I've had an Alienware laptop since late 2005 running off of RAID 0 with two 80 Gb SATA drives. For the most part, it's never given me any trouble until now. About two months ago it did lose sight of the array and I had to re-initialize it, which worked fine. Now it doesn't seem to see the array, but it presents no errors. I get this: FastTrak 378 (tm) BIOS version 1.00.1.35 (c) 2002-2005 Promise Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Scanning IDE drives..... The "Scanning IDE drives....." will disappear after a few seconds, and then everything just stops. I cannot get into BIOS (it normally won't let me in until after this point in the boot sequence), and it hasn't loaded to the point of being able to boot from a CD. Ideally, I'm hoping to be able to recover data from my system, but failing that, I'll be happy if I can just reinstall the OS. Any ideas?

The expectation of any data security when running RAID0 should be re-evaluated. RAID0 is very risky. If the Array is broken there is no recovery option. Maybe you could clear the CMOS by removing the CMOS battery for a bit. Is one of your hard drives removable? If so, removing it may allow access to the BIOS.

I agree... RAID 0 is great until something goes wrong, then it all goes REALLY wrong. :) The system was a gift, and I made the mistake of just never getting around to reconfiguring it. Luckily I have an external Seagate drive that I keep my really important stuff backed up on. The only stuff I might lose from losing the array is my progress through my video games. :) I tried what you suggested, disconnected the two drives, and it booted to the point of allowing me into BIOS. On a whim, I powered down without making any changes, reconnected the drives, and it actually booted up fine. Suffice to say, I'm getting rid of the RAID array. Thanks for your help!!!!

Glad it booted again. I have read that if one of the drives in a RAID array executes a self check of any type the delay can cause that drive to be dropped from the array. When you only have TWO drives in a RAID0 array you lose the entire array. Fortunately your promise controller must be more tolerant than some. If the laptop is now running OK you could image to the external and then image back after losing the array. That may of may not work, depending on available space.