Missing Boot - Invalid Raid drives - No valide deivce!...

[1misled]

Any suggestions on how to recover my raid array or any of my files?

OS is windows Vista, the RAID is configured as a 10 (Mirrored/Striped) with 4 WD SATA 250GB hard drives,
mb is ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe, Silicon controller in use, NVidia controller not in use.

Rebooted machine, and received the following error:

No valide deivce!...press any key to continue

(yes the spelling is like that on screen...)

Then I get: DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

Tried rebooting a couple of times but no change. Ran the WD tools on the disks, "no problems".

If I do a Ctrl-S to enter the SiL-3114 (Silicon Image Controller) Bios,

it shows the 4 drives under Physical Drive but under Logical Drive it says "Invalid Raid drive".

If I click "Create Raid set it comes back with "Not enough single drives to create Raid set".

If I select “Resolve Conflicts”, it says no conflicts exist.


So now I purchased 2 additional Wd 250GB Drives identical to the other 4.

In addition maybe for troubleshooting, I have another computer that can run 2 drive raid sets.

I am not sure which direction I want to proceed to recover either my disk array or my files

without causing more damage to the posibility of recovering my files!

Please advise, thank-you.

 

[1misled]

Anybody? :-(

 

[1misled]

Since original problem, I've attempted to use the Vista system recovery options but it fails when attempting to load the hard drive drivers so since it cant read the drive I'm unable do any restoring. Also attempting to reinstall Vista, the same problem happens. I guess that I probably wont be able to do anything with Vista until I perform the create raid option.

I also don't believe that any drives of the hard drives have failed, When I ran the WD diagnostic tools, it did detect 2 drives, which I guess those are the first and second mirror drives in the array, they both tested good. Just before the fatal reboot I remember doing a few things, running windows update and I believe the update had something to do with Silicon, also I ran the virus checker and it said I needed an update + reboot and the very last task I did was installed drivers for a new mouse that I connected. Since typically I put it in sleep mode and it had been a while since last reboot, the destruction (my guess) seems to be software related. I'd like to recover some important files rather than the OS since that isn't possible anyways.

My next idea I was considering was to install in the same computer, the two brand new identical HDs with XP in a stripped array again. Then attach the 2 original HD's (SATA 3 & 4) that were mirroring the striped drives originally but now inaccessible hopefully to recover anything??? More than likely the OS still won't be able to detect the old drives so at that point I could attempt recovery software and then create raid. Any suggestions or thoughts?

Any other suggestions of software titles that someone has personally found to be successful with recovery on a SATA drive that was raided?

Thank-you, Lynn