"DT" wrote in message
u...

I have been running the following system for a year & yesterday when the
system restarted it said "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS
ENTER".

The PC comprises:
--------------------
Giga 8KNXP (Rev1) with 2.8GHz Iintel cpu
1 GB RAM
2 x Maxtor 120GB SATA disks in RAID1 using the onboard SilImage chip (this
is the Boot C-drive mirrored)
2 x Maxtor 120GB SATA disks in RAID0 using the onbaord Intel ICH5R chip
(this is the non-bootable striped drives)
1 x DVD-RW
1 x DVD/CD reader
1 x floppy drive
1 x ANTEC 550W power supply


I did not change any BIOS/CMOS settings prior to the DISK BOOT FAILURE
error. The only thing that initiated the system restart was Norton
antivirus update of the antivirus data.

At boot time, seems the RAID0 drives are still recgonised, but the RAID1
drives are not recognised (hence does not boot).
There are no other cds/dvds/floppys in the other drives at boot time.
I opened up the chasis and disconnected/reconnected the power-cables &
data cables to & from the mobo to the 4 x harddisks; but this did not
solve anything.

I suspect that the Silicon Image controller on the mobo has failed! What
do you think?

I have several options:

1) buy an addon RAID1 controller card (eg PROMISE Fastrak S150 Tx4) &
connect the 2 x RAID mirrored C-drives.
2) buy an ASUS mobo with equivalent onboard 4 x SATA with RAID1 & RAID0
support.

**ps.- I understand from a retailer that the Giga8KNXP (Rev2) has been
discontinued as a product. Does not speak well for a product that last
just over a year & had so many BIOS fixes.

My RAID0 drives actually contain a DRIVEIMAGE7 backup of the entire
bootable C-drive. But my main concernroblem is that with any of the above
2 options, how do I keep all the data on all 4 xSATA disks intact when I
reinstall them? Alterntatively, if I can keep the data on the RAID0 drives
which have the DRIVEIMAGE7 backup of drive C, then hopefully I can reimage
drive C when all the new hw is installed.... How do I do this?

I appreciate any advice you gurus can provide please.

I'll take a whack at it, as I have the same mobo, although I have not put
the SI controller to use. I assume the SI controller normally would provide
a bios read-out of the drives attached, just as the ICH5R does, and if so
does it show any drives attached to the controller? If not, I would suspect
the controller is dead, as it would be low odds for both drives or both
cables going bad simultaneously. However, if both drives on this controller
are powered by the same cable through a pigtail, try changing to another
pair of Molex connectors or another pigtail. If one wire is bad upstream
both drives may not power up. Do they spin? If so, nix that idea.

I'd assume the RAID creation scheme used by Promise will not be the same as
the SI controller, so I would plan on no retention of data on the C: drive.
OTOH, you could always buy another 8KNXP rev1 on Ebay and you would be up
and running again, theoretically, assuming the drive integrity is still
there.

I have RAID0 on the ICH5R and use Norton Ghost for cloning, but have no
experience with DriveImage7. Does DI7 have a boot-floopy option for
restoring the image? If so,
you could pull the data from the ICH5R after setting up the new array from
the boot floppy. This would be SOP with Ghost, and hopefully you have this
option. If you must use Windows to run DI7, I don't know how you will get
the OS operational again in its old form without restoring the image from a
floppy running in DOS.