Cable Forum - View Single Post - NVRaid problems

Aragorn · 12-07-2005, 11:15

About 9 months ago, I bought an ASUS K8N (NF3 250) mobo as part of a new A64 system. Originally I bought a Maxtor DiamondMax 9 Sata 160Gb drive.

A month or so ago I spent a frustrating weekend upgrading my system to include a second Sata drive (DiamondMax 10 160Gb) in a Raid 1 config for data protection (had to reinstall XP (SP2) and restore data), but I figured if my data is safe it's worth the initial pain.

Last night I hibernated my system as per normal and this morning it refused to boot.

First I knew was an error reporting vga.oem (?) missing or corrupt. I rebooted and spotted the NVRaid bios reporting my Mirror in DEGRADED mode - I hit f10 and both drives were present. I decided not to rebuild - as both drives are healthy why is it saying degraded and how would it know which to rebuild off!

Booted off the Windows XP CD to try and locate the file, but didn't get very far. XP Recov seemed unable to read off the CD to get the 'missing' file.

A couple of reboots later, NVRaid magically decides, without intervention, that the mirror is healthy. Windows then spots the hiber file and asks to delete this and reboot normally. At this point, boot.ini is read normally but trying to start XP give 'hal.dll' missing or corrupt. Recovery console confirms that both hal.dll and ntoskrnl are present.

Also tried unplugging one of the drives - its a mirror and SHOULD boot off one drive (at least thats what I paid for) - but NVRaid fails to start the array if either drive is unplugged - ergo I think both drives are working.

So, wtf is going on and now do I get the system back up without losing the data that NVRaid is supposed to protect? Does the MOBO need RMAing?

TIA for any bright ideas.

12-07-2005, 11:15	#1
Aragorn Inactive Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Minas Tirith, Gondor Age: 61 Posts: 3,458	NVRaid problems - any bright ideas? About 9 months ago, I bought an ASUS K8N (NF3 250) mobo as part of a new A64 system. Originally I bought a Maxtor DiamondMax 9 Sata 160Gb drive. A month or so ago I spent a frustrating weekend upgrading my system to include a second Sata drive (DiamondMax 10 160Gb) in a Raid 1 config for data protection (had to reinstall XP (SP2) and restore data), but I figured if my data is safe it's worth the initial pain. Last night I hibernated my system as per normal and this morning it refused to boot. First I knew was an error reporting vga.oem (?) missing or corrupt. I rebooted and spotted the NVRaid bios reporting my Mirror in DEGRADED mode - I hit f10 and both drives were present. I decided not to rebuild - as both drives are healthy why is it saying degraded and how would it know which to rebuild off! Booted off the Windows XP CD to try and locate the file, but didn't get very far. XP Recov seemed unable to read off the CD to get the 'missing' file. A couple of reboots later, NVRaid magically decides, without intervention, that the mirror is healthy. Windows then spots the hiber file and asks to delete this and reboot normally. At this point, boot.ini is read normally but trying to start XP give 'hal.dll' missing or corrupt. Recovery console confirms that both hal.dll and ntoskrnl are present. Also tried unplugging one of the drives - its a mirror and SHOULD boot off one drive (at least thats what I paid for) - but NVRaid fails to start the array if either drive is unplugged - ergo I think both drives are working. So, wtf is going on and now do I get the system back up without losing the data that NVRaid is supposed to protect? Does the MOBO need RMAing? TIA for any bright ideas.