How to restore a RAID 0 ARRAY failure?

[icyangel2666]

I'm at a loss for what to do here. My problem is I've got this really old XPS desktop that suddenly had a RAID 0 ARRAY Failure. Says not bootable. Anyway it has almost 300 GB and as you can imagine I have a LOT of data and stuff I collected over the years I'd hate to lose, losing it isn't an option for me if I can help it. It also says "Alert! System battery voltage low." I think that's because I left it unplugged for a few months, I didn't know computers had an internal battery and that it was important to leave it plugged in, at the time. I originally thought leaving it unplugged caused this array failure but after reading some maybe that's not the case? The desktop runs on windows XP.

So I did a bunch of reading on how to fix this, some sites I've read say unless I can have a professional do it, there's no chance. But that it's also very costly.
Some say try to take out the hard drive and clone or copy the files off it that way.
Some say insert the windows recovery disks or whatever they are. And restore the array. Which may involve deleting and rewriting the array but that shouldn't destroy the files, just fix the problem and everything will be as it were. So if that's true then I also don't have any of the windows recovery disks or any of those sort of things, I've had that computer so long that the disks either got broken or lost. So would that mean I'd have to buy new ones?

So as you can see I've got a big problem here... Murphy was not good to me.

And again another site said don't do anything or you might damage or lose data, just get a professional. Also not to use any data recovery softwares. I'd rather do it myself but I also don't want to cough up a ton of dough, nor do I want to mess this up.

So.... what works, what doesn't? What is the safest route(s) to go?

By the way, are you even able to copy or clone data off hard drives with an Array 0 failure? Why do things have to be so technical?

 

[kanewolf]

A RAID0 has NO REDUNDANCY. You should have had backups. Your data is probably lost.

 

[rgd1101]

"losing it isn't an option"
"But that it's also very costly."

So pick one


If you want to try it yourselves. Buy the same raid disk setup, clone each disk. and then try restoring, so you don't mess with the original.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Recovering data from a dead RAID0 (which isn't really RAID, since the R stands for Redundant) is massively tricky. If one drive is dead, it's basically impossible. If the failure was in the RAID controller, you can't just plop the drives onto another RAID controller and expect them to work.

Professional is the only way to go if you cant get that system to recognize them as a RAID0. Don't need it to be bootable; you could always boot a Linux distro and copy the undamaged files off as much of the pair as it can see. Otherwise, professional and expensive. Sorry.

 

[S Haran]

RAID recovery software is generally safe to use. R-Studio is popular. UFSexplorer is also good.

The thing is with RAID0 you need to know, or guess at, the original drive order and stripe size.

If the drives are sound recovery should be possible. You should check the SMART info on the drives to see if there are any issues.

If both drives are sound and detected in Windows recovery chances are good.

For extra safety you can clone/image each drive and then perform recovery work using the images.

 

[puttynene]

It is a cleaner approach than trying to reconstruct an old array that has failed. If it was backed up properly you should produce a clone of the original when you restore it.

If I were doing this I would reconstruct the array from scratch and acid test it before I reconstructed it. I would also look into converting to a RAID 5 or RAID 10 to prevent future problems.

Think you should seek professional assistance for this