asked on

Disk Error with Optiplex 980 running Intel RAID Corrupt MBR?

I have a Dell Optiplex 980 running Vista Professional equipped with Intel Matrix Manager from the factory. It appears that it got unplugged by the user and is now dead.

Upon boot the Intel Matrix Storage Manager is reporting two arrays (there should only be one). There is an RAID ID0 and RAID ID1 both are 232 GB. The status of both is failed.

It also reports on the physical disks.

Dirve 0 is showing as a Member Disk and is green
Drive 1 is red and it's status is Error Occurred (1)

I've tried to boot off of each disk but neither will boot the computer. I went into Windows Repair with the Vista system disk and it can't see any files on drive 0 when I'm running on Drive 0 alone. I didin't try this with drive 1 because of the error. When I try to do a Windows repair it tells me that that drive 0 has a corrupt/mbr.

I need to get this data. Any other suggestions? If I come up dry I will send them off to Ontrack to try to recover the files.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Callandor

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

kdubendorf

ASKER

Thank you, good advice. Unfortunately RAID Reconstructor didn't work in this case. It would only do RAID 0 or RAID 5, not RAID 1. I think the Intel Matrix solution is different than the RAID found in servers. It certainly doesn't seem as reliable.
While RAID REconstructor couldn't help me, I will use it in the future. I did take your suggestion and try to read the 2 disks in another computer. One read fine, the other had a lot of repairs, not sure how good the data is on the second.
I took the one that read good and put it back in the PC. It couldn't boot when the BIOS was set to RAID. I changed the BIOS to legacy, and after a little complaining it booted off of the drive. So the problem is solved for now.
I don't think I'll be able to go to RAID 1 again unless I do a complete reinstall.

Thanks.