[SOLVED] Accidentally erased data creating a RAID5

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Kigris

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May 17, 2016
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Hello there! First of all, I'm very noob with RAID. I wanted to create a RAID 5 with 3 hard drives. I had 2 of them with data (2TB and 4TB). I bought another one of 8TB and I thought of creating a RAID5 through BIOS. I didn't know that RAID will delete all my existing data and I went ahead and did the raid. When I saw that the screen told me that all data was erased, I quit the BIOS without saving the changes (without initializing the RAID). Then I re-entered BIOS and changed the SATA mode from "INTEL RST PREMIUM" to "AHCI" and then reboot. When I entered to Windows I notice that luckily the 4TB drive was untouched, but the 2TB is gone. When I go to the Windows partition formatter it asks me if I want to initiliaze one partition, which I assume that is the RAID. I clicked no obviously. In order to recover the data from the 2TB drive I thought of picking a recover software like Easeus or Stellaris but none of them detected the hard drive. The 8TB is gone also, but it's empty anyway. Is there any way to recover the 2TB HDD entirely like the 4TB one? I read that if I try to break the RAID it will delete all my data. Will this happen even if I didn't initialize the RAID? Thanks for all your anwers!

PD: My motherboard is Gigabyte Aorus Master Z390
 
Solution
USAFRet
Firstly, a RAID 5 needs identical size drives.
2TB+4TB+8TB is a 4TB RAID5 array. Total waste of space.

Secondly, creating the RAID 5 absolutely reformats the drives, completely. If you recovered anything from the 4TB, you are lucky. Whatever was on the 2TB is gone gone gone.

Never ever do any manipulation like this without a known good backup, and know how to recover it.
And delve into the actual requirements of what you're wanting to do. That combination of drives is not for a RAID 5.
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Firstly, a RAID 5 needs identical size drives.
2TB+4TB+8TB is a 4TB RAID5 array. Total waste of space.

Secondly, creating the RAID 5 absolutely reformats the drives, completely. If you recovered anything from the 4TB, you are lucky. Whatever was on the 2TB is gone gone gone.

Never ever do any manipulation like this without a known good backup, and know how to recover it.
And delve into the actual requirements of what you're wanting to do. That combination of drives is not for a RAID 5.
 
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Solution
USAFRet said:
Firstly, a RAID 5 needs identical size drives.
2TB+4TB+8TB is a 4TB RAID5 array. Total waste of space.

Secondly, creating the RAID 5 absolutely reformats the drives, completely. If you recovered anything from the 4TB, you are lucky. Whatever was on the 2TB is gone gone gone.

Never ever do any manipulation like this without a known good backup, and know how to recover it.
And delve into the actual requirements of what you're wanting to do. That combination of drives is not for a RAID 5.
Click to expand...
I guess I'm very lucky because I recovered about 70% of all data of the 2TB hard drive. I used Easeus Master Partition to recover the lost partition and it has recovered all the folder structure. I'll try to recover the 30% left with some data recovery software.
 
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Now I have a little problem. I was able to get the hdd on another pc and recover the partition but it doesn't show up when I put it on my pc, where RAID 5 was created. I imagine that this is because my Windows installation thinks that the 2TB hdd is still in RAID. Is there any way to "rebuild" hdd info for all hard drives? Thanks!
 
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Kigris said:
Now I have a little problem. I was able to get the hdd on another pc and recover the partition but it doesn't show up when I put it on my pc, where RAID 5 was created. I imagine that this is because my Windows installation thinks that the 2TB hdd is still in RAID. Is there any way to "rebuild" hdd info for all hard drives? Thanks!
Click to expand...
Rebuild what info?
The individual drives, or the RAID 5?
 
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Like the Windows "internal tables info" for HDD. The 2TB is showing up on a different pc than the one that created the RAID. I think it has someting to do with the Windows installation.
 
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Kigris said:
Like the Windows "internal tables info" for HDD. The 2TB is showing up on a different pc than the one that created the RAID. I think it has someting to do with the Windows installation.
Click to expand...
Copy whatever data that may still live on it to elsewhere, and the commandline function diskpart, and the clean command.
Wipe it completely and reformat.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/format-hard-drive-command-prompt,37632.html
https://www.seagate.com/support/kb/...-a-drive-through-the-command-prompt-005929en/
https://searchwindowsserver.techtar...t-to-create-extend-or-delete-a-disk-partition
 
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It's not just visible, the data is there. I can open it and it's just fine. I'm using Stellaris Data Recovery to recover the other 30% and I'm doing pretty well. My main issue is that I can see the HDD on another pc but not on mine...
 
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So the problem was Intel Storage Driver. I went to the Device Manager, and then to the ATA/ATAPI IDE Drivers tab and finally uninstalled the Intel ahci driver. Then Windows automatically used his standard driver and detected the 2TB HDD. If I install the Intel storage driver again then the 2TB HDD is not visible again, so I guess I will be using the standard one for a while.
 
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So, going back to the beginning...
"I had 2 of them with data (2TB and 4TB). I bought another one of 8TB and I thought of creating a RAID5 through BIOS "

Why the RAID 5?
And you can't do a RAID 5 with those 3 drives. They NEED to be the same size.
 
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I know, I'm a beginner when it comes to RAID and I didn't research well for the info and I thought it was possible to do with different sizes. The issue now is pretty much solved, I got my 2TB HDD back.
 
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