Partition on RAID now incompleate

[cleevondeath]

Hi there everyone,

*Running Windows 7 pro, and was raided with windows 7 Disk Manager. I believe it was Raid 5*
I picked up a 4TB drive in the summer to add it to my emulator collection, it refused to read it as 4TB so I partitioned it to 3+1 and added both to the raid. (I keep everything RAIDed together to run Hyperspin, and I replace my drives every three years.) A month ago my SSD crapped out on me, so I had it RMA'd, installed windows (without the other drives attached) and when I try to recover my raid it says incomplete because I'm missing the partitioned section (Four Drives and not Five Drives). I've tried Active Boot and Gparted to recover the partition and both couldn't find it. I've been trying to fix this issue but really found nothing on the problem I've got. That's what brings me here.
I could just put it together, but I'm scared I'll loose a really good chunk of my collection, and most of it would be tough to get back. I've been collecting for over 10 years now. If this gets fixed I'm going to spend the cash so I can set-up an external back-up.
Any recommendations would be very much appreciated. Thanks much.

 

[drtweak]

Do you ran a Raid 5 Though windows? Yea thats a big no no. 1) Raid 5 sucks at performance. 2) The configuration is ran by windows that set it up.

was the SSD that was RMA'ed part of the Raid or no? Also want to make sure ALL drives are attached. Might get luck and it might pick up the Raid config.

When it comes to software raid Raid 1 and 0 are the only one's I'd ever do if that. Raid 0 should never go without a backup if its critcal data but a Raid 1 you can at least keep on chugging along if that gets screwed up. but RAID 5 is a Pain. We have been moving all our clients away from Raid 5. Just setup a Raid 10 with 4 1TB drives for a client. getting 350 read and write on that sucker. But yea Invest in backup and hardware raid!