Hi all and thanks for the responses... heres the update. Since the machine is still under extended warranty, I did the tech support dance with HP, and I ran a few self tests from the bios, diagnosing the two drives that make up the RAID configuartion, one fails pretty quickly, the other takes alot longer, but does eventually fail the read part of the extended test.. so HP is gonna replace the two drives and restore the system to factory...heres my newest dilema..
I dont have a USB external drive.. as I did let Acronis run a complete backup, ignoring the bad sectors...I stored this on my third drive.. ( not in RAID configuration ) I'm now wondering if the Image it made is any good, seeing that theres bad sectors on the RAID drives it was copied from. I may just have to start from scratch and start trying to find everything to reload.
I was seriously wanting to take the drives OUT of RAID 0 , but this being an HP machine, it only lets you make a Factory Image, they Dont give you the OS disks.. so.. in order to wipe the drives, take it out of RAID configuration, I'd need a Vista 64 home premium OS to reinstall using my serial number I guess??? Well, lesson learned on RAID here.. now its back to ground zero.... Thanks for the prgram link, I'll check it out. I'm sure I'll have other questions as I go through this crap. I'm off to start taking out my all the goodies i put in this thing.