RAID 0 - Recovery

[77Irid]

I forgot to backup some essential documents before undoing my raid 0 array. (Idiot i know)

I have not formatted the hard drives yet, and both are working, what will be the easiest way to recover the data? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ronintexas]

The only way to get it back is to connect it to the RAID controller and hope the volume is recognized.

 

[boosted1g]

Nothing else to do but hope ronintexas's suggestion works.

Raid 0 should just not be used without a backup method.

 

[77Irid]

I will rebuild the array tonight and hope for the best with a recovery program.
I have a backup, but sadly its a bit old, and new documents are always the most important 😛

 

[popatim]

no you dont rebuild.
Its preferred that you image both drives first. so that if something goes wrong those important docs are still somewhere.

Leave the drives disconnected. Enter the bios and put the sata controller back into raid mode and shut down. Reinstall the drives. now power up and enter the raid bios. Note that you are only here to check the existing LD's and make sure they are functional.

- If they are functional then exit the raid bios and continue your normal boot into windows where you should be able to recover those files.

- If they arent functional then you are looking at recovering from a raid0 for which your backups are the best source if you have them. If not you'll be looking at using software, i would suggest linux at first, to recreate the existing raidset at a software level and recover your data.


*both intel and AMD raids write the raid config info on the drives themselves. I pull my raid drives out fairly often and swap in another pair with no loss of data or boot-ability. In fact just the other day I used an old set of Seagate 320's into a retired htpc for my niece. The AMD chipset recognized the raid and booted right up 🙂
(not that I didnt have to do a full reinstall anyways. I just wanted to show whats possible)

 

[77Irid]

Success!

I did rebuild it and then used active undelete. Luckilly everything was recovered. just took ages to scan and recover because of the size of the drives.

Thanks for the advice. ill remember in the future not to be an idiot and too make image drives too 😛