nForce3 RAID Controller not recognizing HDDs in DOS Seatools

[biased]

Hello,

I am attempting to narrow down a problem which happened because when I booted into Windows XP SP2 I got four "windows recovered from a serious error, please send in error check report" messages so I checked eventlogger and looked up the error (Error code 000000fc, parameter1 bacc7bf0, parameter2 0aa8b163, parameter3 bacc7b5c, parameter4 00000000) online which essentially said it was some sort of BSOD error despite having no BSOD.

I checked report error and it said the error report was corrupt. So I figured perhaps my drive is corrupt. I then downloaded and burned SeaTools for DOS to a cd and attempted to run it for a diagnosis. It booted into FreeDOS but would not continue giving me the error message "InitDiskBad" when attempting to list the drives available. I have an onboard nForce3 RAID controller with 2 SATA Seagate Barracuda drives, one of which is under 8 months old (320gb) and running perfectly fine before installing this new drive and the other(750gb) is newly purchased OEM from newegg. My BIOS, the nForce RAID setup and Windows XP SP2 all recognize that the drives are there however it recognizes both Seagate drives in Windows XP as "NVIDIA JBOD" which is my RAID controller but the capacity on both of them is correct.


The solutions I have tried are disabling DEP. What is the problem and how can I fix it?

 

[mike99]

Seatools for DOS does not know how to work with your RAID controller! Try restarting Windows in 'Last known good configuration' (Press F8 at start). Try VGA mode or Safe Mode. You could also try Repair Console by booting from Windows CD, but will need the RAID driver on a Floppy. Try Repair Install. Why are you using JBOD (Just A Bunch Of Drives)? What are you trying to acheive?

Mike.

Mike.

 

[biased]

The other options would not allow me to set the drives independently. Mirror, Striping, Mirroring+Stripping. Windows boots fine except for that previous error message. What will Safe Mode, Last known good configuration or VGA mode accomplish?

I am simply trying to get both SATA drives to work with the onboard RAID controller.

 

[mike99]

If you list the 3 drives and how they are connected, and how you want to configure them. Are you booting from a non-RAID drive? To fix the error messages, try running 'chkdsk C: /F' from a CMD prompt (assuming C: is your system drive) You need to connect the 2 SATA drives to RAID capable sockets on your motherboard and then go into RAID configuration at startup and configure the drives as required.

Mike.

 

[biased]

750GB - OS is on this (loads first)
320GB - also on RAID

I am not booting from a non-RAID drive. The drives are connecting to RAID capable sockets on the motherboard and configured properly.

 

[mike99]

If it set as JBOD you will see a single 1Tb drive. If you do not yet have a RAID array, making one will erase both drives! Be prepared to reinstall or restore from a backup.

Mike