Factory Restore/Recovery: "There is not enough free disc space" -- HELP!!!

Hey there,

I'm brand-new to this community, but not to Dell computers -- I have a (working!) Dimension 8100 desktop from 2001 and a Studio XPS 8100 desktop (now discontinued) from 2010 ... In fact, I'm typing this on the old system right now because I can't boot from the (Windows 7 Ultimate) hard drive on the new system ...

Actually, there are TWO 1-TB drives on the new system, configured as a single RAID 0 array of 2-TB ... And something therein has gotten royally hosed such that Windows can no longer boot -- it just cycles endlessly through the BIOS trying to boot from the RAID 0 array ...

Now, I WAS doing something with installing Ubuntu on a USB flash drive, but (I thought) NOT anything that would've tinkered with the hard drive(s), messed with the MBR, or anything like that ... So I'm not really sure what the heck happened here ... I had an earlier situation with installing Ubuntu on that USB drive in which I accidentally allowed GRUB (the Ubuntu bootloader) to replace the hard drive's MBR (for an unintended dual-boot system) -- which also prevented Windows from booting -- but I was able to recover from that by finding instructions in "7forums.com" for fixing the Windows 7 MBR ... And thereafter I tried my best to avoid touching that MBR in my subsequent USB installations of Ubuntu ... (BTW, those MBR-fix instructions don't solve this new problem) ...

After spending hours already (and more hours to come) on the phone with Dell Support, I'm resigned to doing a "Dell Factory Image Restore" -- again, actually, because I already did it once successfully -- but THIS time, I can't even do THAT, because it fails with message: "There is not enough free disc space" ... Last time Windows booted, I was only using 16% of the 2-TB RAID 0 array ... (And I ran "DellUtils" diagnostics successfully on both hard drives) ...

NOW ... I'm able to boot to Ubuntu, using either a "live" DVD or my USB installation, and run Ubuntu's "Disc Utility", which allows one to examine, mount, change, format, partition, etc. all of the physical drives and logical volumes on the system ... And both the "DellUtils" (41 MB) and "RECOVERY" (12 GB) areas are clearly ON THE HARD DRIVE(s) and can be mounted and examined, and they seem to contain the expected files and folders ... So this is NOT a situation where the RAID 0 array got reformatted, erased, overwritten, etc. such that the "RECOVERY" area would be lost ... And this area seems to occupy the expected 6 GB out of the reserved 12 GB ...

But if I try to mount the "OS" volume on the RAID 0 array, the Ubuntu mount fails with error code 2, which means pretty much the same thing in Linux-land -- lack of system resources, space, etc. ... The Ubuntu "Disc Utility" program shows that the "OS" volume is "out there" on the RAID 0 array, but it can't be accessed (or booted from) ...

Has anyone ever seen this particular error message when trying to perform a "Factory Restore/Recovery"?  What does it mean?  Could it be a problem with the MBR or the partitioning or the RAID 0 configuration?  I'm at my wit's end here simply trying to do a factory restore -- either from the hard drive(s) OR from the "System Recovery" DVD's (also 6 GB) that I created when first setting up the system -- and no one at Dell (so far) seems to have any clue of what to do, OTHER than re-installing Windows 7 on clean hard drive(s), using a Windows 7 disc that was NOT included with my system (and therefore, more delays) ...

What a huge hassle all THAT would be!!!  Isn't there a better way???  I can SEE the required fixin' areas "out there" on the hard drive(s) ... Can anyone please help me, or offer some ideas, or point me to (online) resources???

Thanks,

Kevin