i have a relatively new built computer, and am experiencing my first big problem. i'm not sure what to do, so any help would be appreciated - this is my first build, so i'm a relative newbie when it comes to this... but i'm fairly sure one of my hard drives has died and it is messing up my computer.
my computer is less than a year old. i am running windows 7, and i have a RAID array, with one striped partition and one mirrored on two physical hard drives (using the intel raid matrix).
While I was away my computer crashed, and apparantly tried to reboot, but failed. i came back to see a repair screen, saying the repairs had failed and a system restore was advised. since i didn't know what was going on and wanted to see more options, i cancelled the restore, after which my computer essentially froze (this was stupid, i know this already). after a manual reboot, the computer gives me the following information:
one of my physical hard drives is not responding ("error occurred")
one of my partitions (the mirrored one, RAID 1) is "degraded"
BOOTMGR is missing
(however, it lists both partitions as "bootable")
my questions are:
did i majorly mess up by not restoring the system? what is BOOTMGR?
why is my mirrored drive (RAID 1) degraded (not the striped, which is "normal"), and is it possible to boot the system to windows using the remaining hard drive (windows should be loaded on the mirrored partition)?
can i use the computer on one hard drive while i wait for a new drive to arrive?
how can i back up data from the remaining hard drive?
i should mention that i can access the raid controller from the BIOS, but i haven't tried anything yet because i don't really know what to do (and i don't want to lose my surviving data).
any help would be greatly appreciated. thank you in advance...
matt
my computer is less than a year old. i am running windows 7, and i have a RAID array, with one striped partition and one mirrored on two physical hard drives (using the intel raid matrix).
While I was away my computer crashed, and apparantly tried to reboot, but failed. i came back to see a repair screen, saying the repairs had failed and a system restore was advised. since i didn't know what was going on and wanted to see more options, i cancelled the restore, after which my computer essentially froze (this was stupid, i know this already). after a manual reboot, the computer gives me the following information:
one of my physical hard drives is not responding ("error occurred")
one of my partitions (the mirrored one, RAID 1) is "degraded"
BOOTMGR is missing
(however, it lists both partitions as "bootable")
my questions are:
did i majorly mess up by not restoring the system? what is BOOTMGR?
why is my mirrored drive (RAID 1) degraded (not the striped, which is "normal"), and is it possible to boot the system to windows using the remaining hard drive (windows should be loaded on the mirrored partition)?
can i use the computer on one hard drive while i wait for a new drive to arrive?
how can i back up data from the remaining hard drive?
i should mention that i can access the raid controller from the BIOS, but i haven't tried anything yet because i don't really know what to do (and i don't want to lose my surviving data).
any help would be greatly appreciated. thank you in advance...
matt