My friend has a Dell Dimension 8400 Desktop computer and he was having some random electrical problems. The computer has two hard drives running a RAID 1 array (software not hardware). The HDD’s use SATA cables. Long story short, I got a similar dell power supply and replaced the bad one with the good one to make sure its the PSU, which solved the original problem.

However, when I was cabling the new power supply I did not notice that the SATA cable for the 2nd hard drive came loose from its connection to the motherboard. I booted it up and his Intel Raid Utility freaked out and messed up the array. The disk was labeled as a non-raid member disk. I could not boot into windows. This is the problem I have now.

I did some searching around a found a posting with an email from an Intel support tech that gave me some step by step directions. Following the directions, I used the array utility to remove the RAID array. Both disk are now listed as non-member disks. After a reboot, I got a error saying "Bad PBR". Did some searching on that, and it turns out to be a messed up boot record, which makes sense to me. I used the recovery disk to repair it from command prompt (FIXBOOT). It could not find any installation, so I used FIXMBR in stead. Now, after a reboot, I get a different error saying "Error Loading Operating System."
This is where I am at now. Should I re-create the RAID array using the utility? What should I do?

Both disks are listed as 150 GB. I don’t think the data was erased, but I am stuck. Any ideas/suggestions that avoid data loss would be helpful. Thanks!

I’d like to swap out the hard drive on my Compaq Persario desktop computer, running Windows XP. The physical part of it I can handle, but is the software end of it as easy as puting my reformat/recovery disc in the disc drive and then booting up on that to load everything I need to have it run correctly? Also, are there any special considerations to think of when looking for the replacemet hard drive?

Thanks!!

I was taking my data from my laptop and putted it on an external hard disk, I re-transferred it to a desktop computer but when I was about to have 92% completed, a power serge occurred during the process and I lost the data on the hard disk because its an external hard disk, is there a program to recover my files please tell me.
(The process was by using the cut and paste method).
So I need a recovery program that recovers all types of recovery even cut and pasted files.
To be more specific the largest file I need to recover is 300Mb and the files are in all formats (from document files - video files).
Thanks for your help in advance.