Hard Drive problem again! ahhhh!!!!

[nobitacu]

Ok, here's my problem, after I got the other hard drive problem figured out and everything's going good. I then try to install windows xp again. I have a 20 gig and a 80 gig hard drive. I had the 20 gig as my C: and 80 gig as my D:, both on raid. Well, anyways, here's the problem. After I installed windows, and got it running, a stupid thing happened. for some odd unknown reason, the computer changed my 80 gig drive, which was my D:, to the letter C: drive!!! and my 20 gig C: drive became nothing, no drive letter, Fdisk even says it's a non-partition. WTF!!!! Why does my hard drive letter change like that??? So then I was like, fine I'll do it over again. So then I did Fdisk again, got the drives back and right, reformat it, then try to install windows again on my 20 gig which is back to C:, then moments later! boom! it did it again!!!!

Does anyone know what might be costing this problem??? and how to solve it??? I've been working on this stupid computer for 3 days now, and I'm getting very very mad!
Does anyone know anything about this problem??

Ming

 

[turd]

I think the problem is with the raid, dont understand what u are doing with fdisk andr raid, but I think windows is iding those two as one stripe, raiding a 20 and 80 gig drive is not the best way to go raid, and you should have some sort of screen to configure your stripes, and not fdisk, but like i said im not really sure what u mean by "both on raid"

 

[nobitacu]

The 20 gig is on Raid 1 port, and the 80 gig is on raid 2 port.

 

[nobitacu]

No one knows the problem to this????

 

[nobitacu]

Ok, I took out one HD, and then reinstalled xp, but when it's doing it's first boot, again, the same problem happened. It ways it can't find any system files, and then I check the stats in Fdisk to see what's wrong. Yup, the C: is gone again. now I have no drive letter at all. It is now again, a Non-DOS Partition. Why does this happen??????? There were no problem at all when installing XP, it just does it when it's at a point of first boot into windows. Why does my drive keep disapearing like that???? and changes into a Non-DOS Partition??? Some body must know this problem...
Does anyone know how to also change drive letter in dos? maybe that'll do the trick. But if someone know of this problem and what's costing it and how to solve it....

please help....

 

[Lancelot]

If you did a default clean install of XP(pro?) it's a good bet it turned your original C: drive into a NTFS partition which would make it invisible under DOS and make your D: drive 'C' under DOS. If this is the case, when you look in windows explorer C: will be your 20Gig, and D: will be your 80Gig, but under DOS your 'D:' will be 'C:'.... confusing isn't it?!

 

[nobitacu]

yea, but I can't even load into windows. It just keep saying it can't find any system files, cause I'm betting it's searching on my D: which got turned into C:

This is a weird problem... I never had anything like this before...

 

[nobitacu]

Well, I flashed my bios and everything, and reformat and installed xp, but now the screen will get stuck at the windows xp boot up screen, the one with a line that go across on the bottom, but the line will just stop, and nothing will happen, and won't log into windows. I can only get into windows by safe mode.... Still don't know what the problem is... I'm getting new problems one after another...

 

[nobitacu]

Does anyone know how to solve the problem with the freeze up in the boot up screen?

 

[nobitacu]

and the sad part is, I'm not even overclocking anything.

 

[nobitacu]

I guess no one in here knows the answer to this problem...

 

[Xaotic]

It's probably time to restart. Since you don't have a matched pair of drives, drop the RAID idea till you do. They need to be the same size and model for best performance. Hook either the 20 or the 80 to the regular primary IDE controller. FDISK and delete the partitions. Then, FDISK /MBR to clear the master boot record. One of the things that's happening now is that the MBR on the 20 is pointing to the 80 to boot from and something in the configuration(probably the RAID config) is fouling up the boot process. Select to boot from the primary IDE in BIOS. Install on the now unpartitioned drive and after the install reconnect the other drive, which can be partitioned and formatted quickly and painlessly through Disk Management.

 

[Wedo]

FDISK and delete the partitions. Then, FDISK /MBR to clear the master boot record. One of the things that's happening now is that the MBR on the 20 is pointing to the 80 .....

Good one Xaotic, he needs a low level format. You can get a nice boot disk at www.bootdisk.com for nothing and this will help you get your drives installed.

Buy, or "find" a copy of partion magic 7.0. This program will let you enable both partitions as "primary" therefore, if your C: drive crashes, you wont lose you data on the D: drive.

Just learned that one the hard way as our webmaster had his OS drop out and I tried to save the data on the D: to no avail.

Good luck,
Wedo

 

[nobitacu]

ok, thanks

 

[nobitacu]

what program do I download on the bootdisk.com? to do that type of reformating? and how do I do it? can you tell me the steps? My hard drive for some odd reason is really messed up, I'm only using the 80 gig on my raid now, not using the 20 gig at all because I don't have long enough IDE cable to reach it. How do I do a low level format?

Thanks

 

[Wedo]

I think Xao is right, you should let go of the RAID. Performance drops if your drives don't match.

Are you using a RAID controller card, or is it on your mobo? Either way, I'd ditch the RAID, use one drive (80GB is enough, isn't it?) and start over.

Wedo

 

[Xaotic]

LLF is best(read only, unless you like taking risks) done by using the manufacturer's diagnostic and utility disks. The disk you'd need for basic partitioning and formatting are any of the Win98 boot disks, but since you've got XP boot from the CD and let the installer create and format the partition after cleaning the hard drives. There are options in some BIOSes to LLF, but I wouldn't as in some cases drive geometry can be changed and poor performance or damage may result. You may be able to leave the 80 on the RAID controller, but make sure that it's RAID BIOS settings are set for using it as an IDE controller only. If you're not sure about the settings, just move the drive to the primary IDE and you should have no problems.