Acronis - I just nearly died!!!

Picture this... come in from work, turn PC on, reaches desktop, try to click Startmenu to launch a program and everything has just frozen, HDD led is ON permanent... my normal 100% stable WinXP doesn't normally do this... reboot...

Bios memory check.... BOOT DISK FAILURE......!!!!!!!!!!!

Acronis, myself, Quest and others are still pleading for Silicon Image RAID chipset support - it's taken me 3 hours to recover from the thought of how bad this could have been!

Fortunately upon powering off, then back on I'm back and working as normal - I've frantically copied a lot of really important work across to my spare 80gb drive just in case one of these 2 x Maxtor 160gb RAID0 drives goes dead on me!!!

It's a bit worrying, maybe dodgy SATA cable connection, although PC hasn't moved in months etc... but as you (Acronis) know I am unable to image my machine due to the TI Boot CD/Disk being able to view my 2 x 160gb RAID0 config as ONE drive like Windows sees it. So YES, I can make an image from within windows but I ***STILL*** cannot restore should one of these 2 160gb drives go down on me.

From the "BOOT DISK FAILURE" message I actually didn't dare to go near my PC for 30mins due to sheer panic, note I am a very advanced Windows user, programmer etc... Other than a clean install, what the hell could I have done had this machine not booted back up for me tonight

I was wondering how I was going to get work I'd done the previous night back, I mean think about it, how the hell do you recover some files from a RAID0 configuration when possibly 1 of those 2 HD drives has failed - data is shared between them isn't it? Where wouldl I start?

Advice from Acronis tech guys on the last question would be greatly appreciated for future reference please.

Next, I know I've re-sent my original support ticket email again asking WHEN my Silicon Image chipset is going to be supported, I think after tonights incident I could really do with a better timescale from Acronis on this

While still waiting for this crucial support of Raid chipset, perhaps the Acronis tech people could advise on how I can possibly take my 2 x 160gb RAID0 and restore back to ONE SINGLE drive so I can temporarily get back to using TI?

e.g. I've just taken an image of my partitions tonight and got it all on a DVD, if I hook up ONE single SATA drive, use TI Boot CD, I know that I can tell TI to restore those partitions onto that single drive, but I also know from trying this originally that WinXP won't boot up, presumably the boot sector it has restored from the RAID0 backup don't work once restored to ONE drive? Is it as simple as fixing the boot sector somehow?

Thanks to Acronis and anyone who spent time reading/understanding any of this, my best advice I can offer anyone is DON'T bother putting 2 drives together as RAID0 just for a bit extra performance, it's not worth the hassle and uncertainty when something starts to go wrong!!!

Fedorov.

 

Hi, Fedorov999

Soory to hear of your trouble Fedorov.

Did you have any power cuts or outrage's. [Sounds like it]

Is it a spare SATA you are thinking of useing.

FIXMBR might work.

Also so see this link I left for you:- #9

Take Care,
TheQuest

 

Thanks Quest, no power cuts that I noticed, been running all evening since and all is fine (fingers crossed etc.!)

I'm thinking of just reverting to doing a TI restore from DVD onto ONE of these 160gb Maxtor SATAs which I know I can do, as I say it's just how to get the thing to boot, i.e. it don't like the boot sector from the previous RAID0 config.

I would then use the 2nd (now spare) 160gb as my new backup drive for keeping images on - I currently use a spare 80gb IDE drive as backup drive.

Thanks for the link btw - I'm just not confident about trying *anything* with regard to restoring to this RAID0 - I'll only be happy once the TI boot CD can see my 2 drives as 1 then I'll feel I can safely restore.

Naturally we all hope and pray we never need to use/try this restore feature

Fedorov.

 

Hi, Fedorov999

Make sure you clean up the old Raid0 on the HDD, [000 wipe]

If it does not work with FIXMBR.

Come back and I will tell you how to restore the Image from the DVD,
to a new Raid0.............. #2

You must have spare Clean PATA to do this.

Lengthy at FIRST to setup but works.

Well it was when first I worked on an Idea I had of a way of backing up an Image of Raid0 with Ti safely.

Take Care,
TheQuest

 

Hello Fedorov --

Actually, as far as I know the build that will support the 3112 controller is very close to be released. At least it's being tested right now... I hope that it will be released quite soon.

As for now I believe The Quest as usual was faster than me with an advice, a helpful one *wink*

Thank you.

--
Best regards,
Anton Gromov

Acronis, Inc.
395 Oyster Point Blvd. Suite 213
South San Francisco
CA 94080 USA
http://www.acronis.com/

Acronis... Compute with confidence

 

Thanks for the replies guys!

Quest, think I'll hang in there a little longer if 3112 controller support is "close" cos soon as I know I can restore my images then I'm happy to stay with 2 x 160gb RAID 0 configuration

Lets hope it's real soon!

Fedorov.