Dead Aurora R3 - Raid10 disk errors;Then Respawn Recovery disabled RAID...The Recovery Disk won't work... Is there any hope?!

I've tried all USB ports on the machine with the Recovery Flash Drive... it boots... but can't find the recovery image... which appears to be there.  I don't have a dual connect USB/eSATA drive...that some claim will run the recovery.  I don't have a DVD drive large enough to hold 6GB required... so that path is out for now.

You do have an eSATA port, it's number 7 on the picture below. This are the rear panel connectors:

The recovery drive boot stops at a respawn dialog that says it cannot find the System Recovery Image...which is supposed to be on the recovery flash drive.  This is a nightmare. Never had an issue with my old Dell system... this is over the top... and out of warranty.

How exactly are you trying to access the back up recovery? What steps are you taking in order to get started?

Did you change the boot priority in the BIOS?

Yes, I have an eSATA port...just don't have a USB / eSATA connector. Checked for a connector at local stores yesterday...no luck.  I did change the bios boot priority to USB flash drive but it behaves the same.

With RAID config disabled/eliminated...can't boot from HD's... so I insert the Respawn Recovery Flash Drive into a USB 2.0 port... and it boots... but then arrives at a Respawn Recovery screen where it says it can't find the System Recovery Image. I see this same problem regarding the Image from other folks... and it's not caused by the absence of the files on the flash drive.  This is pretty awful.

With RAID config disabled/eliminated...can't boot from HD's...

Well, if the drives were RAIDed, they will only boot (or be able to read data on them) if they are still RAIDed. They are linked to the Intel chipset HDD controller in that model series.

Good luck with your recovery. Personally, I would:

- Find out which drive is bad (or other problem that de-railed the RAID). If you don't run a good UPS-Battery (like a APC) it might have just been a power event. Run Diags on whole machine and drives themselves.

- Restore either your drive/partition backups or Clean Install Windows and restore just your data files.

If you get tired of playing with Respawn and need help with the above, just ask.

Also, if you do have to rebuild the machine from scratch, I suggest you drop the RAID config. Get yourself a SSD if you want speed. Use one of the large spinning drives for backups.

Bought the connector...plugged into #7... no change   What a piece of crap this machine is.

Maybe creating the recovery when the drive was already failing and not when you got the system is causing the error?

All connected to a big APC box... it was the boot drive that knocked the RAID config out.

Tried the eSATA connection... still won't boot from the respawn flash boot drive

I don't have windows media to reinstall

Alienware = boat anchor

Bought the connector...plugged into #7... no change

What a piece of crap this machine is.

1. All connected to a big APC box   2. it was the boot drive that knocked the RAID config out.   3. Tried the eSATA connection... still won't boot from the respawn flash boot drive   4. I don't have windows media to reinstall   5. Alienware = boat anchor

1. All connected to a big APC box   2. it was the boot drive that knocked the RAID config out.   3. Tried the eSATA connection... still won't boot from the respawn flash boot drive   4. I don't have windows media to reinstall   5. Alienware = boat anchor

#2 is the important one. Raid-10 recovery can be tricky. You have to make a recovery with Raid-0 to bring them back which is why I made my statement. If you try to make a recovery once a disk is failing it's almost always to late( corrupted data on all 4 disks ). Then there is the fact that the disks must be kept in order. Making a mistake in the order will also prevent a recovery and the only way I know to figure it out once that is done is with the system functioning or another system.


Most likely half the array is still there ( data may be good ). I think you could use a disk editor to do it. If you know which two disks are good you should be able to install just them and rebuild the array ( raid-0 ).  I Googled a couple walk throughs to do this. Hope it helps.

Personally I only use Raid-0 ( never raid5,10 ) and only for the performance increase and never a redundancy array on my personal systems. I make full back-ups of everything which is truly the best way to go. I believe in what Tesla said that it should be left to servers, more trouble then it's worth.



Try this one first:    http://www.raid10recovery.info/raid10-recovery.aspx 

This is a software Raid recovery tool, never tried it but what the heck: http://www.freeraidrecovery.com/library/raid10-recovery.aspx


#5 It's always someone else's fault.

Thanks for the detailed advice. I will call phone support to see if they will send me OS media. In the interim Dell reached out to me to sell me on site OS reinstall.  I bought it for $149 ...a process that took 45min of phone time... took 3 days to have that transaction show up as a PO in the service ctr computers.  I then scheduled the install for tomorrow morning... and this afternoon 3 more days later they call my home 90 minutes before they close to tell me there is no tech available tomorrow...rather than calling the preferred cell number they asked me for.  Icing on the Dell cake.

Regarding whose fault this is... yep its Dell's fault that this system failed 16 months after startup.  Yes it's Dell's fault that the flash boot disk option fails and corrupts the RAID config.   Disenchanted with Dell... rightfully so.