Asus a8n-sli premium, recover XP from reinstall/RAID?

I have an Asus a8n-sli premium. I had a SATA II drive as my boot
drive, on the NVIDIA SATA BUS in a non raid setup. SMART indicated a
hard drive failure was coming, so I imaged the drive to another drive.
I booted up on that drive, installed the SIS RAID drivers, and then
moved it over to the SIL RAID SATA I connectors and configured a RAID 1
array.

This has been working for many months.

The other night, the MFT went corrupt on the boot partition. I was
able to boot into safe mode one time and store all my recent changes to
data files onto another drive.

At this point, it will not boot even into safe mode. I can rebuild the
array, but boot it will not. It is mostly generating page faults.

So now I am trying to install Windows ontop of the existing partition.
If I don't hit F6, then of course Windows doesn't see the RAID array.
If I hit F6 and try to install the SIL3114r5.sys, I get an exception
(4096) which appears to be common;

http://groups.google.com/group/micro...7477671f1a9252
http://groups.google.com/group/micro...ab2b286e96186d

This second post states to switch to combined mode instead of RAID.
But I am don't see a way on the a8n-sli p to do this.

Any help? Can I remove one of the RAID drives, and hook the primary
drive back up to the NVIDIA channel and re-install Windows without
needing a driver disk, or has SIL modified the drive? Ideas?

I've still got the old hard drive that was failing, powered off since
the cloning - so I could recover from that, but that would loose about
a years worth of software upgrades/installs that I'd rather not re-do.

Thanks;

Edwin.

Any my fun experience with PC's continues...

I booted Barts PE. It did not recognize the RAID array. I booted from
emergency recovery cd, and it did recognize the RAID array, but locked
up while loading the MFT.

I took my primary RAID SATA drive and unplugged it from the SIL3114
raid controller. I plugged it into the NVIDIA controller as non-raid.
I disconnected all other hard drives.

Cross my fingers.. Windows started. Said a chkdsk was scheduled,
runs 1-3 not 4. It ran. XP booted. Here I am.

Event log shows;

The device, \Device\Scsi\Si3114r51, did not respond within the timeout
period.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

>From yesterday.

So this tells me 1 of 3 things.

#1) My SIL RAID array drivers are corrupt. I have done a Windows
update and installed the updates Windows has been suggesting for
several months now. I haven't reconnected yet to see if this solves
the problem, yet.

#2) My SIL RAID controller, on board, is failing.

#3) One of my drives is failing. The second drive, the mirror, did
get orphaned when this all started. Maybe it's this one failing? I
can try booting up off of it to get an indication..

I find it interesting that the RAID drive can connect from the SIL
controller to the nVidia controller. This is unlike SCSI I've used
where a 3ware raid 5 array will not attach to an HP raid 5 controller
and boot.

Two hours later, another status update.

I plugged in the second RAID drive from the SIL controller to the
nVidia. Same errors are when setup in RAID1. It failed to boot.

Since it was on the nVidia controller, Barts PE could see the drive.

I pulled it up in file explorer and could see the data. Good sign.

I ran chkdsk and scanned the entire drive. Many many lost chains and
inconstancy's. Over a thousand.

I ran HD Tune against it and it reported back no errors. This is a WD
drive, and BE shows 45. HD Tune says "failed", however that is the
temperature return per Wikipedia. The other temperature is 45C so I am
guessing this is a false positive error on HD Tunes part as HD Tune
doesn't know what BE is and is guessing.

HD Tune error checking (slow) showed no errors. The performance tune
was very quick. Not like what you normally have on a failing drive
with redirected sectors. I am posting this post by booting from the
second drive.

So apparently what we have here is a failure of the SIL software RAID.
I've seen this with other software RAID before. With hardware RAID, a
data error on the "mirror" drive would occur it would simply issue a
rebuild and either rebuild, or orphan. If it were the primary drive,
then both drives would have the data error since we are mirroring data.
With software RAID, the software couldn't apparently fix the data
problem.

Now the next step. Hook up the drive that didn't have the data
failure, the primary in the RAID set, and make sure I have it as drive
A (0 or 1 depending on how you count) in the SIL controller. Make
sure it boots. Then reboot and hook up the second drive and rebuild
the array. With any luck I'll be back in business.

What a way to spend 8 hours As long as I don't loose the drive,
that's fine. I'll be making a complete backup after all of this is
done..

The system simply will not boot up off of the SIL3114r5 controller. If
I hook just the primary drive up (like I did way back when I first
setup the raid) the system locks at the Press F4 screen. Pressing F4
does nothing.

If I hook both up, it shows the RAID array. But it will not boot. It
says drive read error.

So my guess is that I have another failed SATA controller on an ASUS
board. This wouldn't be the first time. I think this if the 4th MOBO
I've personally dealt with where the drive controller failed.

One on a p3v4x. One on an old P133 system from way back. Another at
work on a PC I've used.

So I guess I can setup this as an nVidia raid array. Do I loose the
ability to boot off of just one drive as a non-raid if something like
this happens again? Or I can do what I've done now and go off of RAID
and backup the drive to the second drive. Or I can look at a real
RAID controller. Probably RAID 5 if I do go that route. But then if
the controller fails or something odd happens again, then I can not
simply put one drive in on my non raid SATA controller and be back up
like I am now.

Fun times at RAID high.

On 4 Jan 2007 20:05:08 -0800, wrote:

>The system simply will not boot up off of the SIL3114r5 controller. If
>I hook just the primary drive up (like I did way back when I first
>setup the raid) the system locks at the Press F4 screen. Pressing F4
>does nothing.
>
>If I hook both up, it shows the RAID array. But it will not boot. It
>says drive read error.
>
>So my guess is that I have another failed SATA controller on an ASUS
>board. This wouldn't be the first time. I think this if the 4th MOBO
>I've personally dealt with where the drive controller failed.
>
>One on a p3v4x. One on an old P133 system from way back. Another at
>work on a PC I've used.
>
>So I guess I can setup this as an nVidia raid array. Do I loose the
>ability to boot off of just one drive as a non-raid if something like
>this happens again? Or I can do what I've done now and go off of RAID
>and backup the drive to the second drive. Or I can look at a real
>RAID controller. Probably RAID 5 if I do go that route. But then if
>the controller fails or something odd happens again, then I can not
>simply put one drive in on my non raid SATA controller and be back up
>like I am now.
>
>Fun times at RAID high.

You're obviously more familiar with RAID than I am. I'm just curious
why you elected to set up your RAID on the A8N-SLI Premium on the SI
controller as opposed to the nVidia controller in the first place.

I avoid RAID 0 setups like the plague. They almost never provide
enough real-world improvement in functionality to justify the
increased risk of data loss and headaches. I always thought RAID 1
was pretty safe, but after your experience, I think I'll avoid that,
too. My data is kept safe by redundant daily incremental disk
imaging. It's way easier to troubleshoot that RAID mirroring.

Ron

If your problem started after allowing Windows Update to install a new
driver for the SIL Raid driver - That would bew the problem.
I have repaired several computers that have developed problems after Windows
Update Drivers have been installed.
Go to Asus, download the SIL driver and install that one and give it a try.

<> wrote in message
news: oups.com...
>I have an Asus a8n-sli premium. I had a SATA II drive as my boot
> drive, on the NVIDIA SATA BUS in a non raid setup. SMART indicated a
> hard drive failure was coming, so I imaged the drive to another drive.
> I booted up on that drive, installed the SIS RAID drivers, and then
> moved it over to the SIL RAID SATA I connectors and configured a RAID 1
> array.
>
> This has been working for many months.
>
> The other night, the MFT went corrupt on the boot partition. I was
> able to boot into safe mode one time and store all my recent changes to
> data files onto another drive.
>
> At this point, it will not boot even into safe mode. I can rebuild the
> array, but boot it will not. It is mostly generating page faults.
>
> So now I am trying to install Windows ontop of the existing partition.
> If I don't hit F6, then of course Windows doesn't see the RAID array.
> If I hit F6 and try to install the SIL3114r5.sys, I get an exception
> (4096) which appears to be common;
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/micro...7477671f1a9252
> http://groups.google.com/group/micro...ab2b286e96186d
>
> This second post states to switch to combined mode instead of RAID.
> But I am don't see a way on the a8n-sli p to do this.
>
> Any help? Can I remove one of the RAID drives, and hook the primary
> drive back up to the NVIDIA channel and re-install Windows without
> needing a driver disk, or has SIL modified the drive? Ideas?
>
> I've still got the old hard drive that was failing, powered off since
> the cloning - so I could recover from that, but that would loose about
> a years worth of software upgrades/installs that I'd rather not re-do.
>
> Thanks;
>
> Edwin.
>

Yea, avoid Windows update driver updates like the plague. But not, the
driver was updated AFTER the problem started & did not fix the problem.
I'd tried re-installing the SIL driver from ASUS's site also, but
that didn't help. Neither way would the SIL controller work anymore.

I used the SIL controller over the nVidia because the SIL has more
functions than the nVidia. (Rebuild RAID from bios w/out booting, RAID
5, etc.) I do realize the nVidia is SATA II where the SIL is not, and
nVidia is SATA 300 where SIL is 150. But the drives are 60MB/s so 150
channel is fine, and they are going to use any features that SATA II
brings to the table.

I have other drive in this system, non RAID, which I left on the other
channels.