Windows VISTA wont boot up. Please Help (RAID)

[hollowman]

Hi all. I'm just wondering if anyone can help me with this.

1. I have Vista sp2 installed
2. My drives are RAID (2x 150GB)
3. I have C and D drive

All of a sudden, one day i decided to turn on my PC and go about my usual business.

It said "raid can't be detected, blah blah." so i reboot...
It then detected the raid, and windows vista loading screen comes up (the stupid green animated bar).

Anyway, while the green bar is animating/loading vista, only 1 hard drive is rapidly active as for the other one, its spining and the head is moving etc but not as much as the other one.

it then comes up with the CHKDSK screen, wanting to check my HDD for errors etc... i allow it to continue.

1 does its phase 1 of 3 and so on... when it goes to phase 3 of 3
it says this:

CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors
Repairin the unreadable security descriptors data stream.

i allow it to continue

it then gets to a stage and says

Inserting an index entry with id 2865 into index $SII of file 9
Inserting an index entry with id 2866 into index $SDM of file 9
Inserting an index entry with id 2867 into index $SII of file 9
Inserting an index entry with id 2868 into index $SDM of file 9

and so on

then it says

Rapairing the security file record segment.
131968 security descriptors processed.
Cleaning up 246 unsused index entries from index $SII from file 9
Cleaning up 246 unsused index entries from index $SDH from file 9

and so on

then it says something about "not enough disk space and cannot repair" its to fast, so then it reboots.....

If i skip the CHKDSK it continues and nothing happens for a while, and just reboots.

I tried resetting the bios... didnt help

So basically, i need to get into my windows and i cant, there is a folder on my hdd that i need, i dont care about anything else ...

can anyone please help if they can.

Thanks

[Aboulaly]

have you tried inserting a vista cd and do a startup repair from the cd?

[hollowman]

no i have not ?
ill try it....

[hollowman]

when i started the vista dvd, it loads the files, then i get the BSOD

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

[DND]

whats the bet one of your HDD's are dieing

[hollowman]

whats the bet that if that is the case that im going to cry my eyes out

[hollowman]

after tryin ga few times, it gets to the windows vista blank screen and just hangs there for a very very long time.... to be honest, im not to worried about the pc or the OS, i just need that damn folder

[Aboulaly]

when i started the vista dvd, it loads the files, then i get the BSOD

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

try to get the numbers generated with this error message that would help you pin point the problem
0x000000????

[hollowman]

try to get the numbers generated with this error message that would help you pin point the problem
0x000000????

yeah i did get a whole buch of that... but i dont get the BSOD now... i manage to get into the recovery console of vista, but its very very slow, dont know why

[Aboulaly]

try to do a system restore from the repair console to an earlier date where it was working fine and see if this does something.

[hollowman]

try to do a system restore from the repair console to an earlier date where it was working fine and see if this does something.

nop, that didnt work...

im starting to think that there is actually some boot sector or hardware malfuntion

[hollowman]

well it turns out my hard drive is faulty... well one of them anyway, sent it away to singapore for replacement.... but i lost my data, which is a shame....

LESSON LEARNT ! never have your important PC on a RAID setup !!!

[johnhoward]

LOL , backup backup backup

[johnhoward]

I wish I had a dollar for every customer Ive told of the importance of doing regular backups

[fandtm666]

best having it in raid 1 also when it booted it should have given you a raid error, on my setup the bios gives me a critical error message when one disc is playing up.This then allows it to boot through then use raidxpert to rebuild a new drive

[Zero Alpha]

I wish I had a dollar for every customer Ive told of the importance of doing regular backups

Don't tell your customers that