Media Creator 10 Install Danger For Raid Drives

[larry411]

Last week I installed MC 10 from the CD on my XP box. On restart I received the NTLDR is Missing message. NTLDR apparently tells the OS where files are on the drives.

 

I have a striped RAID, which means no redundancy. What I was not told when I bought the machine five years ago was that RAID (0) configurations make it nearly impossible to recover the data if the configuration files are corrupted. I didn't know that the failure rate goes up as the square of the number of drives, so a two disk striped array has 1/4th the dependability of one drive! Since all my business software apps are on the drive (five years worth), recreating the apps will take weeks and has already cost me thousands of dollars in lost business.

 

All my data is backed up, but the apps were not, because backing them up would be useless without the registry settings to allow them to run (time to switch back to Apple), and I don't know how to create a self updating clone of the boot drive with all its applications and appropriate registry entries. I expect that if I had the array set up as a RAID (1) then I wouldn't have this terrible problem.

 

Methods for fixing the problem that have been made include putting a duplicate of the original operating system on the motherboard (?) to see it, using a Linux boot disk to allow us to see the drive, and the published method for fixing the NTLDR problem on this forum (which I don't think will work because the OS can't see the drive to copy files to it).

 

One tech friend told me that the reason the problem came up is that Roxio is already installed in XP (it is the burning app) and attempting to "reinstall" it caused it to break. I don't know if that is correct.

 

If anyone has other solutions to this problem, please post ASAP, as the techs are working on my computer as I type (they have had the computer for nearly a week).

 

Morals of this story:

(1) if you have a RAID (0) (striped array) as your boot drive do not attempt to install MC!

(2) if you have a RAID (0) and you aren't prepared to lose all your data on the RAID array, you may want to buy bigger drives and convert to a mirrored array.

 

If you have RAID but don't know which kind you have, you will want to ask a tech and act accordingly.

 

Please feel free to correct the technical inaccuracies above. I've done my best to explain my understanding, but I expect I am off base on some of it.

 

I feel like my child is undergoing brain surgery while I wait to hear if they can fix the computer or not.

 

Thanks.

 

[tbrewst]

That's a good link Daithi.I used it once when I had this happen and it worked like a champ.

[Larry411a]

That's a good link Daithi.I used it once when I had this happen and it worked like a champ.

 

I would like to clarify my original post blaming MC for the NTLDR issue.

 

The techs could find nothing they could do to fix the problem after keeping the machine a week. When I got it back, I was installing a new hard drive in the hopes that a new Window installation would be able to read the striped drive array.

 

While poking around something stabbed my finger. It turned out to be one of the 70 (?) wires, 1/16th of an inch long, sticking out of the ribbon cable that connects the hard drives. I replaced the ribbon cable and the machine booted. I think the cable wire was broken before MC was installed and perhaps MC caused a different wire to be used to send a signal...I don't know.

 

After all that, I was able to download the update, 10.1, and now it all seems to work.

 

 

[gi7omy]

Glad you got it sorted but a serious word of advice from someone who also has a RAID0 setup (4 x 250 GB SATA2)

 

If one of the drives dies for any reason - you lose everything. It's happened to me and there is NO recovery possible.

 

I use my setup for storage - I boot from an IDE drive and have two more IDEs for important files - the RAID is used mainly for rendering and short term storage - I wouldn't trust it for anything else

[grandpabruce]

Start by reading this pinned topic.:

 

http://forums.support.roxio.com/index.php?showtopic=29912

[larry411]

Start by reading this pinned topic.:

 

http://forums.support.roxio.com/index.php?showtopic=29912

 

 

I read that, of course, as well as the other mentions of NTLDR.

 

The pointer you gave says:

a. Install Easy Media Creator 10.

b. When prompted to restart your computer, click “No”.

...

 

I installed EMC and then the computer died with the "NTLDR is missing" before it could restart.

 

So that wasn't very helpful.

 

What else do you have to suggest? The techs gave up.

 

[grandpabruce]

I read that, of course, as well as the other mentions of NTLDR.

 

The pointer you gave says:

a. Install Easy Media Creator 10.

b. When prompted to restart your computer, click “No”.

...

 

I installed EMC and then the computer died with the "NTLDR is missing" before it could restart.

 

So that wasn't very helpful.

 

What else do you have to suggest? The techs gave up.

 

I have nothing else to suggest. Supposedly, the 10.1 update, fixes the problem, but it is only good for the Retail version, and you have to have 10.0 on your computer.

 

That doesn't seem to make much sense to me, but that is the way it is.

[gi7omy]

As NTLDR is only called during the boot ptocess, installing the 10.1 update BEFORE rebooting should get round that.

 

The missing NTLDR problem is actually very common and not just with EMC

 

For a detailed 'howto' fix - check here

 

http://tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm