Copy a functional recovery partition to a new hard disk***

If you want to try this, I'd recommend either disabling RAID in the BIOS or changing it to RAID1, which is also known as mirroring. With RAID1, everything on the first hard drive is copied to the second, so if either hard drive goes bad, you have an exact backup and all you need to do is replace the hard drive. Once the hard drive is replaced, RAID1 will copy the data on the good hard drive to the new hard drive. The disadvantage of RAID1 is that it uses twice as much disk space as a conventional two drive setup. But RAID0 in a laptop is an accident waiting to happen.

Jenny100,
Thanks so much for such a clear explanation. I've googled my problem every way I could think of and never came up with such consise information.

I created a couple of copies of recovery disks when the laptop was new. AND I have an OS CD that came with the laptop. So I've got that covered.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll give it a shot. Ya know I didn't actually even drop it. I caught it before it hit the floor, but the momentum caused the lid to slam shut. Must've been enough to give the hard drive a fatal blow.

zookeeper

Lucky you caught it! The monitor could have been damaged easily then we are talking some $$$ to replace it or the laptop itself.

Jenny is correct in that RAID systems are meant to deal with redundancy and having multiple drives ( must have at least 2 ) can save a system when properly configured. That's what RAID means by the way... Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.

I hope all goes well.

Ha! sureshot, you must've been reading my mind. I got up this morning thinking I should look up what RAID stands for!

Question,
When the laptop is booting I have an option to go to control/i which takes me to a place where I can change the RAID settings. Is it advisable to change anything. Can I save data by doing that? Thing is I checked my ex. hard drive and it has no data on it. So apparently I'm unable to backup. I have a backup from a year ago that I can use in a pinch, but I will lose some data, though nothing terribly important. This is my gaming computer, so I don't keep important files on it.

Also, it's not going to be easy finding the same HD. This is a 5 year old computer so that HD can only be found refurbished. Not sure if I want to put money into a refurbished one. Although they're pretty cheap. But, maybe it's time for a new computer. Fun but, expensive. And this one was working great til I dropped it.

zookeeper - as a computer pro and supporting the military - we can speak in acronyms all day..

I would not change anything just yet - you can really mess up a computer by making even a small change and it won't boot! I would do some diags first - determine if you DO have a second physical drive and if it good. Does BIOS see it. Windows Disk Manager could also tell you if it's a physical drive itself or a partition on C: Drive called D:

What is the make and model - laptops with dual HDDs are higher end stuff especially 5 years ago.

The way RAID works ( a very big subject ) basically if you have 2 disks - the RAID "set" could only be as big as the smallest drive. So if you have 2 100 gig drives and replace one with a 150 gig drive - the total is NOT added but it is still becomes a 100 gig RAID set and that 50 gigs is on its own - you can use it as a separate volume and assign another drive letter to it. So you don't need to get the exact same size drive - RAID can only use the space as big as the C: - the rest is up for grabs.

Is the external drive recognized by Windows ? can you open it and move files around on it?

I am sorry if I confused you - but it is big subject and could get complicating.

sureshot, I do have 2 physical drives. I opened the computer and checked that both were properly plugged in. I was hoping the fall knocked one loose.

It's a Gateway P-173XL FX. I like to go as high end as I can to avoid replacing every couple years or so. I wanted a gaming computer and Alienware was out of my price range and this one came with good reviews. It's been a decent computer all around.

Somewhere, either during bootup (CTRL-i) or in Intel console , it says the c: is working and bootable and the d: is reporting the error. In a popup in the taskbar it states that the d: cannot be either written to or read from. I backed up to it and it's now full so it must be unable to be read from???

I will try running more diags and see if I can narrow it down more. This is pretty foreign to me, but I'm picking up bits of knowledge.

Windows could not find a driver for the external drive so the install did not complete through windows. Although WD did complete the install without the help of windows and it seems to be working fine. I'm not sure that there are any files on it to move around. What's on it all comes up as readme files so I think it's just WD files.

You're not confusing me. I hope I'm able to describe this problem in my lay person way so that you can determine what it is that I'm talking about.

I really appreciate all the info and all the time that you and Jenny are taking to answer my questions. I'm picking up lots of knowledge, now hopefully I can actually apply it.

zookeeper - You're doing just fine !!

Wish I could help more - If I had the suspect bad drive here, I have equipment that could try access it - that's how I pull data from failed systems and save files.

With the WD drive attached, you could try double click My Computer, then double click the WD drive to open it in a separate window - while that is open, see if you can drag files from your desktop or from C: over to it and vs.

You could also see if D: can be opened by double clicking that too and open another window. If you see that drive - see if you can move that backup file by dragging it to the WD drive. Sounds complicated - but without having it here - I don't see what is going on but once you see it it should be easy to maneuver in the drives.

Ah, I was wondering if I could drag and drop that way. I was actually thinking of trying that. (I forget the basics unless I use them all the time.) But yeah, I'm on it- thanks!

Like I said I dont have anything too important, but I like fiddling like this, I learn more that way.

Editing to say...Drag and drop did the trick! Piece of cake

One last question, can you recommend a hard drive. Currently I have the 2 Seagate HDs, each is 200GB.

If you do that, you'll effectively wipe both drives. You need to leave it the way it is until you can get the data off of it.


I'd try again, copying a few files at at time, and see if anything will copy. If you try to copy everything at once, and it tries to copy a bad area, it may balk and not copy anything.


The hard drives don't have to be identical. There's an answer here which explains:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100106130536AAKiTaM

You don't even have to get another drive if you turn off RAID. But you'll have to find a way to reinstall Windows, which is no problem if you have restore discs.

The biggest problem is getting your data off the drive -- if it's important to you.


I'd just go to Newegg and see what has good reviews. Do a search for laptop hard drives and sort by "Best Rating." Try ***this link to Newegg***. If you want to stick with RAID, getting a drive with more than 200GB won't do you any good. If you change to a normal hard drive setup, it's up to you what size you get. Laptops take the 2.5" size hard drive.

Thanks Jenny, I'm all backed up. Now I just need to find a HD...thanks for the links, I'll take a look.

Again, thanks so much for your help!

You need to know what interface your hard drive is. Being five years old, there’s a good chance it’s IDE, and they’re almost impossible to find. All the newer stuff is SATA. Good luck.
Albert

The Gateway P-173XL FX has SATA (serial ATA) hard drives.

https://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/2008/GodzillaFX/2906085R/2906085Rsp2.shtml

Thanks Albert. Yes, as Jenny said, it is SATA.

More questions...

I'm planning on setting up 2 500gb drives in a RAID1 array. If I understand correctly, that configuration would provide redundancy, so the data would be safe if one drive fails. I would only be losing some performance, but it would be minor. Although since they're bigger drives would I get an increase in performance?

At boot, in ctrl/i I don't see an option to change to RAID1.

And finally, do the different manufacturers offer support for installing hard drives? I'm looking at the WD 500gb 7200 SATA. I have some experience adding and reconfiguring hard drives but its been 10 years.

Mostly you'd get an increase in disc space (500GB vs 400GB). Writing performance would be less than with RAID0. It's explained better in the manual I found on the Gateway site. The link is later in this post.


If you go to ***Gateway support*** and choose to download User Manuals, then choose to download the "8513074 - Gateway FX Notebook Reference Guide R1", that manual should give you instructions. The manual has a section on RAID starting on page 52 with configuration instructions starting on page 54. You may have to delete the RAID0 before you can create the RAID1. And you may have to have two functional drives before it will let you do anything.


The Gateway manual I found above has instructions on replacing the hard drive on page 106.

Thanks Jenny.

I've been following this thread gleaning tons of information. I have a question about whether the motherboard will recognize the 2 bigger drives since it's an older one. A friend has a custom built laptop less than a year old with all the latest bells and whistles. When she plugged in a 1 TB exterior drive, the motherboard only recognized it as a 500 GB drive. This may be as simple as a change in the BIOS, but I was just wondering...

Because it's an SATA drive, I doubt there will be any issues - most limitations applied to IDE drives or controllers that lacked 48-bit LBA support.

See if there is a BIOS update for the motherboard. If the laptop is a name brand, you can look for the BIOS update on the manufacturer's website. Otherwise you'll have to find the manufacturer and model of the motherboard's manufacturer.

Since it's not a name brand, I told her to contact the company that built it for her in the UK - so far they have excellent technical support.