Help: Raid problems again NP9262

I had a prior thread where Gophin solved rebuilding the RAID questions
I had, however a new problem has risen and now I can't boot into windows.

What was done: AOL locked up again (continuous problem) system
had to be shut down by power switch, system rebooted and the Intel RAID
manager showed status as Verify. System hard drive activity light remained
solid lit for as long as I was aware of it. System was able to run windows (xp home) and programs fine at this time besides the expected Verify slow down.

System was shut off normally, the Intel manger was checked to see if one
or the other drives had a degraded or other status - both drives showed fine member disk status. Got back out of the manager and booted into the Seagate DOS disk tools - did a full erase of disk B9VF. Erase showed it completed successfully.

Got out of the disk tools, rebooted - the Intel manager showed status was still Verify, disk B9VF was now a non raid disk, and the other disk CRM6 was still a member disk. I'd had this happen before where I had to get into windows, then reboot, then the manager would bring up the option to rebuild screen... so I exited the Intel manager and I get a series of text now that says:

Intel UNDI, PXE-2.1 (build 082)
Copyright (c) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation

For Realtek RTL8111B/8168B Gigabit Ethernet Controller v.2.03 (000516)
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF: Exiting PXE ROM
Operating System not found.

Pressing any key just repeats the message.
I went back to the Intel manager - no change.
Went back to the Seagate disk tools and ran a full long test on each disk and both came up as passed.

On loading the Seagate tools, I managed to catch a new set of messages that flash up quickly before going into the program proper:

InitDiskillegal partition table - drive 00 sector 0
illegal partition table - drive 00 sector 0
illegal partition table - drive 00 sector 0
illegal partition table - drive 00 sector 0

It gave the option of pressing F8 for trace, which gives these options:

Files = 30 [Y,N] (pressed n)
Buffers = 50, 8 [Y,N] (pressed n)
Lastdrive = Z [Y,N] (pressed n)
device = himem.exe [Y,N] (pressed n)
device = tdsk.exe [Y,N] (pressed n)

Freecom version 0.84-pre2 XMS_Swap
[Aug 28, 2006 00:29:00]
A:/>/autoexec.bat [yes =enter, no=esc]


From what little I do know, erasing the 0 track on any disk basically kills it.
Am I without hope for getting my data back or is there some way of saving it?
I'm only 2 days away from getting rid of AOL completely & forever.. and this happens.

 

What RAID are (or were) you running? RAID-0?

 

Problem persists with boot priority, go into the BIOS and change the boot order to one of the HDD's (primary HDD in the RAID block) - move the Realtek entry to the last slot available.


/Saad

 

gophn - Raid 1 mirror across (2) 186.3 GB drives.
Here's my old thread if it helps:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=273427

vigilante - I don't think my BIOS will allow me to pick between
the two drives - but I will check again and update this post unless there's
something new posted before hand.

Appreciate the help guys.

Update:
Ok I looked at the boot order and the Realtek was listed as position 6 of 8 with the hard drive (shown as one entry) was listed as position 4 of 8.
For the heck of it I moved the Realtek entry to position 7. Eight for some reason won't allow anything in there.

Bottom line is that there is no change in the error message I listed before.
If the drives are possibly out of synch, would it be suggested to try and do a full erase of the drive I already supposedly erased? Alternatively, take the "erased" drive out of the computer physically? Does seem like a data issue though...

I did copy some information off the BIOS that may be of interest.

SATA Port 1 200GB SATA 1
SATA Port 2 None
SATA Port 3 200 GB SATA 3

IDE Channel 0 CD ROM

SATA Mode: RAID
Boot Time Diagnostic: enabled
Intel Virtualization Technology: disabled
No Execute Mode Memory Protection: disabled

Boot Order (current)
1. USB kdc
2. USB key
3. IDE TSSTcorp CDDVDW TS-L632H-)
4. PCI SCSI: ST9200420AS
5. IDE HDD
6. USB HDD
7. PCI Bev: Realtek Boot Agent
8. none

Exclude: usb cdrom, usb zip

 

I think SATA3 is the slot thats under the battery, could be the problem if the HDD is under there - shouldn't matter what slot the HDD is in though. Just double check to see if both HDDs are coupled in the same HDD bay under the track pad area.


/Saad

 

vigilante - the drives are set up so there's on on either side of
the palm rests, from when I took a 9262 apart previously - that
unit had other issues and was returned back in Feb.

Really - there should not be any physical issue with the machine,
the system has sat in the same exact spot and ran the same way
for a couple months now. It's just after this erasure that flipped everything
on it's head.

I've been doing some searching into the "illegal partition table - drive 00 sector 0" message and a corrupted partition table can indeed cause a system not to be able to boot into windows. Going on that line of thought - any programs worth while to give it a shot of rebuilding the table?

Even if I can't properly restore the drives 100%, I mainly need the data.
Replacing some drives or reformatting them after the fact is the least of my worries.

 

I've actually had a windows HDD partition get corrupted before as well. What I did was format a new HDD (to get a functional disk) and pull the data from the corrupted disk. Long and painstaking task, was done in Unix and to be honest I just got lucky, might want to look into though.


/Saad


Just found this, worth a try: http://www.ptdd.com/rpt.htm
I personally like to do these things manually so that I know how to fix it without relying on a 3rd party application.

 

Yeah can't say I have any experience with command consoles
in *nix systems.

That's one program I'm looking at...
This one uses Fdisk -
http://www.adrc.com/diy_rescue/win/invalid_partition.html

Also have this one which says it works on RAID...
http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/DiskPatch.htm

 

Both very good, Fdisk is pretty good but I'd go with DiskPatch first since it supports RAID recovery.


/Saad

 

Ok update - Disk Patch didn't even get to a usable menu as it couldn't read through the RAID. The EASEUS program could and said there was a partition table error on the erased disk.

I've got a thread on dslreports as well - here's a copy n' paste update from what I said there:

I'm going to see if I can grab a USB/eSATA 2.5 inch enclosure from the local BestBuy and see if I can get the data off the good disc.

Really to be honest it seems like the Intel manager is stuck or the data for "array" "drive 00" is what's gone. I'm rather of the belief that if the confounded Intel manager would recognized the erased disk is available for rebuild - this might well fix itself. However without Windows, I don't see it happening.

Bad news is that after getting about $100 in recovery/partition table software, no change. The one table repair did find a problem with the empty drive - which it says it fixed. Also ran a master boot record check/repair on that drive and started into a "bootfix" which was canceled as it simply took too long. None of these did anything for the problem. Also tried going back into SeaTools and erasing the re-re erased drive again after the partition table was adjusted - nothing either.

Mostly I'm thinking that the full erase making it a clean disc is what the partition table app is thinking is an error. A false positive of sorts.

The drive with data still shows it's a NTFS drive, set as active status, and seems to indicate it's in fine condition for whatever tests I've run on it. Depending on my interpretation of the app's UI, it appears to show the partition is full of data compared to the erased drive.

*scratches head*
I dunno, I'm at a loss as to what to do.
I'll see if I can try this enclosure idea as then I can hook it to another PC with a few more tools. After that, unless someone's got a better idea it may well be headed for a recovery center.

 

I think this'll be my final update... mostly for others coming into this problem.

Well things took a turn for the better.

Picked up the SATA enclosure from BestBuy and was able to make a backup of the files on the good drive. The erased drive, no matter what I tried to it - didn't show any signs of being functional besides powering up.

Replacing the working drive into the system without the erased unit gave the system some problems several times at startup until I was able to run chkdsk from a command prompt. So far it's been able to boot up properly 2x and I'm running another backup.

Since the Intel manager switched back over to degraded. I'll see if I can get the erased drive re-erased and reinserted to see if the array will rebuild. If not, at least the data's safe.

Thank you to everyone who contributed,