Question Messed up RAID 1, how to recover?

[visosilver]

Hi all,

I had two 1 TB HDDs in RAID 1 which served as Data-Storage in my Desktop PC.
Today I realized that the RAID was somehow broken, as the Harddrives were showing up separately in the file-manager (no idea how this happened).

This is where I really messed up, and I really should have known better. I decided to recreate the RAID in the BIOS, and created a new RAID volume. Directly after clicking, I realized that this will delete my data on both disks and immediately powered the system down. However, it looks as if the existing Partitions were already deleted.

I have already tried to recover the data with testdisk and a live CD, but I am not sure if i should delete the RAID setup in the BIOS first, or if this will cause further problems. Also I will require an empty harddrive to recover the data to. Should I remove one of the RAID disks and insert a new 1 TB disk, so testdisk can possibly restore to this partition?

What is the best approach for recovering as much data as possible? Is there maybe another tool than testdisk which would be better suited for this purpose? The data must somehow still be there (or at least most of it). In an emergency case I would try forensic software, such as FTK or Autopsy...

Thank you,
Visosilver

 

[hedwar2011]

So you may have a few options:
1) You were using RAID 1 which makes the drives a paired set as everything from Drive 1 is mirrored to Drive 2. You theoretically should be able to take Disk 2 from the set, plug it in to a different computer and access the data. The only issue with that is the fact that the partitions were subsequently removed when you re-created the array with the new one.
2) Once you have your data, yes, the best thing to do would be to remove any existing RAID configurations and re-establish them. This will avoid confusion later on and possible issues between the old and new array if any traces remain.
3) Data recovery from any RAID configuration is extremely dicey so I can't really make a recommendation for recovery services but it will likely not be on the cheaper end of things.

 

[USAFRet]

This is what an actual backup is for.

In theory, a broken RAID lets the system work with a single drive.
Recover the data.

But with a broken RAID controller, that's when you recover the data from your actual backup.


Given the current circumstances, possibly this:

RAID Recovery Software - the only FREE tool

Need to recover a failed RAID? Do not rush to send it to a lab, try our read-only free RAID recovery software which recovers most common RAID types.

www.freeraidrecovery.com

But since you already started down the path of killing the RAID config, trying to make a new one....I'm not holding out much hope.

 

[visosilver]

Thanks for your advice. Unfortunately both devices had their RAID configurations overwritten, so I was not able to access the data of both devices.
TestDisk was not able to recover the partitions.
I conducted a scan of one of the drives with Autopsy and all the files seem to be available & accessible. I am currently extracting them, and it looks pretty promising.

And yes, I will definitely organize separate backup possibilities afterwards ;-)

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks for your advice. Unfortunately both devices had their RAID configurations overwritten, so I was not able to access the data of both devices.
TestDisk was not able to recover the partitions.
I conducted a scan of one of the drives with Autopsy and all the files seem to be available & accessible. I am currently extracting them, and it looks pretty promising.

And yes, I will definitely organize separate backup possibilities afterwards ;-)

In the consumer world, RAID of any type is mostly irrelevant.

Any RAID array also needs a full backup situation.
And if you have that, you probably don't need the RAID array.

Currently, you're spending FAR more time in hopefully recovering, than with just recovering from a regular backup.

 

[hedwar2011]

RAID was designed primarily with large-scale business and enterprise users in mind, not home users.