Raid0 apparently gone, cannot reformat with XP

[rasloper]

My system;
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe NForce 4 9
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
Corsair TWINX1024-3200PT (2x512)
2ea WD740GD 74 GB SATA 10K Raptor drivesBFG Geforce 7800 GTX OC 256mb ect.

I'm 64 now and have messed around with computers since pong was exciting. Over the years I picked up on a few things so consider my self an enthuisist. This was a decent gaming computer in its day 2005 setup was Raid0 with XP Pro but was not used much due to trying to stay alive in this s****y economy. The computer was moved from whence it sat for years to an upstairs office. Began to boot it up but failed. So knowing a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, I did not need the data (just a couple of games) and decided I would just reformat the beast. I have done so over the years with a couple of other computers no big deal so went ahead. Well the reformat failed and in the insuing investigation remembered it was a Raid0 and maybe I should not have attempted a reformat. So I have tried numerous ways, in and out of the bios etc. Near as I can tell it gets to one point or another and fails due to XP not being able to see the drives. They show up in the boot but will not format. At this point I would like to have the raid) back or just be able to format one of the drives to use it by itself which it will not do either. I have no need to recover any of the data as I can reinstall most every thing I had. Been all over the internet but nothing I try will work and it appears any recovery system is too expensive or will not boot without an OS. I have another older computer Im using but cannot switch the Sata drives in its configureation, OLD. Any help leading me in the right direction will be gratefully appreaciated. Gregory

 

[o1die]

If one of your drives won't format alone, then it's bad. I usually hear a clicking noise when a drive goes out. Two of my ssd's froze recently and windows device manager could locate them, but they were white in the system properties, indicating the device was there, but not working.

 

[ko888]

Is the RAID array still intact (i.e. set up and validated through the BIOS RAID setup feature)?

Did you have the NVRAID driver on a a floppy diskette so that you could install it using the F6 key add a storage driver during Windows XP installation? Without the driver Windows XP will not recognize the RAID array and you won't be able to use it.

 

[rasloper]

Thanks for your reply,

I dont think the RAID array was still intact. I also did down load drivers from all sorts of places including board and drive manu. some on the web and of course the ones from the original driver disk. At one point I stumbled across what appeared to be a low level format to clear the disk, it seemed to help somewhat. Got through the BIOS, BIOS setup did reflect the drives were there as first and second SATA. Was able to begin windows setup got through the drivers then it would choke and tell me XP could not be loaded without a drive? I finally gave up a couple of days later and decided I had had enough and would through money at it instead so dropped it off at my local computer store (small family run biz that I trust so far). $55 to diagnose to see if it can be saved. Thanks for your help to those who responded.

gm