Sata raid problem

[bogart]

Have A Asus A7N8X-E MB with 2 160GB Hitachi Deskstar Hds. Had for around 9mths. Set up as raid1 after a bit of huffing and puffing. Everything looked ok until a few weeks ago when occasionally on booting up (XP) would get message "incomplete raid set press F4 etc,etc" upon pressing F4 would show both drives as present. Taking the option to repair the raid set would be told not enough single drives.
I would then carry on merrily using the system, I presume using just the one drive. This message "incomplete raid set" would manifest itself say every 1 in 4 boot ups.
Then yesterday whilst using the pc a nice loud crack emanated from its rear and the system died. Opened it up fearing the worst but found no signs of the cause. So being the optimist I am switched on again, got the "incomplete" message and carried on working with it for about an hour, then switched off.
Now the trouble , trying to switch on again resulted in the "incomplete" message and pressing F4 was told unable to detect any drives. Tried each drive on its own, swapping data cables, power cables but still no luck. Finally attempted to do a repair windows, loading sata drivers of the floppy etc,etc then when asked by windows to press key R for repai windows tells me it cant find any drives either.
Am at a bit of a loss, any assistance in the right direction will be appreciated.
And just one other thing can these 2 drives at some time be run in non raid set up? cant find any reference to not raid usage, everything mentions raids.

Sorry for such a long waffle.

[cignal]

Bogart, did you ever figure out the solution to the Raid problem (incomplete raid set)? I have the same board and 2 Maxtor 160's. Can't get Windows to recognize either. If you found the solution, please let me know.
Bill

[Splash]

To me Incomplete RAID set would suggest one of the drives has failed and needs replacing, however I would expect the RAID BIOS to report that error, not Windows. If Windows itself is reporting the error I would suggest an immediate reinstall of your SATA RAID drivers.

If you've heard a loud crack though that would suggest a drive failure for sure.

[bogart]

No never did get to the root of the problem. Got a replacement from Scan. Never ever fitted that one, had experienced more than enough trouble with the original to not even try with the new one. Sold it on Ebay and bought a cheap Asrock K7 upgrade motherboard(still made by Asus) for about half the price.
Installed faultlessly, raid operation is a doddle why the Asus board could not be like this heaven knows.
I went for the Asus motherboard as specs looked good and Asus a respected name, lots of people knock Asrock boards but im converted.

Regards

[cignal]

Bogart,
Well, thanks for trying; I appreciate the reply.
Bill

[bogart]

No problem, thats the whole reason for forums, amazing the problems that can be sorted listening to others. Pity couldn't be more helpful in this case.

Regards

[Splash]

I just re-read the OP and the fact that it's asking you to hit F4 suggests strongly that it's BIOS level - if you're certain both drives are ok you should be able to go into the RAID BIOS and rebuild RAID set, though again I suspect it's (imminent?) failure of one of the drives.

[[GSV]Trig]

I'd say check for a BIOS update but on most arrays a BIOS update will screw the array apparently...