Recover and clone RAID 0 Boot Drives

[hyrule195]

I have a Sony Vaio model VGC-RA830G desktop running Windows XP. A few months back it came up with an warning that one of the drives was failing in the 2 drive RAID 0 array that's used to boot from and to back up. At that point I didn't have the funds to get new drives, so I shut it down and stored it in the closet until I could get some drives.

Fast forward to December and my roommate's brother is wanting some home videos made into a DVD (this is the system I use to capture and make DVD video's with). I was able to pick up 2 new 1 TB drives to replace both the older 2 x 1 TB drives that are in the bootable RAID 0 config as well as a Inatek FD2005 cloning dock.

I have tried the offline cloning option of the Inatek FD2005 from each of the old drives to the new drives. However, when trying to boot from the new drives it comes up with "Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key" Thinking one of the drives fell out of the RAID again, I went to the "Intel(R) Application Acclerator RAID Option ROM v4.0.0.6211" console I seen it show the drives as "Non-RAID" Creating a RAID volume put both drives as "Member Disk(0)" and the RAID Volume status became "Normal" and bootable.

My question's are:

1.) How can I put these back in the RAID array and boot from them as I was able to before (keeping all my files)?

Then:

2.) How can I clone the original 2 disk RAID 0 set over to the new drives and be able to boot from like the originals?

 

[USAFRet]

1. You can't clone a single drive from a RAID 0 and have it work. The data is striped across both drives.

2. It warned you that the drive was 'failing'. It failed. Once either drive in a RAID 0 fails, all data is lost. All of it.

There are 4 parts to a RAID 0:
1. Drive 1
2. Drive 2
3. The RAID controller
4. Your data.

Of these, only #4 is important. You need to create backups and clones of a RAID 0 before it fails.

 

[Alabalcho]

1. Cross your fingers that you did not damage the original drives
2. Put them back into the original system
3. Boot Windows, confirm that it works properly.
4. Plug one of the new drives, and clone the RAID0 array onto it.

 

[hyrule195]

1. You can't clone a single drive from a RAID 0 and have it work. The data is striped across both drives.

-- First off, I don't need a lesson on what or how a RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, etc works or stores data, as I already know. However, I'm not familiar copying/cloning a RAID 0 set (as the others have some redundancy) to a new set of drives, which is why I tried cloning each drive over to a new set. I figured that if I was able to clone sector by sector from one drive to another, it would make an exact clone of the drive and work. On the "Intel(R) Application Accelerator RAID Option ROM v4.0.0.6211" console, I only seen the options for

1. Create RAID Volume
2. Delete RAID Volume
3. Reset Disks to Non-RAID
4. Exit

Nothing about copying or recovering a RAID array/set.


2. It warned you that the drive was 'failing'. It failed. Once either drive in a RAID 0 fails, all data is lost. All of it.

-- Yes it did warn me and it did boot a couple times, and the RAID controller can see the drive, it's correct size and can even put it into a RAID set. So I don't think the drive has totally failed, yet.

The problem is the original RAID volume on the original drives was deleted and re-created (apparently with different parameters) so now the system doesn't know where the boot OS is, etc. I'm needing to recover this RAID volume info so the system can start booting again with the original drives and then I need a way to be able to copy over everything (after formatting the new drives) over to the new drive set.


There are 4 parts to a RAID 0:
1. Drive 1
2. Drive 2
3. The RAID controller
4. Your data.

Of these, only #4 is important. You need to create backups and clones of a RAID 0 before it fails.

-- Again, I know how a RAID stores data, etc. and I know that backups, etc are important. Most of the files on these drives are video files (mostly TV programs), there's only a few other files, and programs that I'd rather not have to hassle with in re-activating them, which is why I was looking at the cloning option.

My whole plan for the 3/possibly 4 when I do a game system build, is to do a DIY NAS build with a RAID 6 (minimum) or RAID 6 equivalent (minimum) where I can have a central location to store all files and to have that NAS build to automatically sync all files that aren't video, or other replaceable files, to another NAS build or/& to a cloud storage.

 

[hyrule195]

1. Cross your fingers that you did not damage the original drives
2. Put them back into the original system
3. Boot Windows, confirm that it works properly.
4. Plug one of the new drives, and clone the RAID0 array onto it.

The problem is that the RAID volume info on the original drives was deleted, so now the computer doesn't know where the OS is to boot from it. First thing is I need a way to recover/recreate the RAID array info to it's original settings, etc. so the computer knows where the OS is to be able to boot into Windows.

 

[Alabalcho]

The problem is that the RAID volume info on the original drives was deleted, so now the computer doesn't know where the OS is to boot from it. First thing is I need a way to recover/recreate the RAID array info to it's original settings, etc. so the computer knows where the OS is to be able to boot into Windows.

You don't have to boot Windows off this array in order to recover the data. You can even boot some other OS (eg installed on your new drive) for recovery.

 

[USAFRet]

The problem is that the RAID volume info on the original drives was deleted, so now the computer doesn't know where the OS is to boot from it. First thing is I need a way to recover/recreate the RAID array info to it's original settings, etc. so the computer knows where the OS is to be able to boot into Windows.

Given that, you are almost certainly out of luck.

 

[Rogue Leader]

1. Cross your fingers that you did not damage the original drives
2. Put them back into the original system
3. Boot Windows, confirm that it works properly.
4. Plug one of the new drives, and clone the RAID0 array onto it.

The problem is that the RAID volume info on the original drives was deleted, so now the computer doesn't know where the OS is to boot from it. First thing is I need a way to recover/recreate the RAID array info to it's original settings, etc. so the computer knows where the OS is to be able to boot into Windows.

The pope himself could not excommunicate the data from your drives.

In a RAID 0 setup the data is striped and the RAID Array is the road map that tells the system where the data cuts in and out between the drives. Lose that and you have nothing. Do not even waste any more time on this, its over.