Motherboards Possible Motherboard failure, RAID0 upgrade?

Hi folks, I am in a bit of a pickle!

This evening my desktop PC froze while playing a movie (Used as a HTPC), I had to press the reset button to get it to reboot, but instead of it booting it just hung with no beeps from the MoBo and no Video signal (The Optical drives were "cycling" on and off also).

I have tried removing / moving various bits of hardware but get the same error everytime, no POST at all.

My 4x 500GB HD's are setup in 2x RAID0 (Striping). I realise this has no failsafe at all but was wondering what my options are to try and get some data back.

I can get a new MoBo with a different chipset and give Raid2Raid a shot but has anyone ever used this I wonder?

I could also try an external SATA RAID box connected to this laptop via USB and again see if Raid2Raid could see anything on there but I feel this would be an extreme longshot.

I could try and find the same MoBo again (Or someone with one) and get the data that way (It's an ASUS P5N32 SLi SE Deluxe, with nVidia nForce4 SLi), bit of a longshot that though.

Finally I could get a MoBo with a newer nForce RAID chipset and hope that this would see my drives and work OK with them without loosing data.

If this was a faulty Graphics card, am I right in saying it would still POST?

Does anyone please have any advice (Other than I should have backed up more often ) that could help me out of this one?


TIA...D-an-W

 

If a PC does not post, it could so so many different things...

Can you get another PC to check RAM, PSU, GPU etc?

Does it give any error on the mobo?

Also, I run RAID0 and only backed up my data the other week after all this time with it, it's silly tbh, just back it up straight away if it isn't the RAID0. The thing is, if it was the HDDs, it would still post, just not boot.

 

Thanks for the fast reply Major, I might be able to rustle something up I suppose. No one is awake at 1.43am though!?!

Should it POST with the GPU removed, I think I tested it without one in too!

EDIT: Still no beep with the GPU, RAM, HDD's and Optical Drives removed, but I don't honestly know if it should beep in that scenario...

 

Mate, my PC does not beep at all.

You'll have to check all componants seperatly somehow, do you have another PC in the house that has supporting RAM and PSU for the broken one? And you need RAM and HDDs in the PC btw for it to boot or post as far as I know.

You need to get hold on some RAM and a PSU, they are the easiest things to clear first and easist things to replace.

Anyway need some sleep

 

I only mention the beep (Beggining to hate that word now!) as I know it did it everytime it was turned on, followed by the initial BIOS Splash screen.

 

Sounds like toasted memory to me

 

Both at the same time though Burnout21?

Forgive me for being stupid here (Been up all night), but I can just run with 1 stick of RAM...right?

 

yeah you can run with a single stick of ram.

Trust me i thought it to be impossible.

I was running 4 sticks of ram, watched a film one night switched off, came back in the morning to find a machine that refused to boot. 3 out of 4 sticks had died in the end, and i found this out after buying a brand new board, as i was too stubborn to except that so many modules could have died!

Basically one stick could have died, but the bios will prevent the system from booting as it runs its own little memtest during inital boot.

 

My priority atm is data, I am going to Maplin shortly (There returns policy is great) to get one of these...

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=226732

and one of these...

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=222999

for use with this...

http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm

Hopefully then I can create some images of the drives and extract that way?

 

Can I state the bleeding obvious?

Get yourself a decent backup plan in order. Raid 0 and no suitable backup.

DOH!

 

WOW there, thats kinda insulting.

Not everyone is a god dam genius of your caliber so inlight us why not! Jesus!

Yes RAID 0 is great for creating a large volume for dumping alot of data qucikly (with the right hardware card)

personally i perfer RAID 5, but when you get into RAID setups it costs serious money for piece of mind.





Back on topic, I find maplin over priced. Be careful when picking up this caddy, they have two types at the same price. the best one has e-SATA! Cheesecake! I had to get one a few weeks ago.

Also may i suggest the icybox

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/02/01/icy-box-ib-nas4220-b-network-storage/1

It supports 1GBit networking, which is a god send when shifting alot of data, as that caddy form maplin only supports 10/100 which is a failure with todays usage of networks.

 

Don't think you can do it that way.

Just get a stick of memory and see, memory costs £10 - £20 and you'll have your computer running again.

 

I finished up getting the IcyBox EasySwap eSATA / USB 2.0 single drive enclosure and the Dual Bay SATA RAID enclosure.

Raid2Raid recognised the RAID0 array in the dual drive enclosure and let me browse files etc. It is currently creating a .img file of the entire drive onto a spare SATA drive in the other enclosure.

RAID Reconstructor didn't see the drives at all, but from what I have found out, it only sees broken arrays and I have to use GetDataBack instead.

 

Wow, I didn't know you could do that. I thought it had to be the same RAID controller in order for the RAID array to be created again?

 

RAID Reconstructor is working now as well with UAC disabled.

At least now I can concentrate on fixing the PC and not worry about my data!

 

Maybe you should do a sensible thing (if you value your data that much) and ditch the RAID 0 array too?

 

My thoughts exactly, the speed gain just isn't worth the hassle!

 

Its a little like Nvidia's SLI and ATI's crossfire, sure two cards are faster than one, but not by a huge amount, costs the earth and the moon, and will always cause headaches! lol!

 

Sorry, but the speed gain IS worth it, I know, I had to use a normal HDD for a month while this PC was being fixed, and the speed when loading some games, extracting file etc is worth it.

Everything is backed up, and if it crashes, it crashes.

 

The speed gain isn't worth the risks... If you really need the speed increase, go RAID 5...