What is ailing my PC?

[XC26]

Thanks. The RAID stuff is, needless to say, over my head. But cutting to the chase, it is the disk that's gone bad (and even if it's managed to get into WEindows this time, it's only a question of time before it happens again). As a non-techy's solution, might my best option be to get a new HD, load Windows on it and take it from there?

Looking again at the photo of your screen, I notice your running 2 physical disks in a RAID 0 configuration, which means you simply combine the 2 separate disks into one larger, logical disk or volume. There will be no fault tolerance on this level of RAID configuration. Do you have any backups of your important and/or personal data? Otherwise you are in danger of losing stuff. If you can get the system to boot up one more time, you should aim to copy all your data to a safe external location, DVD, USB drive, stick, Cloud, etc.

Once you’re sorted, perhaps run a RAID 5 configuration (min. 3 physical disks). This would give you a fault tolerance of 1 disk failure and the system would continue as normal while you replace the faulty disk. As well as this, set up a backup strategy using external media or cloud services.

 

[swee'pea99]

I bought a new HP Pavilion but the old computer was still working, strange thing was that if I turned the old machine off it would boot straight away if it was only switched off for 30-40 minutes, after 30-40 minutes it would take 3 or 4 attempts to boot.

Very interesting. Thanks for that.

 

[swee'pea99]

Looking again at the photo of your screen, I notice your running 2 physical disks in a RAID 0 configuration, which means you simply combine the 2 separate disks into one larger, logical disk or volume. There will be no fault tolerance on this level of RAID configuration. Do you have any backups of your important and/or personal data? Otherwise you are in danger of losing stuff. If you can get the system to boot up one more time, you should aim to copy all your data to a safe external location, DVD, USB drive, stick, Cloud, etc.

Once you’re sorted, perhaps run a RAID 5 configuration (min. 3 physical disks). This would give you a fault tolerance of 1 disk failure and the system would continue as normal while you replace the faulty disk. As well as this, set up a backup strategy using external media or cloud services.

Thanks. Needless to say I have no idea what that means, but it's enough info for me to google, so I'll definitely look into it. It's only just occurred to me, that RAID 0 reports as 465.7Gb. I have three disks in there - a 500 + 2x300....so the RAID 0 figure doesn't tally with anything, far as I can see. (As usual, whenever I do computer stuff.)

 

[Lonestar]

Is that your pin number?

 

[swee'pea99]

Is that your pin number?

No - my pin number is.....oh...hang on...you nearly got me there!

 

[Tigerbiten]

Think of RAID 0 as two books where you write all the odd numbers in one book and all even numbers in the other.
It's faster because you have two people reading and writing the numbers if needed.
Everything is fine until one book goes up in flames.
Then you have only half the numbers and no way of finding the other half.

RAID 1 is where the same number is written in each book. If you lose a book then no problem. But you waste a lot of space with duplicate data.

So RAID 5 was devised so the data was written across 3 or more books in such a way that if you lost a book, it could be rewritten from the data in the other books.

 

[Crackle]

While it's working get an external drive attached and backup your data as has been said but do it ASAP. It could also be a failing RAID controller which is probably built into the Motherboard if it's a Dell or a failing SATA channel, all depending on how it's configured but the result is the same, it's all about to go wrong.

 

[XC26]

Thanks. Needless to say I have no idea what that means, but it's enough info for me to google, so I'll definitely look into it. It's only just occurred to me, that RAID 0 reports as 465.7Gb. I have three disks in there - a 500 + 2x300....so the RAID 0 figure doesn't tally with anything, far as I can see. (As usual, whenever I do computer stuff.)

A computer can have many physical disks and use some or all of them in (multiple) RAID configurations. It’s not so easy to deduce your exact configuration from your screenshot, apart from there’s at least one RAID volume. The info. at the top of the screenshot lists your physical devices, the lines with 0, 2, 3 in the 2nd column. 0 and 3 are both 298 (approx 300) GB disks and 2 is your DVD drive. This implies 1 is missing, as indicated by the error message lower down the screenshot: Drive 1 not found (reported as a SATA drive) - could this be your 500GB disk? However, your RAID volume appears to be roughly 2x the capacity of your smaller (working) disks, implying it is using those and that your 500 GB (broken?) disk is not in the RAID volume. This is where one needs to be at the computer in person to poke around a bit more. It’s not out of the question to have all 3 of your disks in a RAID volume, even though they don’t all have the same capacity. E.g. if you had a RAID 5 on all 3 of your disks, you would have a RAID volume with the capacity of 2x the smallest disk plus fault tolerance of any one disk.

Anyhow, the most important thing is to safeguard your data, if you can.

 

[swee'pea99]

A computer can have many physical disks and use some or all of them in (multiple) RAID configurations. It’s not so easy to deduce your exact configuration from your screenshot, apart from there’s at least one RAID volume. The info. at the top of the screenshot lists your physical devices, the lines with 0, 2, 3 in the 2nd column. 0 and 3 are both 298 (approx 300) GB disks and 2 is your DVD drive. This implies 1 is missing, as indicated by the error message lower down the screenshot: Drive 1 not found (reported as a SATA drive) - could this be your 500GB disk? However, your RAID volume appears to be roughly 2x the capacity of your smaller (working) disks, implying it is using those and that your 500 GB (broken?) disk is not in the RAID volume. This is where one needs to be at the computer in person to poke around a bit more. It’s not out of the question to have all 3 of your disks in a RAID volume, even though they don’t all have the same capacity. E.g. if you had a RAID 5 on all 3 of your disks, you would have a RAID volume with the capacity of 2x the smallest disk plus fault tolerance of any one disk.

Anyhow, the most important thing is to safeguard your data, if you can.

Thanks again. The thing I find most baffling is that it reports it can't find drive 1 - the 500gb drive - but that's the drive Windows is on, the one I'm in right now, that enables me to post this message. Plus the fact that when I did the chkdsk, recently, it reported no errors.

Would this RAID issue affect anything if I decided to go for broke, get a new 500gb drive and install Windows 7 on it?

 

[XC26]

Thanks again. The thing I find most baffling is that it reports it can't find drive 1 - the 500gb drive - but that's the drive Windows is on, the one I'm in right now, that enables me to post this message. Plus the fact that when I did the chkdsk, recently, it reported no errors.

Would this RAID issue affect anything if I decided to go for broke, get a new 500gb drive and install Windows 7 on it?

It does seem odd if it’s running on the supposedly broken disk! If you’re not bothered about having a RAID set up, you can simply unconfigure it and run with independent separate disks. This will *** DESTROY *** ### ALL ### the data on the RAID volume.

There should be no reason to prevent you installing another, new disk - assuming there’s room on the controller to plug it in. Accessing and safeguarding your personal data is most important thing. Make sure you backup all your precious files to an external destination (2 independent copies, if possible).

 

[Tigerbiten]

How are your drives setup ??
Go Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management.
That will show each hard drive and the partitions on them.
What drive letters are you using and how big is each partition ??
I've partitions C: & E: on my first drive and D: & F: on my second.
From what I can make out you have a C: 500 Gb raid disk partition, so you should have two more partitions plus your CD/DVD drives.
You should have an other 100 Gb partition from the rest of 2x300 drives and an other 500 Gb partition from your big drive.
If you have a 500 Gb raid disk partition and 2x 300 Gb partitions from the other drives then something is very messed up.

 

[swee'pea99]

How are your drives setup ??
Go Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management.
That will show each hard drive and the partitions on them.
What drive letters are you using and how big is each partition ??
I've partitions C: & E: on my first drive and D: & F: on my second.
From what I can make out you have a C: 500 Gb raid disk partition, so you should have two more partitions plus your CD/DVD drives.
You should have an other 100 Gb partition from the rest of 2x300 drives and an other 500 Gb partition from your big drive.
If you have a 500 Gb raid disk partition and 2x 300 Gb partitions from the other drives then something is very messed up.

All of this stuff is way over my head but since you've been nice enough to ask...

Does that tell you anything?

FWIW I've pretty much decided to take my cue from the message earlier that said 'this happened to me for a year - it would always start up on the third boot'. I just have a gut feeling that this is software (specifically W10) related rather than hardware. It always happens after a W10 update. So I think what I'm going to do is disable auto-updates, install avast to use for anti-virus (because Windows Defender will get out of date), and avoid turning the computer off (it reboots itself automatically when it updates, which is how I end up finding myself looking at that screen). My theory is, I'll be ok as long as I don't restart - which shouldn't be hard: as a rule it stays on 24 hours a day.

I've backed up everything that matters; I'll aim to back up once a week or so; other than that I'll just keep calm and carry on, and see how it goes. Thanks for all your input and advice. I do really appreciate it.

 

[swee'pea99]

Well, so much for that. It turns out Microsoft have decided that with Windows 10 you have no option to disable auto-updates. Which means my PC will keep restarting itself whether I like it or not. Grrr. I hate Microsoft. And I don't think much of Windows 10, which was never more than a feeble and belated attempt to get Microsoft a foothold in the world of mobiles. Can anyone think of a good reason why I shouldn't just install Windows 7 - the last true PC Windows - and have done with it?

 

[Tigerbiten]

All of this stuff is way over my head but since you've been nice enough to ask...

View attachment 386222

Does that tell you anything?

Something is messed up.
You shouldn't be getting messages about a RAID fail as you're not running one.

If all your data is safe and you're going to reinstall Windoze, then I'd make one of your other 300Gb hard drives the boot drive.
This is because your computer is a bit 50-50 about finding the 500Gb C: drive when it reboots.
But if your C: drive has an internal RAID then you do run the risk of all the data on it being lost when you change the boot drive.

The quick method is just to press the "F2" key as you reboot to get into the BIOS and then change which hard drive is used to boot from. The "Del" key works if "F2" doesn't. Reboot with the Windoze 7 disk in a drive to install it.

The slow method would be to work out which hard drive goes with each drive letter, so you can empty the drive before making it the boot drive.

Luck ...........

 

[swee'pea99]

Something is messed up.
You shouldn't be getting messages about a RAID fail as you're not running one.

If all your data is safe and you're going to reinstall Windoze, then I'd make one of your other 300Gb hard drives the boot drive.
This is because your computer is a bit 50-50 about finding the 500Gb C: drive when it reboots.
But if your C: drive has an internal RAID then you do run the risk of all the data on it being lost when you change the boot drive.

The quick method is just to press the "F2" key as you reboot to get into the BIOS and then change which hard drive is used to boot from. The "Del" key works if "F2" doesn't. Reboot with the Windoze 7 disk in a drive to install it.

The slow method would be to work out which hard drive goes with each drive letter, so you can empty the drive before making it the boot drive.

Luck ...........

Interesting, thanks. It would never have occurred to me to load the W7 on one of the 300s, but it makes sense.