Hi guys it might be a little off topic. I have dual p3 pc with a 18gb hard drives , internal scsi . i have lot of footage saved on them but what I did was changed my op sys to xp from win 2000. now xp doesnt recognise my hard drives . it shows only the c: and the external firewire d: my f: drive which was the 4 18gb's strapped together doesnt even show up . if I go to disk management to look for them they are there and show up as disk1 disk2 disk3 and disk4. When i right click on them to change them to basic drive it tells me that" all the data will be lost" . I dont know what to do. Is thera way I can restrap them into one and save data . It is about 4 hours of footage and a few projects . PLease help!!!

Thanks

I had the exact same problem with my portable HD. Somebody please help with this...as I have some footage on my portable one too....

I'm NO expert but will try to help based on VERY limited experience messing with RAID 0 arrays.

I'll take a guess that the 4 data drives that made up your "F" drive were RAID 0 ("striped" across 2 or more physical drives to improve performance), either using Windows 2000 disk management or a separate RAID controller (either built onto your motherboard or an add-in card).

First, check BIOS settings (motherboard and/or add-in RAID card) to make sure RAID hasn't been disabled or changed. If that isn't the case...

If you used Win2K's built-in striping capability...
I would have thought that XP would have recognized the striping and preserved it. Since it apparently didn't, I think your best bet would be to uninstall XP and return to your Win2K config that worked. If you turn the drives into basic drives you WILL lose all data. If you can't uninstall XP, you probably need advice from someone more knowledgeable than me!

If the drives are striped as RAID 0 using a hardware RAID controller...
You need to set up the same controller (eg, Win2K, Promise, Adaptec, etc) to recognize the array correctly. If the correct controller is configured properly, you should be able to see your array WITHOUT destroying any data on the drives.

If you have RAID controller hardware, XP ought to see it. If not, perhaps a run through the New Hardware wizard or a physical uninstall/reinstall will help XP to recognize it so the striped data can be properly read across the array.

If it turns out you were using RAID 1 (redundancy) WITHOUT RAID 0 (striping), you ought to be able to salvage your data, since the same bits are saved on more than one of the drives.

I've had a drive on a RAID 0 go flakey on me, and even though I didn't have any important data on the array, I feel your pain. Best o' luck!

thanks a million pete ill try what you told me to and see what happens and will keep you posted
thanks again

but if i format the hard drive and reinstall win2k.....i mean the c: drive then would it automatically pick up the raid ?????

thanks again

sorry me again

i had to format the c: drive to install xp ...it wasnt upgrade ..but a clean install...can i do the same ...format c: and reinstall win2k
thanks

Yeah, if it was a clean install, there's no going back; only starting over!

So, before going to all the bother of wiping the C: drive and reinstalling OS, do everything possible to get XP to see the array.

How was the array set up...striping using Disk Manager or with RAID hardware like Promise, etc? What type of RAID (0, 1, 0+1) was it? Whatever hardware allowed you to have the array in the first place must still be there.

Also, if you haven't already done so, definitely check out manufacterers' web sites (especially message boards for the computer or motherboard, and RAID card, if any) or do an internet search on keywords...I'm NO expert, so there may be a painless solution out there that I don't know to give you. I can't do an extensive search myself tonight, but I just did a quick Yahoo search and keyworded "XP" and "fault-tolerant" and got this MS page that MIGHT be helpful:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=303246

I guess if all else fails, reinstalling Win2k makes sense. If Win2k sees the array after reinstalling, you at least can back up your data before proceeding with a full system wipe!

Cheers,

thanks guys , i got all my data back
I did not touch any hardware , what I did was formatted c: and reinstalled win2k
since all the array was created with win2k with the existing ocntroller so when I re installed win2k after formatting my c: i could see all the f: drive back in the same position as it was before ....all I did was copy all the data on the firewire drive i have for 160 gb and reinstalled xp after formatting c: again. now in xp after installing premiere i can read and play all my files as before...:)))

thanks guys i appreciate all the help

thanks pete , thanks a million again

you were great help

thanks again

That's great...it would have been really terrible to lose all your data. Happy editing!