I can't boot to my XP installation. I installed a driver that has put me into a no boot situation. After POST, XP isn't "found". There is just a blinking cursor. So, I installed a spare disk, booted to XP on it to see if I could see my RAID and drag my data over to the spare drive. My RAID is (2) 80GB Maxtors RAID0 on a SIIG PCI ATA100 controller. The RAID has performed fine. I don't suspect a problem with the RAID - XP system files are messed up. Ok, I could not get to my data in the spare drive. Disk Manager sees it as healthy, separate drives. Explorer sees them as 2 drives but if I click on them, it wants to format them. I don't of course. I tried to reinstall XP on the RAID. I installed the F6 driver thing, but XP installation wants to format the drives. The recovery console won't let me access the drives. Then, I unplugged one of the RAID-ed drives and booted up, to see by some irrational miracle, if I'd have progress. The RAID utility now says: Invalid RAID. Question: If I delete and then recreate that RAID in the F3 utility, do I worsen things? Question: is there a utility that allows XP to access the data (from the spare drive)? I already tried Partition Magic 8 - it does not support spanned volumes, ditto with EasyRecovery. Um, data recovery outfits that charge $2000 are out of the question. I have 145GB of data that I need to access.

OK, First things first, does your raid card say that the drives/raid set is functional? If so, you are fine, don't try and use the recovery console, try re installing xp using the "R" Repair option. You will still need the OEM drivers for the "F6" option. If not check cabling etc.

No, the RAID set is "invalid". I've contacted SIIG to see if they can help me figure out how to get my raid back to normal. It got called "invalid" after I stupidly unplugged one of the drives. After I plugged the drive back in, the raid software (during post) says: Invalid Raid set. I tried to reinstall using the Repair option. XP couldn't find my installation of XP, wanted to format the drives. I F3-ed (Quit).

you'll have to rebuild the raid set in the card's utilities. XP won't be able to see the raid set until it is functional.