Disk Boot Failure with RAID 0 Array

Hi

I have two 500Gb SATA drives in a RAID 0 config set as my system drive 'C', and a 1TB SATA as a storage drive 'E'

Never had this problem until last night when I removed the storage drive. Tried the usual fixes with no luck, put the drive back in and the system boots normally.

The problem seems to be that I installed Windows on the RAID array while the storage drive was attached, and for some reason Windows decided to make 'E' the active partition.

Have attached a screenshot.

'E' also shows as System for some reason, even tho Windows is on 'C'.

What I want to know is can I fix this problem without reformatting/reinstalling, and what will potentially happen if I make the 'C' partition active? Dont really want to kill my machine right now!

All comments and advice appreicated.

Jonathan_King said:

That should do the trick.

Should?

Curious as to why E is showing as System as well. Any ideas on that?

Cheers for that, but my concern is that if it doesnt work, i wont be able to boot back in to mark the E partition as active. Bit of a catch 22 i suspect.

No go. I set the partition as active, booted from the install disk, used startup recovery, says it cant repair the disk and that no os is present.

I am now officially screwed. ANyone have any ideas how I can get back into my pc?

ps - I assume the windows setup disk is not seeing the os because it is installed on a raid set and it doesnt have raid drivers, if this makes sense. Any way of loading raid drivers prior to running startup recovery?

Oops. Answered my own question. Working now, touch wood. Was not quite as straightforward as all that - seems the biggest problem was Windows still insisting on assigning the drive letter C to the storage drive and not the raid set. Had to bludgeon it into submission by unplugging everything but the raid set and assigning drive letters manually. So far so good.

Startup Recovery, looks for Boot files on Disk 0, which is your E: drive.