Serious problem.

Have you tried to run teh startup repair? Sometimes you have to run it three times before it finalizes repairing your 7 install

For you to backup, in case you can't boot on this computer, the best would be to find another computer where you could plug the HD to and then copy what you need.

BTW, if it started doing that all of a sudden you might have a disk problem, I would advise you to check your HD if can meke this work again.

You can still do it, but you will need some hardware, there are external connectors you can use to plug a laptop's HD to another computer.

At this point, you might want to do that first and have your data safe, before proceeding with the risk of loosing it.

Sounds like at the end of the day you will need to do a clean install... sometimes learning comes at a price... back up, back up and then back up some more..

Can you partition the second drive and install some OS there, so you can backup your data on your main drive? Or is your data separate already?

I wouldn't pry open my 5 grand computer either... :)

That is new info. Can you please update the specs for your system ("My system Specs" on the left hand corner of your post), there might be more things we should know beforehand

Did you have updated drivers for your RAID array? That could be a cause of the problem

Also, when you ran the startup repair, did you boot from the DVD or from the previous install? You should boot from the DVD and run from there.

For the backup: we will need some operating system. I have an idea but can't test it now. Tews, a hand: do you know if GParted will see the external drive and can make an image of the partition he needs copied?

Yes gparted will be able to see/read/write to an external drive..