RAID beginner

[frippe]

Hello,
I had a 3 WD 500Gb drives RAID set up for me on a DELL T5400 and Windows 7 Ultimate
I removed the drives (to install an SSD drive, which didn't work), and when I put them back, only, and now the system dosn't boot
I dont know the RAID mode
How can I read data from the RAID, in an as simple way a possible?
Can I simply use any of the 3 drives as a slvae, booting from a new drive, or connect it as a slave to another TT5400 running Windows 7 U?

 

[GhislainG]

The drives probably were setup in RAID 0 or RAID 5. Have you tried both?

 

[sminlal]

I understand that many of the Linux-based systems such as Ubuntu have drivers which will automatically recognize RAID disks. If you configure the drives as non-RAID in the BIOS and then boot from one of the Linux "LiveCD" distros it's supposed to recognize and mount the RAID volume - that would let you recover the data from it and copy it to another drive.

I don't have any personal experience with it, however.

 

[frippe]

I understand that many of the Linux-based systems such as Ubuntu have drivers which will automatically recognize RAID disks.

great answer, thanks for sharing your expertize
i backed up the most important files, but its rgeat to know that there is a way to recover
i will try it at some point, and post the result here

 

[frippe]

The drives probably were setup in RAID 0 or RAID 5. Have you tried both?

thank you
the RAID was set up using the built in RAID on the motherboard of the DELL T5400
it doesnt say which RAID it is, i can select RAID or automatic ATA/RAID detection, thats about it
i should have mentioned that only 1 out of the 3 disks is recognized now (RAID 0 on SATA0), which is unfortunate because I reinstalled all 3 and made sure that cables are connected, and that STATA is 'On' in the Bios etc
i got a warning when i switched from RAID to automatic ATA/RAID, did that maybe corrupt the drives permanently?

 

[GhislainG]

i got a warning when i switched from RAID to automatic ATA/RAID, did that maybe corrupt the drives permanently?

It certainly didn't help. Didn't you perform a complete backup before making changes to your system's configuration? Why did you have to break the RAID to install the SSD? Not enough SATA ports?

At a minimum all hard disks have to be detected by the controller before you can include them as RAID members.

 

[Mu33rto]

If you go the linux route try

"cat /proc/mdstat" to display any raid devices. If you used a live cd you might see md126 - md128. You should stop those before trying to assemble the fail raid.

"mdadm --stop /dev/md126"
type "fdisk -l" to find out the layout which you are going to need.

Now try to assemble the raid
* mdadm --assemble md-device component-devices
so it should look something like this
mdadm --assemble /dev/md0 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1

The "/dev/sda1" /dev/sdb1" /dev/sdc1" should correspond to your layout.

If all goes well you will only have to mount /dev/md0 to have access to it