Highpoint Raid ruined by Parallel port scanner - Hardware

brain4000@hotmail.com (Jess) wrote in message news:<6f6bae49.0408101244.19d9d265@posting.google.com>...
> Hey,
> I have a RAID system running a Highpoint HPT370A Raid chipset.
> I've got four 60gig hd's, 2gig ram, dual 1ghz p3's running on windows
> 2k pro.
> I have the raid setup as a mirror of 2 drives to the other drives.
>
> My problem started when I decided to install a parallel port flatbed
> scanner on my computer ... after installing the drivers I rebooted and
> the screen that shows the Raid drives showed that I had no drives!
> After a day or so of screwing around with it I was able to remove the
> drivers for the scanner. But from then on my computer never worked
> right! Every other time I would start my computer up it would show
> that there was no master drive to boot off of.
>
> I think that it messed my raid up somehow and that there is nothing
> wrong with my hard drives but now it will not boot up no matter what!
> It just goes cli-i-i-i-ck over and over the same way. It sounds like
> a normal hard drive click that is almost stuck.
>
> It does the same thing when I try to load it into another computer!
> I just want to retrieve my files and burn them to cd's.
> Does anyone have any idea what the problem is or suggestions how I can
> retrieve my files?
>
> Thanks!

You could just take out the drives that are being backed up (or maybe
either pair, they are supposed to be exact copies, I think) and put
them in another computer. Are each pair set up in striping
arrangement (RAID 0)? If so, you would have to have them connected to
something that supports RAID 0.

I don't actually know if taking two of them would work, it just makes
sense.

Aaron

>
> You could just take out the drives that are being backed up (or maybe
> either pair, they are supposed to be exact copies, I think) and put
> them in another computer. Are each pair set up in striping
> arrangement (RAID 0)? If so, you would have to have them connected to
> something that supports RAID 0.
>
> I don't actually know if taking two of them would work, it just makes
> sense.
>
> Aaron


My problem is a bit more complicated...
Its raid 1 mirroring. I can stick anyone of the 4 hard drives in
another normal pc and see it as a slave.
My problem is that my mirror broke on my booting hard drive 5 months
ago and I have been running off of the backup hard drive for all that
time. Now the backup HD just stopped working and I dont know enough
about that so called "Click of Death" to say that thats what my hard
drive has.

I can view all my hard drives except for the one with my crucial data!
It gets to the loading screen for windows then freezes and just keeps
repeating the same thinking/reading click over and over with a half
second pause in between the clicks.

If anyone knows of this problem, or that knows of any good free data
recovery / hard drive repair software that works from a bootable disk
please let me know!

Also if worse comes to worse does anyone know of any data recovery
places that have really good prices being that I dont have to much
money to throw at it seeing that I may have to buy new hard drives.

Thanks!