Need some help with hard disks

[Falcor]

Ok...so finally got round to installing my 2 sata 1 small hard disks i use as a raid 0 for running windows and programs after doing a test run on my big new 1tb storage drive..however ive got problems..

Both disks showed up when plugged in on vista as 2 unreadable hard disks...obviously cuz there a raid array so i formatted one...and was planning to do another one today...but its dissapeared the one i formatted is sitting there ready to use but the other one has dissapeared off the my computer and only appears on device manager, where its properties are identical to the working one..

So my question is how do i get that one back/format, why did it dissapear?

I also have an old corrupted 160gig ide i want to sort out i believe its reigstry is corrupted...what would be the best program to use to recover data/format this disk. Reason i mention this is , this one also shows up in device manager but not in my disk list.

Edit- the 2 sata disks are Samsung sata 1 150gb drives, and there ide is a seagate.

Thanks tried google etc but theres too much spam about hard disks out there

[idlehanz]

Hmm,

Thinking about the drives your trying to get in a striped (RAID 0) config.

1. Which version of Vista 0/S are you using
2. What make and model of RAID controller are you using? (or what mobo if integrated in to mobo)

[Falcor]

Well its not so much getting them into raid, i can do that done it before on xp ( im now using vista ulti 64)

What i dont understand is, how my 2 identical hard disks can appear in the my computer list, i then format one to a normal drive, and the other has dissapeared and is only in device manager.

My plan was, to format both disks in vista to make them normal drives again(as u would buy them) then reformat them in dos to a raid 0 partition.

My mobo is a p5q-e. According to the mobo book, its Intel Matrix.

[idlehanz]

Does sound little strange.

I can't offer you any clear explaination of why, apart from Vista doing something strange for no apparent reason.

Perhaps ignore what Vista is doing and if you are able to identify which of the 2 SATA HDD's you've formated, then unplug the power to that one, reboot, and see if you can see the other one normally. Perhaps then format that one like the other one if it appears.

& after that you can do another reboot, power up both drives and configure your RAID as planned.

[Falcor]

yeah, it will probably be ok in dos, one other thing, is there a good recovery/fix program for an ide hard disk, id really like to get the ide hard disk i have spare working again

[iranu]

Why don't you use the Intel Raid Matrix set up when the PC boots before going into windows? Can't remember the key to press to get it up but you should see it on boot. That is the easiest way as it should format the disks before it creates the array if it needs to.

[idlehanz]

yeah, it will probably be ok in dos, one other thing, is there a good recovery/fix program for an ide hard disk, id really like to get the ide hard disk i have spare working again

Software, I wouldn't know what's good to recover. I have a an external backup drive so I don't usually worry about recovering data. Which will change if the external drive goes tits up!!

[vinnyT]

When I've got a hd that appears broken I use spinrite (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm), depends on how much you need to recover the drive though, as it costs $89.