Windows 7 Failing to boot due to RAID0 error (cannot load windows file)

Foadon

New Member
Hello everyone,
First of all I'm not 100% sure this is ONLY(or at all?) Win7 related but since a lot of my questions involve changing or moving my OS i figured i should start here)
The problem I am having consists of my RAID volume( that I use for OS + data) has recently come back with an Error Occured message during the RAID controller. Before I've also noticed problems in booting to windows. It would simply "freeze" during boot up, not normal freeze since the animation still went on, but the HDD led goes blank and just gets stuck (which makes sense if it cant find that windows file). Before though, it always managed to get through it after a few tries, so I got to chance to back up the things most dear to me.

However today seemed to be the last straw. Couldn't get it to boot up anymore, so i installed another windows on a different (non-RAID) drive.
However someone pointed out these forums to me and perhaps there is another way to atleast be able to use that RAID drive by somehow isolating the "bad" sector and moving the windows file to someplace it can read correctly from.

The drive itself I have also had the same kind of "error occurred" message before, but at that time i figured i had just done something wrong software wise to xxxx it up. However after i remade the RAID volume it worked like a charm for about 4months, until now, which leads me to believe it must be the drive itself

A couple of questions I have about this:
1. Can i still use this drive in or out of RAID (if not in a RAID then atleast keep it as a normal drive)
2. Can I move the windows file to another location on the drive so windows can load it properly and just keep on using the RAID 0 while trying to "avoid" the problem
3. Can i repair the RAID volume without losing all the data and/or without having to replace the drive ?
4. If the RAID itself cannot be salvaged, can i somehow make a windows image from it and use that to restore everything without using the same setup (RAID 0) but for example a RAID 1 or even single disk ?

A thank you in advance to anyone who takes the time to read & answer :)
 
Your explanation is a little confusing since a true Raid 0 configuration requires a minimum of two drives and you refer to it as a single drive. So my suspicion is that the Raid 0 identity is specific to the host controller. What are your options, now that you have win 7 up and running on another drive, presumably not connected to the raid controller, can you connect the drive to another IDE or SATA controller or even an external controller like this Newegg.com - CABLES UNLIMITED USB-2110 USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA Adapter Cable w/ Power - Adapters & Gender Changers
or other external enclosure. Is the drive making any unusual noises, if not and you can connect it somehow to your computer or for that matter any other computer, see if you can open it and examine the contents, then you could certainly attempt some drive diagnostics, like running chkdsk with the /r switch to see if you can repair it, there are a lot of third party utilities and software for attempting such a repair and yet others for imaging and cloning, so you have some options provided of course that the drive is not suffering some type of mechanical failure. The only caveat might be is if the original host controller somehow did something of a proprietary nature to the MFT.
 
As Loathe points out in RAID 0 the information is spread across two disks and so you wouldn't be able to access any useable data off either of the drives unless they were in RAID 0.
You might be able to get something off a single drive but as to what I'm unsure and I doubt very much you'd be able to get any useable image of the os..
If you can pair the drives up again then check your storage controller bios settings as it may have some form of repair otherwise if it's a lost cause you'll have rebuild the array and lose any info in the process..
Do at least try chkdsk as I've seen this work wonders at times.
 
sorry if i wasnt clear, i do in fact have 2 drives that make up a RAID 0 volume, however the error is only on 1 of the drives (you can see which drive gets the error when you boot up and the raid controller is busy detecting them)
and for example now that im using a windows on another drive, still with the raid volume hooked up, i can access it without any problems. just that because of that error it cant boot up on its own anymore

in either case though, i've decided i will just buy new drives so i don't have to keep worrying about it :) this time though it'll be RAID1 because 1 i want the security of safe data and 2 i will have enough storage disks now seeing as i can recover the old ones.

thanks for everyone's input nonetheless
 
Thanks for updating.. I was going to say that if you only seeing an error on one drive then you would still need to rebuild the RAID array..
Anyway, best of luck with the new hardware.. :)
 
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