RAID 0 STRIPED Lost Partition Recovery

mrgold

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Mar 29, 2010
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LOST PARTITION ON STRIPED RAID0 SET!!!
I have a really bad partition lost situation in my office.
I have 4 phsical disks on my system
1. Windows system disk NTFS (MBR) for win 7
2. Mac os x system disk mac journaled (GUI) for leopard
3. 2 Disks as raid 0 striped on silicon image raid chip (NTFS-MBR).
On mac os x i accidentaly repartitioned and formatted my raid set from ntfs to mac os. All data have gone.
To be able to make a partition recovery on windows, i changed GUI to MBR but didnt formatted again.
Now it seems a 500GB unallocated disk drive.
Which way do i need use to recover all my files?
If i use a recovery software it will not get my files back because of striped set.
I tried acronis disk utility to recover ntfs partition back but it couldnt find anything.
Now i want to try paragon partition manager but i dont have any idea that i am doing the right thing or not?
I need the ideas of experts about it. I am not a newbie and know enough to understand disk structures.
Which way do i have to use?
Which software do i have to use?

Please help..
 
Solution
Thank you for your kind interest.. I finally found a way to recover all my files.. I guess i should share it here so it can help others to spend money and time about it.
There are many different and good file recovery softwares. Many of them uses the same methods. But the situation was a little different for me because i wa using a striped raid array and all the files were striped on 2 physical disks. I didnt loosed any data actually but i cant recover them healthy.
And i found a software named R-Studio..
This program uses a different strategy about recovering data. It first analyses your raid array and then scans the files.
And finally i recovered all my data perfectly and saved business 🙂
If you want to recover files on your raid 0...
There is no way to do a full recovery; as you've overwritten data on the disks; that's gone permanently.

However, you might still be able to recover part of the array. Use RAID reconstructor or any software RAID functionality to try to recover parts of it.

Also, may i suggest never using fakeRAID shitty chips like Silicon Image to store important data? The importance of a backup can also never be pointed out enough.

I'm not too optimistic of your chances of making a recovery; but it would expect you would least get some files of it.
 
Thank you really much for your answer.
I want to give some info to you maybe you can inform me more..
This is a silicon image raid chip on intel ich7r chipset. (P5W DH Deluxe)
I didnt write any file on that disk after repartition and format..
Does it makes me lucky or not?
I am trying to recover the old ntfs partition by o&o software.
if i cant, i will format it as ntfs and try to raid file recovery ..
Thanks again to your kind interest..
 
You can try burning an Ubuntu livecd (just the normal cd; use option 1 at the menu) and see if it can access your RAID-array; as Ubuntu has its own drivers that access your two disks directly and create a RAID-volume you can use. If that works, you may be able to copy parts of it. It may also refuse to mount or give an error during copying because of filesystem damage.

In that case, Ubuntu can still help you to write the contents of the RAID to a single disk; and then you can use recovery programs for Windows that can fix this damage or at least give you partial file recovery. You would need a disk at least twice as large as both disks in the RAID0. Since you were using two 500GB disks; you would need at least a 1TB disk. Be aware, though, that disks are always slightly larger than their rated capacity; and the 1TB disk may actually be smaller than two 500GB drives of a different type. So to be safe, use a 1.5TB drive.

I'm sorry if i can't be of more help to you, it seems easy recovery is not an option, and the options you have may only yield partial success. If your data is important to you, i would at least consider the above mentioned recovery procedure. It should be safe as you're not writing to the two 500GB disks anymore, and it would allow you to recover your RAID using normal windows filesystems; you perform the recovery on the 1.0/1.5TB disk which has the information of the two 500GB disks in RAID0. So you don't have to worry about the RAID0-part; it would be a single disk with some corruption, which you may attempt to recover.

If you have any more questions, please ask.
 
Also, i cannot stress enough that you should not do anything 'stupid' right now - if you write or format or do whatever on your 500GB drives, you may only make things worse. So disconnect your disks and only use them in Linux environment until you got this sorted out.
 
I also deleted partition table (GPT) and changed it to mbr..
And used O&O DiskRecovery software to recover files.. I can see all my files at the right folder structure, but i cannot open any of them when i recover these files. I guess this is because of raid0.. What can i do about it ?
 
Thank you for your kind interest.. I finally found a way to recover all my files.. I guess i should share it here so it can help others to spend money and time about it.
There are many different and good file recovery softwares. Many of them uses the same methods. But the situation was a little different for me because i wa using a striped raid array and all the files were striped on 2 physical disks. I didnt loosed any data actually but i cant recover them healthy.
And i found a software named R-Studio..
This program uses a different strategy about recovering data. It first analyses your raid array and then scans the files.
And finally i recovered all my data perfectly and saved business 🙂
If you want to recover files on your raid 0 striped array, this is the best solution ive ever seen.
Thanks sub mesa youve lightened me about partitions tables..
 
Solution
Not everyone has a few grand to spend on 'being safe'. And not that much risk if the procedure is read-only and you generally know what you're doing.

mrgold, good to hear you still could recover your data! Hope you won't have to lose data ever again. :)
 
hi mrgold,

I am having similar issue,

MAC OS
2TB X 3 Drivers in RAID 0 Stripped Array,
we have lost RAID 0 array.We have sent to SOFTRAID for recovery and they have informed that one of the drives is repartitioned/reformatted.
kindly let me know how to recover the data from RAID 0.
 
First of all disconnect your raid array disks (you can just unplug the power cables) and connect a new disk to another port to setup a new system and setup r-disk.
Then reconnect your raid array..
You will have 2 different ways to have your files back.
1st one is to get your partition table back which doesnt need any file recovery operation..
2nd one is to search the right partition tables and scan for the correct file structure.
If your file system is corrupted already, youll have to choose the 2nd option. Just make all the steps, and plug your disks again. If the system doesnt see your raid array correctly, do not panic, just delete it and recreate new one with the same settings. It will warn you that all the files be gone but they are already gone so say ok and recreate the array. Then open windows and r-studio and start the analysis of partititon on your raid array. It will find some partition tables with recognisedxx names. Just check all of them for file system. One of them will have all your files in it. Select the files you want to recover and take a deep breathe.. 🙂
P.S: Do not use any other software if you are going to recover from a raid array. I tried all of them but all the files youve recovered will be broken cause all other softwares recovery systems build for non-raid disk and partition structure. I hope this will help you..



 
Hi arjunkr;
You have 2 options:

1. If you can see your raid array healthy on boot, but you can not boot or see your files then do not touch any raid setting, plug another empty hard drive, install windows and r-disk studio, and just search for lost partitions "ON YOUR ARRAY" NOT ON THE DISKS as i wrote above.

2. If you can not see your raid array, or it doesnt seem healthy; then you have to rebuilt it first WITH EXATLY THE SAME SETTINGS. cause the software has to know what it will search for. Then you can use the same way to save all your files.

Be sure that you will be able to save 99% of your files at least. So do not panic and just do the standart prosedure.

Normally the best and safest way to do recovery is getting the full image of the disk first but in this case, you have 3x2 GB = 6 GB and you will need 12 GB free disk space on another drive and its almost impossible. So you can safely use the way above and next time please use raid 5 to be more safe and fast already..
 
mr gold,

I ham having the same problem that you had with your raid 0. I accidentally installed windows 7 with one of the member disk of my Raid 0. I setup a new windows with another drive and installed r-studio like you suggested. I re-create raid in bios (ICH7) with Intel Raid.

I ran r-studio and it still see my Raid 0 as two separate drives. I just anyway used Virtual Raid provided by R-studio

I scanned my system for more than an hour. I saw my old files recovered but I cannot open any of them.

By the way, I set bios to IDE mode in order to boot to my new drive. Maybe the reason why I cannot see my Raid0 as 1 drive?

Please please help mr gold... I am very much looking forward for your input...