Harddrives Not there?

[andrewisback]

I turned on my computer the other day and suddenly it didn't reconize its own hardrives. I then looked in Bios by holding esc while the vaio animation loaded and they were they both 100GBs it even knew the make.
So i decided to try reinstalling windows.....however windows could not detect any hard disk devices to install to. So i decided i would try to fdisk the probelm away as it said they may need paritioning. SO i went ahead got a boot CD (which took ages!) and fdisked it and formatted it. No Good!. So i have come to the extreme now it seems i'll have to flash my bios as it seems to be a problem there. God knows how this got corrupted but if so at least i might be able to fix it. I have a Sony Vaio VGN AR21S Series I now need to know either

1. Where i can find suitable BIOS and how to flash it on

2. Any way i haven't tried to fix it

P.S. Is there any way of Sony knowing if you've open up your laptop?

[andrewisback]

So any one got any ideas what i can do?

[Thalamus.]

So any one got any ideas what i can do?

I think the simplest solution would be to purchase a set of recovery disc's by contacting Sony Vaio support, you can do this either by phone or via e-Support, use the following link to find the contact details: Sony Vaio Support

[Blencogo]

The reason you have a problem is because the two hard discs in your AR21S are configured in RAID 0. The two discs are a single volume and you cannot format one alone - they must be formatted together to form one RAID Volume.

Unless you know what you are doing, the easiest way forward is to buy a set of Recovery Discs from Sony for £30 which will reinstall the original system.

Presumably you are trying to install XP Pro for some misguided reason. If you want to do this you will need to Google for "Installing XP on SATA/RAID Hard Drives".

There are two ways to install XP. One needs a USB Floppy disc drive with the SATA/RAID drivers on a disc. When the installation gets to "Welcome to Setup", press F6 to install the SATA/RAID drivers. The second way is by using nLite and creating a XP installation disc with all the drivers included. http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html

It is not a simple process. You need to download all the Original Drivers Package (which will include the SATA/RAID drivers) and the Original Utilities Package for your model from here: -

http://support.vaio.sony.co.uk/downloads/preinstalled/preinstalled.asp?site=voe_en_GB_cons&m=2418

I attach the SATA driver and the RAID driver below:

[Blencogo]

Evening Thalamus - you got there first again!!!

[Thalamus.]

Evening Thalamus - you got there first again!!!

 

Good evening to you too Blencogo..

[andrewisback]

Ok thanks a lot guys I am sorry for being a retard and not being able to find the drivers i recently realized my misstake and found them in the original drivers pack, wow imagine that the original drivers in a pack called original drivers....no wounder i got confused.
I had to wait till today to buy a external floppy but have done and now I am in the process of installing windows back on to the laptop.


Thanks a lot agian your all stars in my eyes!

[Thalamus.]

Good luck, hope all goes well..