[SOLVED] Can I restore my RAID0 from backup images of the drives? Haven't had luck in Linux.

Cyber_Akuma

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Oct 5, 2002
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I had an Intel z77 system from 2012 that had an Intel RAID0 on it, the raid ran my Windows 10 OS and all my applications and some minor data. I do have an older backup, but I would like to see if I can get the data off the drives at the time the system died. The drives themselves are fine, it was the motherboard that died on me.

However, I am worried about trying to re-assemble/import the raid by using the drives directly, so I wanted to try instead to image the individual drives and assemble a virtual raid just to be safe. I am not aware of any Windows tools that let you do this so I am doing it on Linux Mint that I installed to a USB Flashdrive (An actual install, not just running it as a LiveUSB) on a new Intel z490 system that I built, but I am not that familiar with Linux.

Anyway, so I have a spare empty Sata HDD I connected that is larger than the two drives in the raid, I connected each of the RAID0 drives one at a time by a USB Sata dock and ran "sudo dd if=/dev/(Raid disk connected by USB) of=/(location of SATA HDD)/drive1 bs=1M oflag=direct", and used drive2 instead of drive1 of course for the second drive.

After that, I used "sudo losetup -f -r /(location of SATA HDD)/drive1" and drive2 to mount the raw disks themselves as a read-only block device, they were mounted as loop0 and loop1.

However, after I could not get them to re-assemble into a RAID again no matter what I tried.

I tried using dmraid first as it was suggested to me, but running "sudo dmraid -ay" just gives me an error message that no raid disks were detected.

I tried "sudo mdadm --assemble /dev/md0 /dev/loop0 /dev/loop1" but it said that there was no superblock in loop0. However, when I run --examine on loop0 it says that there is a superblock on it, but not on loop1 (I assume this is correct? That only the first drive would have a superblock?)

MBR Magic : aa55
Partition[0] : 4294967295 sectors at 1 (type ee)

I am not sure what to do here. I was told that I still needed Intel RAID to be enabled on the motherboard for it to work, I found that odd if the software was going to be doing the work, but I did it anyway. Then I was told that no method of using diak images or virtual drives would work and I would have to connect the physical drives, but that apparently my new motherboard uses a newer version of Intel raid called RST and that this would apparently be incompatible with the old system my z77 board used for the RAID? I also noticed that despite enabling "Intel RST Raid" in my SATA settings, that "Intel Rapid Storage Technology" was still listed as off.

Is it true that even with software to try to re-assemble and recover raids like dmraid or mdadm I would still need the Intel RAID enabled on my motherboard for it to work? Or that it uses some new type of RAID that is not compatible with the way my old board did it? I am not sure what would be the safest course of action to take at this point to try to recover them. Can I use the disk images I made somehow? If not, what would be the safest way to use the physical disks without risking accidently wiping or overwriting them? I can try to see if I can recover my old motherboard (There is a chance it was the PSU, but I would have to order a new one) but I reset the CMOS as I was trying to fix it originally, and I believe it may have wiped my RAID settings, and I worry I might accidently create a new raid or wipe it while attempting to import/remount my existing one even if I do get the old board working again.
 
Solution
a RAID 0 can't be simply remerged through imaging onto a single disk/SSD with any application....

As reinstalling WIndows from USB media to SSD takes 4-5 minutes these days, I'd concentrate on getting any data you need, if any....

USAFRet

Titan
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However, I am worried about trying to re-assemble/import the raid by using the drives directly, so I wanted to try instead to image the individual drives and assemble a virtual raid just to be safe.
ReclaiMe, maybe
http://www.freeraidrecovery.com/?s=rd


But what you should be worrying about is the 'data', not necessarily the actual RAID construction.

In case of some fail, you simply instantiate a new RAID, and bring the data back over.


  1. What drives was this on?
  2. RAID 0 was never really meant for the OS drive. Ever.
 

Cyber_Akuma

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Oct 5, 2002
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Well, I want to try to get the RAID remounted if I can so I can just flat out image it to a new disk, not just recover the files on their own.

And the disks are two Samsung 840 EVOs at 1TB each.
 
a RAID 0 can't be simply remerged through imaging onto a single disk/SSD with any application....

As reinstalling WIndows from USB media to SSD takes 4-5 minutes these days, I'd concentrate on getting any data you need, if any....
 
Solution