Repair install doesn't see HDD size right

[jackslap]

My problem in a nutshell. I'm trying to install XP as a repair but it isn't going well. I've done it before and I'm quite familiar with the steps, but this time there is one new wrinkle. Windows tells me it sees two partitions, which it shouldn't. There is only one, but it is comprised of two HDD's in a stripe setup. There is a total of 1.2TB of space between the two of them. The free space is somewhere in the 800-900 GB range before the machine started having problems. Windows keeps saying that there is only 900 MB of free space, which is not enough to install windows.

Laughable. There is a ton of free space on those drives, and there is an existing XP installation, albiet one that doesn't work.

This all started due to the install of XP wouldn't load. It would just give me an error message saying disk read error. It was then that I tried "fixmbr" and "fixboot" figuring that might help. When it didn't help I figured that I'd better re-install windows as a repair. Now I'm at my current problem.

Remember, the two drives are striped, both have a ton of free space. There is an existing XP 64 install on them that has been working for over a year. No new hardware or software was installed recently. Windows installation doesn't recognize the true size of the drive. Thanks in advance to anyone who can provid insight.

 

[rexter]

Problem with Raid 0 is that it's vulnerable in anyway. It only take one hard drive fail to work properly And you may have a damage MBR, and if your XP version is older than the one you are trying to fix, the SP3 files have been replace with an old files along with updated files some files may have been corrupted in which will not work anymore.


At this point you will need to reinstall a fresh copy of that OS because I don't think you'll be able to repair the OS anymore, also I hope you backup you files because I don't know if you will be able to retrieve your important files. Try this program if it'll work. http://www.derescue.com/software-screenshot.html


Raid one is fast but to me it's not worth the hassle... I partitioned my hard drive to at least 5 or 6, 3 on each drive unless extra drive is available for stripe system.

DRIVE 1:
PARTITION C - OS/PROGRAMS
PARTITION D - DOWNLAODS
PARTITION E - MEDIA FILES
or
PARTITION X - PROGRAMS

DRIVE 2:
PARTITION F - PAGE SYSTEM
PARTITION G - SCRATH FILES/TEMP FILES
PARTITION H - GAMES
PARTITION I – DATA FILES / BACKUP FILES

I found that booting and loading of programs is not that much faster with raid 0 than this setup. One thing with this setup though is that repair with OS disc doesn't work properly so I use Acronis True Image to backup partition C. Restoring is simpler and faster than using OS disc to repair.

Sorry if I'm not much help but is your XP update to SP3 already?

 

[jackslap]

After 10 days of battling with this I am currently copying my data off the old drives. I was not able to see the data on the drives until using "Get Data Back NTFS" software. What a miracle it is. However, it took some tweaking to get it to work.

The problem was that the RAID stopped booting and Win XP 64 would not see the drives true size or info anymore. Also, they weren't being recognized by Windows as RAID mode drives, but IDE instead. Like the RAID driver for windows got lost.

I got a new HDD, installed windows 7 and appropriate RAID driver, then plugged in the two RAID drives again, booted to the new drive and ran the software on the RAID. BAM, all the data shows up and is copying off the RAID onto the new HDD. I will be of course using a disk imaging software from now on. Acronis seems to be the clear choice. This was a nightmare of a job and a hell of a week.

 

[rexter]

I realise that you need a file recovery program for RAID and that's different than for none RAID, anyway, it's good that you found the program that works for you. I use these programs for most of my recovery and works great.

http://ntfsrecovery.com/
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/

I've used FarStone Total Recovery, Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost in the past but Acronis came out my number one choice. One I like the most is that you can also create a disc where you can use to backup and restore to any PC which also works as a boot disc.

Glad to know you found away to fix your PC issue.