2x75GB hard drives in RAID0; unable to bootup in Recovery Mode

[bourmb]

Here is the background:
2004 Dell XPS Gen5 desktop computer with 2 Western Digitial 75GB hard drives in RAID0. One of the drives is giving me near death errors and I get BSOD every time I try to boot. I can't operate in Safe Mode nor boot up with my Windows XP MCE 2005 DVD because my DVD drive does not respond, just my CD drive. I have gone into BIOS and modified the boot squence so I could try using a bootable USB to no avail, too. When I created a boot USB off the XP DVD with another Windows computer I would get various errors no matter what program I was using to create the bootable USB. I tried multiple programs to no avail. Therefore, I can not access Recovery Mode on the desktop to try to salvage my data without doing a complete reformat and reinstallation of XP on the computer.

I have an entire backup of my hard drive on a Seagate portable hard drive. However, I have done about 10 hours of additional photo editing on the computer since the last backup so I was wanting to be able to access my photos on the Dell rather than having to start my editing over. Furthermore, all my Photoshop Elements photos have 3,000 tags on them that did not make it to the Seagate drive.

Since I am out of ideas to get to Recovery Mode, could I hook up the drives using a USB 2.0 to Dual SATA adapter to my other Dell laptop to pull the data off the drives with a device like this http://www.meritline.com/kingwin-us...-up-model-kwi-s2---p-63957.aspx?source=fghdac? Wouldn't my Dell laptop just treat the drives like an external drive (e.g. my Seagate drive, USB drive, etc.)? Would the fact that my XPS Gen5 is Windows XP and my Dell laptop is Windows 7 be a problem? I am looking for a cheap solution. I looked on the web to see if any Dell XP MCE boot CDs (not DVDs) were available, but I couldn't find any.

 

[Speeddymon]

Here is the background:
2004 Dell XPS Gen5 desktop computer with 2 Western Digitial 75GB hard drives in RAID0. One of the drives is giving me near death errors and I get BSOD every time I try to boot. I can't operate in Safe Mode nor boot up with my Windows XP MCE 2005 DVD because my DVD drive does not respond, just my CD drive. I have gone into BIOS and modified the boot squence so I could try using a bootable USB to no avail, too. When I created a boot USB off the XP DVD with another Windows computer I would get various errors no matter what program I was using to create the bootable USB. I tried multiple programs to no avail. Therefore, I can not access Recovery Mode on the desktop to try to salvage my data without doing a complete reformat and reinstallation of XP on the computer.

I have an entire backup of my hard drive on a Seagate portable hard drive. However, I have done about 10 hours of additional photo editing on the computer since the last backup so I was wanting to be able to access my photos on the Dell rather than having to start my editing over. Furthermore, all my Photoshop Elements photos have 3,000 tags on them that did not make it to the Seagate drive.

Since I am out of ideas to get to Recovery Mode, could I hook up the drives using a USB 2.0 to Dual SATA adapter to my other Dell laptop to pull the data off the drives with a device like this http://www.meritline.com/kingwin-us...-up-model-kwi-s2---p-63957.aspx?source=fghdac? Wouldn't my Dell laptop just treat the drives like an external drive (e.g. my Seagate drive, USB drive, etc.)? Would the fact that my XPS Gen5 is Windows XP and my Dell laptop is Windows 7 be a problem? I am looking for a cheap solution. I looked on the web to see if any Dell XP MCE boot CDs (not DVDs) were available, but I couldn't find any.

I know this is a little late, but is your RAID config done in hardware or software? If hardware, the usb to dual sata won't work; you have to hook it up to another (typically identical) hardware controller.

Here are a few ideas to try:

1) Don't plug the drives in or power them on until you are ready to boot up and recover the data. The more you run them, the sooner that drive death will come. Sticking the failing one in the freezer will help with the recovery process. 20 minutes or so should do it. When the drive warms up, power the machine down, drop the drive back in the freezer and let it cool off, then recover more. Source: http://lifehacker.com/5515337/save-a-failed-hard-drive-in-your-freezer-redux

2) Get a LiveCD of Linux (RIPLinux is highly recommended for this type of work) or if you must have Windows use BartPE. That'll boot off of the CD drive and get you an OS that you can recover the data from to an external drive. I would recommend linux, as there is a better chance of recovery than windows slow crappy self, but if you've never used it, now is probably not the time to learn.

3) If the LiveCD doesn't work, but you have another internal drive, put that in the desktop (unplugging the raid drives of course), install windows (or linux) to the single internal drive, then power the raid drives up, and recover as much as you can (using the freezer trick mentioned above if necessary).