can I restore my raid-0 if

[chiknman]

ok, I had my 4 hdd (4 x 60gig maxtor ata133) set aside on my desk
(I had 2 hdd set as master on 2 different raid cable as a raid-0
I had the other 2 hdd set as slave on the center cables also as raid-0.)

somehow I moved them around and now I do not know which master hdd goes on which raid cable connector to the ribbon cables

FYI,
I had removed a jumper from each of the master raid-0 hdd's and attached them separately (one at a time) to the slave cable of the standard ide channel to "look" at the files to see if I could determine which drive was to go where to no avail.

My fear is since win xp-sp2 recognized the drives separately as a slave ide drive, could somehow xp have corrupted the stripe info?

My raid controller, hpt370,kr7a-raid board from ati, shows both of the hdd's are present -- although they may not appear to be raided together.

I used trial and error to connect the 2 master drives on the raid cables (hdd1 to end of cable 1 and hdd2 to end of cable 2) and visa-versa.

My op system does not find the raid-0 drive(s) in "my computer" or in admin tools disk management,

When i access the raid hardware software during boot-up, it seem to me the drives want to be set back up again, (which will loose all my data)

question is can i use norton or some other disk management program through the command prompt or win xp to restore the proper info so the drives can be seen without a complete loss of data?

I think somehow when winxp "looked" at the drive(s) when they were temporarily on the IDE channel as a slave it may have caused this problem. Any suggestions would be much appreciated!! Thanks!!

 

[linux_0]

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

You cannot really look at a drive that was part of a RAID 0 array individually because a "RAID 0 splits data evenly across two or more disks with no parity information for redundancy. It is important to note that RAID 0 was not one of the original RAID levels, and is not redundant". From wikipedia.

If you cannot get your RAID controller to "see" the drives as a RAID 0 set it will be virtually impossible to recover your data unless you have access to highly specialized data recovery software which MIGHT be able to piece the data back together.

All the guru's out there please do correct me if I'm wrong.

RAID 0 IS a high-risk setup - there is NO redundancy of any kind and RAID 0 is much more of a pain that any other kind of RAID when it breaks. If you had been using RAID 1 or 5 you probably could have survived.

MAYBE you could boot from a Knoppix Linux live CD or DVD and examine the raw data on the disks and look for any markers identifying which drive is which so you can hopefully put them back together and get the RAID 0 controller to recognize them.

I may be able to guide you through the Knoppix process if you are interested in trying it. Knoppix will NOT do any damage to the drives - windows or the RAID controller itself may have already damaged them however.

Good luck

 

[RichPLS]

Hence RAID 0 is not really a RAID, Redundant Array of Indepentent Drives, it is more of a FAID, Fast Array of Independent Drives!

 

[chiknman]

fyi, I have attached the hdd's and windows wants to do a chkdsk on these drives... i am able to copy some very smallest files without difficulty... I do not want windows xp pro-sp-2 to make matters worse so I have NOT allowed chkdsh to execute the task...

I also can see the file/filenames individually when rach drive is independently attahed to a standard ide channel...

I do not feel all has yet been lost... Can someone reccomend a possible course of action?

I do realize possibly there is a loss of everything but somehow I have my mind believing this is not the case... ANY suggestions?

 

[pat]

Yep, you can see filename, but it don't means the file is actually complete..

What I would do is to closely look at the jumper.. if the system has been installed for some time, dust might have been caught between the jumper pins.. but not where actual jumper were, so it may give you a clue about which drive was which..

but, if you messed with your drive alone, and the RAID metadata is corrupt or damaged, then you may have lost anything ...

But, hopefully, you had a backup of your personnal data.. so just forget about the rest, reinstall, download all that stuff again.. and get a fresh start..

Oh.. check for spinrite on google. go to their web site. I think that they have a tool to get data back from array ..

 

[TurtleMan]

Next time... connect the drives in pairs to the raid controller: your array will reappear when you have them connected right.

This time... ur 99.9% screwed.

Data recovery will only work if the drives are in their original configuration: with 4 drives and two ports, there are 12 possible arrangements. And you somehow need to do it correctly the first time: if you rebuild the array with the "wrong" drives, it's game over.

t-man