Hi, great forum. I am not sure if this is the right spot to ask this question...

I have a PC with a asus m2npv-vm mother board with an nForce 4 raid controller. I had winXP 32bit installed on a raid-0 partition. I was having BSOD issues sometimes and was having to run scan disk alot. I plugged in an ide drive and installed xp on that and used the raid partition as a data drive and removed the original OS from it. That worked better for a while but still had BSOD issues. I then noticed the errors were related to the raid controller still, so i disabled raid in the bios even though the raid bios said the stripped array was healthy. then things were a bit better. I then installed win7 on the ide drive to see if the raid would work better in win 7. no not really haha, but it did work. The onboard nForce network card had always been flaky (although bios updates helped a bit) and now it wouldn't work at all. Then the motherboard completely died.

At this point I really just wanted my data off the raid drives but I learned you can't just use any old controller so I bought the identical motherboard off ebay, hooked it up and got back into windows 7 fine (still with the raid drives unplugged). I updated the bios to the latest 5005 again like I had on the old board. The network card even works now yay. then I plugged the raid drives back in and enabled raid and the system wouldn't boot. just got hung on " Media Shield Rom Bios 6.50 detecting array..." screen. I though maybe it mattered which sata ports I had the drives plugged into originally so i tried every combination to no avail. I couldn't even get back into the bios. so I cleared the cmos, got back into the bios and left raid disabled.

I leaned through experimentation that I could boot with the raid controller enabled with no drives attached to it ok. The previously raided drives were detected in windows 7 as normal drives although one of them didn't get a drive letter and seem to have issues in computer management. If I put one of the drives back under raid i could boot and get into the raid bios and see that there was an error with my striped array (because the other drive was missing). but if i plugged in the other drive by itself under raid, I couldn't boot or get into the raid bios, just stuck at "detecting array..." again. So i am worried that the second drive is damaged or corrupted or something.

I really want my data back so I am not willing to give up but I am not sure what to try next. Can I turn off raid, plug the drives in and run scan disk or something in windows to try to fix them of will that ruin my array?

I have just installed your Fernandos non-AHCI nForce Performance Pack for Win7Vista 64bit v9.0 drivers in anticipation of things working but I realize if I can't boot, that won't help.

Hi Fernando,

Thank-you for taking the time to comment. You provide an excellent service here.

doesn't the idea that Win7 doesn't have correct drivers assume that the raid bios can see a healthy partition to start with? I am not booting to the point of even starting windows 7 yet before the system hangs.

My drivers seem ok from what I can gather

Hi Fernando,

I can boot into win7 with the raid controller enabled if I have either none of the drives attached to it or just one but not the other. I can boot into win7 with both drives plugged into non raid sata ports and i can see the drives in windows although their fire system is unknown .

Attached is a pic of the raid controller driver info in device manager. It sure looks like your drivers. I'll have to reboot and plug the raid drives back in to see the drivers they use. brb.

when I boot with the raid controller enabled in the bios but with no drives attached to it, and also have my two raid drives plugged into non raid ports so I can see them in windows, the two sata drives use the microsoft drivers not the nvidia ones! see attached pic. Also you can see from the other attached screenie that in computer management, the second sata drive is not initialized and computer management wants me to initialize it before it can go anything with it. I am fearful to do so as i worry it will distroy the raid array so I haven't.

looking into the usually hidden devices now...

when I show hidden files the only thing I notice different are the storage volumes and storage volume shadow copies. all drivers for them are microsoft. they don't provide much info regarding what they are. I assume the last two storage volumes ate the sata drives.

Hi Fernando,

as I mentioned before, I can't boot with both raid drives connected to raid enabled sata ports. I can only boot with one drive or it hangs. so I booted with the one drive attached to raid and posted the details of the hidden raid device like you asked. It is using a nvidia driver but I am unsure if it is the correct one. Perhaps you could tell me. I currently have no way to check the other drive.

ok so I was able to downgrade the drivers on the first raid drive but I cannot do so with the second drive because the system won't boot with it plugged in to a raid enabled sata port regardless if the other drive is plugged in or not. I always hang on the detecting array... screen

when I plug it into a non raid enabled sata port I can see it but computer management pops up a request to initialize it. I so far have not done this. perhaps if I did this the drive would be magically fixed, or more likely, the raid partition would be destroyed. I don't know.

so i am stuck at this point.

Hi fernando,

of the three accessible sata ports on my motherboard ( port 2 is blocked by the video card now and back when the raid did work on the old motherboard) I have tried every combination of the three with the two drives.