[Archived] Pci Raid Ide Card - Help!

[neekoy]

Just upgraded my computer with new motherboard, processer ect. The new motherboard only has one IDE slot so had to buy a Raid controller card (not using it for Raid though, just the extra IDE slots)

My problem is that after loading the driver for the card out of my two hard drives only the one with the operatins system is recognised i.e a little icon in My Computer.

I transfered my previous 'spare' hard drive which contained all stuff over and it isn't being picked up. I have changed every jumper setting around, connected both hard drives seperately to the card and both hard drives on the same cable.

If you run through windows setup with both hard rives on the card it says that no hard drive is present but the operating system will work on start up.

Also, the computer through Windows Computer Management will recognise the channels as set by the raid bios i.e 0 = 40gig operating system hard drive and 1 = 160gig spare and even lists it as unpartioned space in the window. This drive has come straight out of my old computer and into the new one. Operating perfectly fine previously.

I don't want to have to format the drive to get it to work because I have a lot of data I don't want to lose but I am running out of options.

Any help from techies would be appreciated.

Also to add, if I plug the 160gig directly into the motherboard is recognises in BIOS at start up.

[Flopsy]

how big our your harddrives, I thought RAID combined them into one big one. And thats might be why it says youve only got one.

Or I might be talking utter pooh pooh.

It has been known

Does this explain??

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RAID.html

[thebigguy]

There are 2 different steps i can send you to try and one is to pm me your msn for a program called partition magic

Or

Follow these steps

Start > Control panel

Then click Administrative Tools > Computer management

Then storage > disk management

and check that it is there because if it aint there then its bios that aint picking it up but if its there then it might need a reformate which will need you to back up all stuff on it if you need it from other pc.

Also you could connect both pcs together threw ethernet cable and transfer stuff striaght over to another hard drive and then reformat it once you switch it back

[Biddy]

If you run through windows setup with both hard rives on the card it says that no hard drive is present but the operating system will work on start up.

that is probably because windows setup does not know what your raid card is as standard. To get it to detect, you would have to hit "F6" during the initial blue screen (where it loads drivers), insert he floppy disk that came with the card RAID card and select the drivers from there

Also, the computer through Windows Computer Management will recognise the channels as set by the raid bios i.e 0 = 40gig operating system hard drive and 1 = 160gig spare and even lists it as unpartioned space in the window. This drive has come straight out of my old computer and into the new one. Operating perfectly fine previously.

Right, that's a worry. It looks like Windows can see both hard drives but it is reporting that there is nothing on the 160gb hard drive. There is a posibility here that when you plugged both hard drives into the RAID card, that it tried to do something really clever which has killed the data on the second drive. It shouldn't have done out of the box but there is no telling what the jumpers you played around with were doing.

You have to remember that a RAID card if set up incorrectly for you will try and do one of many things to hard drives (and they should usually be matching size and type). If set, it will either try and mirror your disks or stripe them or variations on one or both of those. If it's tried any of these then the data will be gone.

Also to add, if I plug the 160gig directly into the motherboard is recognises in BIOS at start up.

Can you try your old motherboard again to see if the data is still there. Or buy an external enclosure to get it booted into Windows and see if it can see any data?

Or I might be talking utter pooh pooh.

err, yep

[Flopsy]

fair enough

[neekoy]

Alright I have solved the issue (to some extent )

My old motherboard (which is shagged) would only recognise my hard drive as 128 gig instead of 160 gig.

I think that when it was orginally setup it has formatted and partioned the drive that way. Now I have my shmick Gigabyte motherboard it is probably saying "something is wrong here" and not recognising the drive.

The RAID driver came with a little CD and not a floppy so I wasn't setting it up properly through F6 setup and loading the driver, I was loading the driver through XP, it recognised the card but didn't allow me to format through the back door.

Once I used the floppy the setup would recognise the card and the hard drives that where attached. Problem is it still wasn't recognising the 160 gig back up within My Computer.

I have tried the drive in my mates older computer and it appears that whatever has happened has completely screwed the data anyway

How do I have a now functioning computer? I bit the bullet and formatted and partitioned. I have lost all the data (which could have possibly been avoided if I had found or used partition magic) but I cried and got over it.

I appreciate all of your replies to me, it's just going to take a little longer to get all my music and movies back on the drive. Thank god for fast download speeds and USB drives at work!!!

[Biddy]

Glad to hear that you are back up and running.

Just to clear up a few things for you (to make you not feel quite as bad), The original formatting of the drive wouldn't have mattered. If it was formatted to 128gb and working in your old computer then that's what your new one would have seen. It would have just been able to find the rest and you would have had 30 odd gig of unpartitioned space in Disk Management. I still think the RAID card has killed the partition during one of your trials.

Partition Magic would not have helped you in this situation. The tools it provide are really just in addition to Windows Disk Management in that, if the drive was screwed then PM would have seen the same thing.

Hope it doesn't take you too long to get your stuff back. I had a similar problem recently with both of my Maxtor harddrives going within a month of each other. Not buying them again!

[thebigguy]

partition magic is just like the windows software so wouldnt off changed nothing.

Also if you had off messaged me before formating i could off helped you out with a data recovery softare (some work some dont) even if had a electric shock to them.

one off mine got blown by a short and still copied software over without any troubles jsut the writing