A2 Error

[Lady_M]

I am running an old ASUS PC with Windows 7 for the specific reason as it's the only OS that supports my x-ray developer. I cannot upgrade my OS or I cannot run the program to develop the radiographs.

Last week after a power surge the computer would not turn on at all. It was on a surge protector and it is no longer working either.

It started saying my disk was degraded - that seems to be okay now, both of my Seagate drives (ST2000DM001) are now green showing Non-RAID Disk. It is now giving me a completely black screen with a white cursor top left and white "A2" in the bottom right which I have read to understand as a drive/motherboard issue. I have since been able to get my computer to actually boot up, with the A2 still appearing during the boot process. I read through some forums which suggested unplugging the drives one at a time to isolate the problem, I did find that one of the hard drive cannot be plugged in or it would not boot up at all with it connected and it gives me an error 0x0000007B. It is still unplugged. I have updated the BIOS, and then I had to boot it up through DVD drive with the Windows 7 OS disc. It re-installed Windows 7 and to some degree "reset" the computer.

I have found *most* of the data I had thought I had lost which is a relief - I am awaiting to see exactly how much I was able to retrieve today. It also appears to have the application files for the programs used for the radiology equipment but I have not attempted to re-install it and run the equipment.
My questions are:
1) how do I solve the A2 error?
2) Would changing the suspected faulty disk solve the issue?
3) Is this something I can do myself? I have learned a lot with this computer causing me issues in the past and I can follow directions but not sure if this is something I should tackle..
4) The drives appear to be mirrored - if a new drive was installed would it pick up the pre-existing settings for data storage/mirroring?

Any advice/suggestions are greatly appreciated!

 

[USAFRet]

Is this something I can do myself?

Not trying to be funny, but if it were, you would not be here asking.

x-ray system?

 

[Lady_M]

Not trying to be funny, but if it were, you would not be here asking.

x-ray system?

I dont need an internet troll to tell me I may not be up to the job.

I am here looking for help as I do not have another option to get my system back up and working so I can continue to provide care to my patients. This is required to operate my computed radiography developer so that I can develop the radiographs of my veterinary patients.

I have done more in getting the computer to this point than i thought i could on my own. If you cant provide help then don't reply please.

 

[MrLitschel]

I have found *most* of the data I had thought I had lost which is a relief - I am awaiting to see exactly how much I was able to retrieve today. It also appears to have the application files for the programs used for the radiology equipment but I have not attempted to re-install it and run the equipment.
My questions are:
1) how do I solve the A2 error?
2) Would changing the suspected faulty disk solve the issue?
3) Is this something I can do myself? I have learned a lot with this computer causing me issues in the past and I can follow directions but not sure if this is something I should tackle..
4) The drives appear to be mirrored - if a new drive was installed would it pick up the pre-existing settings for data storage/mirroring?

Any advice/suggestions are greatly appreciated!

You appear to have found the problem which is the Faulty Hard Drive. Replacing the Drive will solve the issue however, if the drive is in a Mirrored Raid, it should be replaced with the same identical drive. The system should auto re-mirror the drives but depending on the size - it may take a couple of hours. I wouldn't know if all your data will be left intact.

I would highly suggest you invest in an external hard drive for periodic backups of your client data. Drives running on a RAID is not a backup.

 

[MrLitschel]

I just realized that the OS was re-installed. Whatever your looking at now on the computer will be what gets duplicated on the raid. If any files were lost, there gone unless you have a backup

 

[Lady_M]

I just realized that the OS was re-installed. Whatever your looking at now on the computer will be what gets duplicated on the raid. If any files were lost, there gone unless you have a backup

Thank you! I have most of it on a back up. I am missing 5 files which is not bad. I do have it backing up on an external drive but its a manual backup so it was not ran a couple weeks before the crash.

 

[MrLitschel]

That's good to hear. If you want to automate your backups for next to nothing (actually free), I would highly recommend FreeFileSync. It is easy to use and automate through windows task manager or you can use their RealTimeSync portion that does it when files change.

FreeFileSync

Download FreeFileSync 13.9. FreeFileSync is a free open source data backup software that helps you synchronize files and folders on Windows, Linux and macOS.

freefilesync.org