So to preface this, I know very little about RAID. I was installing a new hard drive tonight, and for whatever reason, I unplugged my existing hard drive. I plugged them both back in, but instead of plugging them into the SATA slots on the motherboard, I plugged them into the RAID slots. Then when I tried to start the computer, it couldn't find the drives in the BIOS. I recognized my mistake and opened the case, and plugged the drives into the SATA 1 and SATA 2 slots on the motherboard. However, I still cannot boot my computer. It doesn't recognize the original drive as a boot device (its set right in the BIOS, I already checked that.) I'm downloading PuppyLinux now to boot from that and see if I still have files. In the mean time, any suggestions? Did I break my data?

I guess the good news is that all the little girls screen names are score online via stickam, so you aren't that far behind the creepo curve.

K, so now I'm browsing from PuppyLinux... And.. is there even a way to see if my data is still on my hard drive? I know nothing about linux, and I don't seem to be able to find anything useful.

list your drives then try to mount one

sudo fdisk -l in terminal

then man mount and do what you need

I'm not sure if PuppyLinux can read NTFS though I'd expect it can

I'm sure he's already tried that, Navy and all

First check the cables and make sure they are all secure. It is possible the data wasn't touched but in your haste you didn't plug them in properly. Make sure the drives are powering up.

If fdisk -l works it's likely your drives are fine, since if anything is likely to be screwed up with the data to make it unbootable it would start with the partition table. If Linux/fdisk can read it you're probably ok. Otherwise there is an awesome tool to fix the partition table by autodetecting drive boundries... I used it once to save one of my disks. Some buggy Windows app overwrote the partition table. Unfortunately I forget what it was called. One of the Linux heads might know.

To mount a drive:

sudo mount <mountpoint> /dev/sd<drive number as a letter... first drive is a, second drive is b, etc><partition number>

Or you can edit /etc/fstab to set partitions to be mounted at boot (not too useful on a ram disk created by a live CD).

Some distros use "hd" instead of "sd".

If you have an NTFS partition it will probably be mounted readonly, do an apt-get install ntfs-3g (or whatever your distro does for package management) and then add -t ntfs-3g to the mount line to use that filesystem driver.

chances are you just messed up your boot order in the bios. check in there and see if the drive you boot from is still set.

doesn't sound like you did anything too bad

@

Both Rob's trolling in this thread and the way it's been ignored.

Actually if the computer couldn't find any hard drives... I seriously doubt that it would have been able to modify the drives... I vote "no".

It sounds like you (the user) has information that could make it a free system again.

I don't know what our forum would be without Rob. Every forum needs a troll!

Everything was plugged in correctly (the 2nd time). The drives both posted in the BIOS.

Before when they were plugged into the RAID controller, they were posting in the RAID config, but not in the BIOS. Anyway, it's still jacked up and won't boot and worse, I can't find my install cd/serial key for windows.

As to all that linux mumbo jumbo, I have no idea what you're saying, but I'll see what I can do with that.

Disk is found (with fdisk -l), but after listing drive info, it says "Disk /dev/sda doesn't contain a valid partition table"

what am i supposed to do from here? Does that mean it cant read ntfs?

(edit: according to the internet it has support to both read and write ntfs. But I don't seem to have a partition. Did my RAID controller delete my partition??)

Sounds like your raid controller replaced the partition table on the drive when it spun up. Thats one craptacular controller you got there.

Your data is technically still on the drive, but without a parition table and file system you are pretty much screwed. There are utilities and services out there to recover the data, but I've never had much luck with them.

my theory is that he was probably mashing enter, started pairing the drives by accident and then turned off his computer when he saw what it was doing.

If gbk's theory is correct, testdisk (Linux app) is fantastic at fixing borked partition tables.

If joncy's theory is correct, then it's pretty much over.

Jon's theory makes the most sense. The RAID controller isn't going to just start setting up arrays without your intervention.

Yeah. Pretty much.

Yeah, it is quite probable I did something of the sort.
My partition is definitely gone.

*sigh*

well the sucky part is, I don't have my Win XP install disk or product key... so I just went to best buy and bought vista. It's installed and I'm up and running.

Downloading and installing drivers and whatnot now.

Jon'c is probably right.
Probably.


Yeah, I've never had any luck with it.


Ouch. I'm sorry.

Vista is awesome, you neckbeard.

I've had it work 5 out of 6 times.
On the fail time, data had been written over a good bit, so I tried building the file table from the partial data remaining. Took days to try to rebuild it but ultimately failed.

By the time I resort to it the disk is so damaged it would take an act of God to get any data off it (or, at the very least, an act of kak).

A while back a customer brought in a MacBook that had a clicking hard drive. I heated it up on the stovetop with a double-boiler, it stopped clicking long enough to run dd and get 70gb or so off to an image file. Then ran photorec on it and got all their pictures and music off. I still have a picture somewhere....

I have a hard drive that has the click of death, how easy is all that to do?

I'd kind of like to get most of my files back.

It's like you're Jesus...

there it is...

also, coolmatty, apparently you can get around the image size limit by it being .JPG instead of .jpg. that image was 500k and it uploaded fine

The limit is the same, the extension is case insensitive. I raised the JPG limit to 1MB many many months ago.

Awesome.

and everyone said they didn't like the direction coolmatty was taking massassi...

I think he meant purchasing it from Best Buy, not the OS itself.

Vista sucks. As someone who has to support it and its many flukes, it sucks. It's running on hardware that is capable of running on it as well.

Like what flukes? I have no problems with it.

Yeah, but its awesomeness is offset by Best Buy's ridiculous pricing.

Overall noticeable slowness, I've seen Office 2007 profiles get completely screwed up randomly, and the print spooler crashes because of Canon's ****ty print drivers (I know. Not Vista's fault).

It's just flaky on our network. I had one just completely lose the ability to authenticate on our domain this morning. Had to remove the name from AD and rejoin the thing to the domain. I think it had to do with Vista somehow suddenly thinking the year was 2156...

pebkac

:saddowns:

vista does kinda suck, i was able to find xp drivers for my new laptop, it's so much faster.

Basically everything you've listed is a problem with your hardware, with an unrelated application (Office) and with... well,... like Emon said, you. It seems to me you didn't configure your network and domain controller correctly.