Old Noobie Needs Help

I have a Sager 9262 I got almost two years ago when they first came out. I am running XP Pro on a two HD RAID 0 array with a third HD for extra storage and scratch for CS2.

Today when I booted up I got a disk fault message. I cant boot from a live linux CD. I can get to a screen that says create or delete a RAID disk or go back to normal HD setup. I can also get to the screen where you reset the boot sequence.

I have only looked at these utility screens so far.

I am a long time computer user; but I am retired and not sure what the next step is.

I mainly use the Sager for online gaming (Guild Wars) and surfing. Most of my pix are backed up so wiping the disks and reinstalling everything is not out of the question.

What do you guys suggest I do first?

 

It sounds like one of the drives in the RAID has failed.

Your computer was set up as striped (raid 0), which means you had least secure raid setup possible.

Unless you had a complete system back up, you cannot recover from this setup.

You need to install a drive for the failed drive and rebuild the array, or install to a single drive.

 

I know RAID 0 has a trade off between redundancy and speed and I picked speed.

There are currently three drives in the box, two in a RAID 0 array and one for scratch. I assume from what you say one (or perhaps both) of the RAID drives is the problem.

Still I dont know which drive is bad; and it is also unclear to me if the drive has failed or it is simply a bad sector(s) issue.

I may be misunderstanding what you posted. In any case does anyone know the best place I could research a step by step process to get the system up; or should I just continue posting here asking questions.