Technical question on SCSI system

I have a 4 year old home built system using SCSI. My C drive is comprised of 2 75GB Seagate drives operating as a single drive using an Adaptec 2010S card. When I boot up, the system "sees" the drive as ~139GB drive followed by opening Windows Vista.

This morning, when I booted up, the system saw the 139GB drive followed by a blank drive with no size associated with it. The system then posts a message saying there was a problem and to hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot. When I do, I end up in the same place again.

I need help diagnosing this problem ... please. My sense is that the drives are OK since the system sees them and has them sized correctly. Therefore, I suspect I have a bad MBR. Any thoughts on my diagnosis? Other considerations?

If the MBR is bad, what are my options? Reinstalling windows from scratch with a complete reformat? I have an Acronis system backup that will allow me to get back to where I was before this problem.

OR do I have a hard disk problem and should I replace both disks, format, install Windows, etc.?

Appreciate any help/thoughts. Thanks in advance ...

 

a buddy of mine at work had a disk called "hiro boot cd" that may help you. if it comes down to it try doing a repair install of windows, and you are on xp, use the time they ask you after the F8 agree step (i know my lingo isnt the best but you can do your research on what i say and come tyo your own conclusion). it is the SECOND time they ask if you want to repair. you will at least save your documents, or since its a scsi drive im assuming its a server so your clients files (im sure you get my gesture). just a few suggestions that may be of some assistance.

 

I would recommend you start by:

1. Checking the boot order in the motherboard BIOS and checking the configuration/BIOS of the SCSI card (if it has one)
2. Resetting both BIOSes if the above step does not produce results.

Please post back if none of these methods work.

 

You said the drives are Seagate. I would suggest running the Seagate boot CD Diagnostics called Seatools. It will test the drives without disrupting the data on them. It doesn't list SCSI on the Download page for the DOS version but it has worked for me on several Adaptec controllers.

If the drives test good, I would then boot a live Linux CD like Knoppix and see if you can view the drives. If so, it could be a virus or a bad MBR.

 

Aye

Blow the system clean of dust first and then try to boot.

What os are you using?

I suspect it is a windows update but I`m not sure. If it`s not then it could be some sort of virus infection or it could be a hardware problem?

Do you run any virtual scsi (optical) disk programes (apps) in the os?

Hope this can shed light on the problems your having.