I have a Dell Dimension 8400 with two 250gb Maxtor hard drives in a RAID array. I will call the two hard drives in the machine 0 & 2; those were the positions given to them by the RAID application. One of the drives (0) started to fail (as confirmed by error codes returned during diagnostic tests). After consultation with Dell tech support, Dell shipped me a new Maxtor Maxline III 250 gb hard drive. When it arrived, I removed 0 and replaced it with the new drive (N). After installing Windows XP Media Edition, the RAID utility told me I was missing a hard drive, but both N & 2 were visible in “My Computer. I chose not to create a new RAID volume because I was afraid it would overwrite the information I had on drive 2. I then connected the old hard drive (0) to the pc via an external USB cable. Windows recognized the new hardware and I went to access it so I could transfer my settings, files, etc. before sending the drive back to Dell. Windows told me the drive was not formatted, would I like to format it now? I answered “No so as not to lose the data on it.
I then physically removed N and reinstalled 0 to try to copy the data I needed to 2 or to DVD. The computer then wouldn’t boot, telling me there were no bootable drives. I put the new drive back in, but haven’t booted up the computer.
Why is my old hard drive being recognized as “unformatted? I connected it via USB to my laptop and got the same message. How do I get my info off of “0 before I send it back to Dell? And is all the info on “2 gone as well since I installed XP to N while 2 was still there? Right now, I can’t seem to use my computer with the new drive or the old one.
Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Bill