Recovering a RAID 0 array on different hardware (good drives!)

[bhendin]

So I'm trying to recover my brother's data from an ASUS UX51V laptop.
Brilliantly this laptop was shipped with 2 ADATA XM11 SSD drives configured in a RAID 0 array.
I believe the RAID was configured via Intel Rapid Storage (aka Intel Matrix).
This laptop is no longer able to boot due to a motherboard/power issue.

The cost to replace the motherboard or for ASUS to provide data recovery are both relatively expensive and I would like to get this data back on my own.

Further complicating things is that the XM11 drives are not even a standard SATA/mSATA/m.2 connector format, but rather a proprietary 18 pin connection.
I am able to purchase special adapters to convert these drives to SATA drives. I should then be able to plug them in via SATA or (more likely due to the resources I will have at the site) via SATA/USB enclosure.

I have seen some RAID recovery softwares like these:
http://www.ufsexplorer.com/download_stdrr.php
https://www.runtime.org/raid.htm
and others.

I'm wondering if anyone has experience doing a RAID recovery like this using software from SATA drives. I might have difficulty on-site having access to install them as internal SATA and may only be able to use them via a USB enclosure.

Any thoughts, advice, experiences?

Thanks.

 

[derekullo]

Thoughts
Why is he using a raid 0 for important data without a backup?

Advice
Don't use raid 0 without a backup of your data.
An $80 2 Terabyte external hard drive from bestbuy would be a great start.

Experiences
Back in 2002 I made my first computer with 3 wd blue drives in a raid 0.
It was incredibly fast for its time, until it had a read/write error and the raid failed.


https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006338/technologies.html

Their example pretty much exactly describes your situation.

You need to buy/find another system and install windows on another hard drive, not the ones with the important data.

Once that is setup make that single drive the boot drive.

You should then connect the important drives and hopefully Windows sees them on the Intel Storage boot process and be able to access your other drives as, I'm assuming drive D: once you have the volume mapped to a drive letter

Most everything should support raid 1 so it should not matter which motherboard you buy.

If you had a motherboard with Intel Rapid Storage Technology you could try this yourself


If you don't have a spare computer with Intel Rapid Storage it may be cheaper to just bring this to a local computer shop due to them most likely having a spare computer with Intel Rapid Storage, even if they charge $200 you don't have to spend $400+ on creating a new computer just to access the drives.

 

[drtweak]

Try this software first. I have not had to rebuild a raid luckily, but have heard of it working for others

http://www.freeraidrecovery.com/

 

[groves.damien]

for the intel RST, you must first break the array by removing the failed drive from the array, once this is done power down, remove the failed drive and connect the new drive, power on and enter the RST console and add the new drive to the array, and let it rebuild/sync the above covers raid 0/1

however, raid 0 is not a raid, it's simply two physical drives combined into one logical drive, as such there is nothing to recover when one drive fails (your screwed) however the directions to recreate the raid 0 are the same as what is listed above

failure to follow the above steps will leave you with a drive that can show up the wrong size due to the intel RST boot code still residing on the drive. if you want to use bots drives in single drive usage, then you must remove both drives from the array using the rst console

So I'm trying to recover my brother's data from an ASUS UX51V laptop.
Brilliantly this laptop was shipped with 2 ADATA XM11 SSD drives configured in a RAID 0 array.
I believe the RAID was configured via Intel Rapid Storage (aka Intel Matrix).
This laptop is no longer able to boot due to a motherboard/power issue.

The cost to replace the motherboard or for ASUS to provide data recovery are both relatively expensive and I would like to get this data back on my own.

Further complicating things is that the XM11 drives are not even a standard SATA/mSATA/m.2 connector format, but rather a proprietary 18 pin connection.
I am able to purchase special adapters to convert these drives to SATA drives. I should then be able to plug them in via SATA or (more likely due to the resources I will have at the site) via SATA/USB enclosure.

I have seen some RAID recovery softwares like these:
http://www.ufsexplorer.com/download_stdrr.php
https://www.runtime.org/raid.htm
and others.

I'm wondering if anyone has experience doing a RAID recovery like this using software from SATA drives. I might have difficulty on-site having access to install them as internal SATA and may only be able to use them via a USB enclosure.

Any thoughts, advice, experiences?

Thanks.

 

[bhendin]

Thoughts
Why is he using a raid 0 for important data without a backup?
...

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006338/technologies.html
...

Because the stupid manufacturer shipped it that way. It is the stupidest thing I ever heard of in a consumer laptop, but they did it on this model!

I don't know if one of the spare systems I will have will have Intel RST on it. I was supposing with the software solutions that the RAID type might not be important. I'm sure any local computer shop in the area will charge me several hundred dollars for anything.

 

[bhendin]

for the intel RST, you must first break the array by removing the failed drive from the array, once this is done power down, remove the failed drive and connect the new drive, power on and enter the RST console and add the new drive to the array, and let it rebuild/sync the above covers raid 0/1

however, raid 0 is not a raid, it's simply two physical drives combined into one logical drive, as such there is nothing to recover when one drive fails (your screwed) however the directions to recreate the raid 0 are the same as what is listed above

The system is already off and cannot be powered back on. That's the problem.
If you read the OP (even the title) you can see that I state there are no "failed drives" - the problem is the system itself will not power on.

And RAID 0 is really a RAID, or else it wouldn't be called "RAID 0". Yes, I know it isn't "R"edundant, and it *was* kind of silly for them to include it, but it is RAID nonetheless.

 

[drtweak]

Ah yea you got the 18 pin one (These are the ones they use in Mac's)

To recover you will have to buy an adapter first (Only need one). You will then need TWO hard drives/SSD that are the same size OR bigger.

You then plug in one of each, use a tool like Clonezilla to make a 1:1 clone of it. Then do it for the second drive. Once that is done you can plug in both of the normal SATA's drives and then use this software or other recovery software rebuild and recover.

 

[reedo_43]

For what it is worth. I have and do use runtime software and it is very good. But only the data recovery stuff not the raid re-builder you speak of. However they do offer a trial to see if it works for you. Might be worth a shot.

 

[drtweak]

Yea if you do it yourself all you need is the adapter. There is free software out there to help rebuild or at least software that can tell you if it is do able and then you can buy it. R-Studio is a good one as well. I use that for a lot of cloning, especially on bad drives. Macrium Reflect is good but you have to have a valid partition working which you will not.

and yea some places charge a lot. We don't because if we can't get it with the software we have or the adapters then it needs an expert. The software has already paid for itself 10 times over even only charging time spent on it at 80 an hour.

 

[bhendin]

Ah yea you got the 18 pin one (These are the ones they use in Mac's)

To recover you will have to buy an adapter first (Only need one). You will then need TWO hard drives/SSD that are the same size OR bigger.

You then plug in one of each, use a tool like Clonezilla to make a 1:1 clone of it. Then do it for the second drive. Once that is done you can plug in both of the normal SATA's drives and then use this software or other recovery software rebuild and recover.

Can you give me some clarification here? I did see that some of this recovery software states that you can work off a disk image instead of the disk. If that's the case, I assume this is what you are saying I would use clonezilla for....to create an image of each drive. This way I only have to have one adapter to create each image one at a time.

What I'm confused about is why do I need "TWO [additional] hard drives/SSD that are the same size OR bigger." ?

To be clear, I'm not looking to rebuild the array for RAID use, I'm just looking to recover the data. AFAIK the two options I thought would be:

1) Plug both drives in with an adapter and run the software directly on the drives.
2) Create an image of each drive in turn and run the software on the images.

In either case I would think I could recover the data to any drive accessible to the system?

It sounds like you are adding in some additional complexity (which may be required), and I'm not sure why.

Can you clarify?

Also, you say "this software" is there a particular one you recommend/have had success with?

Thanks.

 

[groves.damien]

raid 0 is not really a raid, as such both drives must be present and working in order to access or recover data

this is why you must clone both of your raid drives to new drives (or use 2 drive adapters and access the existing array)

any motherboard with a intel chipset made in the past 6 years should be able to run the intel RST software package, just make sure you match the intel chipset to the correct revision of RST software

using cloned drives is the safest way to go because if something goes wrong, you still have the original set to recreate another clone set to work with

 

[bhendin]

raid 0 is not really a raid, as such both drives must be present and working in order to access or recover data

this is why you must clone both of your raid drives to new drives (or use 2 drive adapters and access the existing array)

any motherboard with a intel chipset made in the past 6 years should be able to run the intel RST software package, just make sure you match the intel chipset to the correct revision of RST software

using cloned drives is the safest way to go because if something goes wrong, you still have the original set to recreate another clone set to work with

Ah I see...so you are just referring back to the original suggestion of using the IRST software, and your recommendation for the extra drives is just so that I don't need to touch the originals?

Yes, that would be good advice except I don't think I will have access to an IRST machine when I am at that location.
I believe I am going to try to use one of the raid recovery software. They all seem to claim that they don't modify the disks. Even so, they work with image files as well, so I should be able to clone each disk to an image file and then work from there. Won't be trying this for a couple of weeks, but I will report back with results/problems.

 

[derekullo]

Thoughts
Why is he using a raid 0 for important data without a backup?
...

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006338/technologies.html
...

Because the stupid manufacturer shipped it that way. It is the stupidest thing I ever heard of in a consumer laptop, but they did it on this model!

I don't know if one of the spare systems I will have will have Intel RST on it. I was supposing with the software solutions that the RAID type might not be important. I'm sure any local computer shop in the area will charge me several hundred dollars for anything.

Raid 0 is fine to use.

The issue here is using a raid 0 without any backups.

Even with a raid 1, 5 or 10 you should still have a backup, but especially so with raid 0 due to the no warning of a failure happening.

But playing the blame game here isn't going to fix it.

You or a local tech needs a computer with the Intel Rapid Storage to fix the issue.

There may be a program that could magically do this for you, but you would still need to pretty much mirror with the Intel instructions say to do.

1. Find another computer and install windows on a separate hard drive.
2. Use magic raid repair program to import old raid config


I would much rather follow the actual intel guide.

 

[groves.damien]

unless you connect BOTH drives at the same time using the intel RST driver, no raid recovery software will be able to work. this is due to the way the data is split across both drives in raid 0, there is no way around this you must have both drives of the raid 0 online if you wish to try data recovery, you might want to read up on just how raid 0 works

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006437/technologies.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

raid 0 is not really a raid, as such both drives must be present and working in order to access or recover data

this is why you must clone both of your raid drives to new drives (or use 2 drive adapters and access the existing array)

any motherboard with a intel chipset made in the past 6 years should be able to run the intel RST software package, just make sure you match the intel chipset to the correct revision of RST software

using cloned drives is the safest way to go because if something goes wrong, you still have the original set to recreate another clone set to work with

Ah I see...so you are just referring back to the original suggestion of using the IRST software, and your recommendation for the extra drives is just so that I don't need to touch the originals?

Yes, that would be good advice except I don't think I will have access to an IRST machine when I am at that location.
I believe I am going to try to use one of the raid recovery software. They all seem to claim that they don't modify the disks. Even so, they work with image files as well, so I should be able to clone each disk to an image file and then work from there. Won't be trying this for a couple of weeks, but I will report back with results/problems.

 

[drtweak]

Ah yea you got the 18 pin one (These are the ones they use in Mac's)

To recover you will have to buy an adapter first (Only need one). You will then need TWO hard drives/SSD that are the same size OR bigger.

You then plug in one of each, use a tool like Clonezilla to make a 1:1 clone of it. Then do it for the second drive. Once that is done you can plug in both of the normal SATA's drives and then use this software or other recovery software rebuild and recover.

Can you give me some clarification here? I did see that some of this recovery software states that you can work off a disk image instead of the disk. If that's the case, I assume this is what you are saying I would use clonezilla for....to create an image of each drive. This way I only have to have one adapter to create each image one at a time.

What I'm confused about is why do I need "TWO [additional] hard drives/SSD that are the same size OR bigger." ?

To be clear, I'm not looking to rebuild the array for RAID use, I'm just looking to recover the data. AFAIK the two options I thought would be:

1) Plug both drives in with an adapter and run the software directly on the drives.
2) Create an image of each drive in turn and run the software on the images.

In either case I would think I could recover the data to any drive accessible to the system?

It sounds like you are adding in some additional complexity (which may be required), and I'm not sure why.

Can you clarify?

Also, you say "this software" is there a particular one you recommend/have had success with?

Thanks.

What i was saying is if you had some that could use images then great. You would still need a software like R-Studio that makes a 1:1 image. When you are dealing with this kind of of stuff you need to have EVERY bit copied as it can't detect where data actually is like with a non raid drive with an intact file table hence why you need a drive as big or bigger to do the 1:1 copy.

Now the reason why I said 2 drives is if you don't have any software that can't use images then you need physical disk. Then use clonezilla to copy 1 SSD to 1 drive, then plug in the next SSD with the Next drive. now you have a 1:1 copy of that SSD on disk you can use. Now if you don't just have any drives laying around then I would suggest just getting two of the adapters, 1 for each, and just plug them both in.

You would still need another drive to then either 1) Clone to once it rebuild the RAID or 2) Copy the data off too.

Either way cloning to other drives are good IF you really can't lose what is on those drives. If it best to NOT use the originals to rebuild unless you have a backup of those disk.

 

[groves.damien]

don't know how to make it more clear, the raid 0 array MUST HAVE ALL DRIVES AVAILABLE IN ORDER FOR THE DATA /DISK STRUCTURE TO BE AVAILABLE any missing drive = missing data = no data recovery

you can make as many images of the drives as you want, but unless you can figure out how to mount those images into a array, using the RST driver, then again you will be unable to recover data

please,.......read up on just how raid 0 works, as i have said it's not really a raid,.... as there is no data redundancy
all raid 0 does is increase the effective speed reading/writing since the data is spread out across the drives on each data write perhaps this example will help, under a 2 drive raid-0 a 100mb file has 50mb data on each drive, if one drive fails then that 50mb of data is gone it no longer exists

hard drives use what is called a low level format this format writes out the necessary disk structures so the drive can then perform any necessary housekeeping functions next there is what is called a HIGH LEVEL FORMAT that the operating system (windows/linux and so on) writes on top of the low level format it is this high level format the drive recovery programs use in order to recover data data recovery programs used by professional recovery specialists use a custom drive controller that is hardware based and will attempt to access the low level format structure if they are unable to access the os formatted data structure what they do in the case of a failed raid 0 array is to remove the platters of the failed drive(s) and connect it to the custom hardware controller along with the other working drive(s) so they now have access to all of the data, once this is done they begin the recovery process which can require manually stepping the heads to locations on the platters which the tech thinks should contain the next block of data in the file he is workig on

Ah yea you got the 18 pin one (These are the ones they use in Mac's)

To recover you will have to buy an adapter first (Only need one). You will then need TWO hard drives/SSD that are the same size OR bigger.

You then plug in one of each, use a tool like Clonezilla to make a 1:1 clone of it. Then do it for the second drive. Once that is done you can plug in both of the normal SATA's drives and then use this software or other recovery software rebuild and recover.

Can you give me some clarification here? I did see that some of this recovery software states that you can work off a disk image instead of the disk. If that's the case, I assume this is what you are saying I would use clonezilla for....to create an image of each drive. This way I only have to have one adapter to create each image one at a time.

What I'm confused about is why do I need "TWO [additional] hard drives/SSD that are the same size OR bigger." ?

To be clear, I'm not looking to rebuild the array for RAID use, I'm just looking to recover the data. AFAIK the two options I thought would be:

1) Plug both drives in with an adapter and run the software directly on the drives.
2) Create an image of each drive in turn and run the software on the images.

In either case I would think I could recover the data to any drive accessible to the system?

It sounds like you are adding in some additional complexity (which may be required), and I'm not sure why.

Can you clarify?

Also, you say "this software" is there a particular one you recommend/have had success with?

Thanks.

What i was saying is if you had some that could use images then great. You would still need a software like R-Studio that makes a 1:1 image. When you are dealing with this kind of of stuff you need to have EVERY bit copied as it can't detect where data actually is like with a non raid drive with an intact file table hence why you need a drive as big or bigger to do the 1:1 copy.

Now the reason why I said 2 drives is if you don't have any software that can't use images then you need physical disk. Then use clonezilla to copy 1 SSD to 1 drive, then plug in the next SSD with the Next drive. now you have a 1:1 copy of that SSD on disk you can use. Now if you don't just have any drives laying around then I would suggest just getting two of the adapters, 1 for each, and just plug them both in.

You would still need another drive to then either 1) Clone to once it rebuild the RAID or 2) Copy the data off too.

Either way cloning to other drives are good IF you really can't lose what is on those drives. If it best to NOT use the originals to rebuild unless you have a backup of those disk.

 

[USAFRet]

The next level of silliness from the manufacturer was 2x SSD in that RAID 0.
Beyond useless.

 

[drtweak]

don't know how to make it more clear, the raid 0 array MUST HAVE ALL DRIVES AVAILABLE IN ORDER FOR THE DATA /DISK STRUCTURE TO BE AVAILABLE any missing drive = missing data = no data recovery

you can make as many images of the drives as you want, but unless you can figure out how to mount those images into a array, using the RST driver, then again you will be unable to recover data

please,.......read up on just how raid 0 works, as i have said it's not really a raid,.... as there is no data redundancy
all raid 0 does is increase the effective speed reading/writing since the data is spread out across the drives on each data write perhaps this example will help, under a 2 drive raid-0 a 100mb file has 50mb data on each drive, if one drive fails then that 50mb of data is gone it no longer exists

hard drives use what is called a low level format this format writes out the necessary disk structures so the drive can then perform any necessary housekeeping functions next there is what is called a HIGH LEVEL FORMAT that the operating system (windows/linux and so on) writes on top of the low level format it is this high level format the drive recovery programs use in order to recover data data recovery programs used by professional recovery specialists use a custom drive controller that is hardware based and will attempt to access the low level format structure if they are unable to access the os formatted data structure what they do in the case of a failed raid 0 array is to remove the platters of the failed drive(s) and connect it to the custom hardware controller along with the other working drive(s) so they now have access to all of the data, once this is done they begin the recovery process which can require manually stepping the heads to locations on the platters which the tech thinks should contain the next block of data in the file he is workig on

Ah yea you got the 18 pin one (These are the ones they use in Mac's)

To recover you will have to buy an adapter first (Only need one). You will then need TWO hard drives/SSD that are the same size OR bigger.

You then plug in one of each, use a tool like Clonezilla to make a 1:1 clone of it. Then do it for the second drive. Once that is done you can plug in both of the normal SATA's drives and then use this software or other recovery software rebuild and recover.

Can you give me some clarification here? I did see that some of this recovery software states that you can work off a disk image instead of the disk. If that's the case, I assume this is what you are saying I would use clonezilla for....to create an image of each drive. This way I only have to have one adapter to create each image one at a time.

What I'm confused about is why do I need "TWO [additional] hard drives/SSD that are the same size OR bigger." ?

To be clear, I'm not looking to rebuild the array for RAID use, I'm just looking to recover the data. AFAIK the two options I thought would be:

1) Plug both drives in with an adapter and run the software directly on the drives.
2) Create an image of each drive in turn and run the software on the images.

In either case I would think I could recover the data to any drive accessible to the system?

It sounds like you are adding in some additional complexity (which may be required), and I'm not sure why.

Can you clarify?

Also, you say "this software" is there a particular one you recommend/have had success with?

Thanks.

What i was saying is if you had some that could use images then great. You would still need a software like R-Studio that makes a 1:1 image. When you are dealing with this kind of of stuff you need to have EVERY bit copied as it can't detect where data actually is like with a non raid drive with an intact file table hence why you need a drive as big or bigger to do the 1:1 copy.

Now the reason why I said 2 drives is if you don't have any software that can't use images then you need physical disk. Then use clonezilla to copy 1 SSD to 1 drive, then plug in the next SSD with the Next drive. now you have a 1:1 copy of that SSD on disk you can use. Now if you don't just have any drives laying around then I would suggest just getting two of the adapters, 1 for each, and just plug them both in.

You would still need another drive to then either 1) Clone to once it rebuild the RAID or 2) Copy the data off too.

Either way cloning to other drives are good IF you really can't lose what is on those drives. If it best to NOT use the originals to rebuild unless you have a backup of those disk.

You do not need to rebuild the RAID to recover data if you have software and it doesn't have to be RST if you go that route either. Also if you noticed the only way he is going to get to use those SSD's if he gets an adapter. I am suggesting him to get 2 other hard drives to image them to or 2 adapters and either way the best thing to do is image them to another hard drive then work from there. You don't want to mess with the original.

Not saying you are wrong just saying you don't need to have to have it in RST, and yes we need all drives to be online.

Now I may not have as many Storage answers as USAFRet here but having over 500 storage threads solved by me plus doing this for 8+ years and have had done it in the past with RAID 5/6's going this exact route I have had no issues.

 

[drtweak]

The next level of silliness from the manufacturer was 2x SSD in that RAID 0.
Beyond useless.

I know right? Like WTF were they thinking?

Hey Guys! Lets make a RAID 0 so that when all these guys who don't know jack hard drives crash we can charge them a fortune for the proprietary SSD's and data recovery!

I mean. Just WTH were they thinking using THAT type of SSD that is only found in macs? Or well mac's, and now this laptop, are the only places I know of.

 

[bhendin]

So just posting an update/resolution in case anyone else stumbles upon this.

I ended up purchasing two of these:

EpicDealz 18Pin To SATA Adapter with USB SATA Cable for Sandisk SDSA5JK ADATA XM11 SSD From Asus UX31 UX21

They were actually pretty shoddy (loose capacitor on one, bad cable with the other) - but I was able to jury rig them for the task at hand and then sent them back for these Sintech ones to keep to reuse the drives in some external USB enclosures moving forward.

Anyway, I simply removed the XM11 drives from the laptop noting which one was on interface 0 and which one was on interface 1.
I then hooked them up to the purchased SATA adapters and plugged them into the USB ports of my laptop.

I launched RAID Reconstructor (Runtime Software) and chose the two disks in the drop-down and selected "Analyze." It reported back the presumed stripe side of the array, which I recorded down. I couldn't go further with this software because I didn't purchase it, and in the end decided to go with:

UFS Explorer RAID Recovery

I don't remember the specific steps, but it was pretty intuitive. After launching the software I chose to reconstruct an array and selected the two disks. I then put in the block information I got from the other program and mounted the array/disk.

Immediately the array was built in real-time and I was able to browse the contents of the drive. I could basically export everything from the array to a new disk and because everything was SSD I recovered like 150 GB of data in ~10 minutes.

I was actually amazed at how easy everything went. The fact that I didn't need to actually rebuild the array onto new disks but the software could just rebuild it (i.e. piece it together) live and allow me to browse/export the files was just fantastic.

I'm not sure if UFS explorer would have detected all the information since it just prompted me to enter it. It may have had that option, but because I happened to get that info from RAID Reconstructor first meant there was no guess-work, etc.

I recommend UFS for other people facing a similar problem.

 

[reedo_43]

No *! Good ending to a very complicated problem. Congrats

 

[drtweak]

So just posting an update/resolution in case anyone else stumbles upon this.

I ended up purchasing two of these:

EpicDealz 18Pin To SATA Adapter with USB SATA Cable for Sandisk SDSA5JK ADATA XM11 SSD From Asus UX31 UX21

They were actually pretty shoddy (loose capacitor on one, bad cable with the other) - but I was able to jury rig them for the task at hand and then sent them back for these Sintech ones to keep to reuse the drives in some external USB enclosures moving forward.

Anyway, I simply removed the XM11 drives from the laptop noting which one was on interface 0 and which one was on interface 1.
I then hooked them up to the purchased SATA adapters and plugged them into the USB ports of my laptop.

I launched RAID Reconstructor (Runtime Software) and chose the two disks in the drop-down and selected "Analyze." It reported back the presumed stripe side of the array, which I recorded down. I couldn't go further with this software because I didn't purchase it, and in the end decided to go with:

UFS Explorer RAID Recovery

I don't remember the specific steps, but it was pretty intuitive. After launching the software I chose to reconstruct an array and selected the two disks. I then put in the block information I got from the other program and mounted the array/disk.

Immediately the array was built in real-time and I was able to browse the contents of the drive. I could basically export everything from the array to a new disk and because everything was SSD I recovered like 150 GB of data in ~10 minutes.

I was actually amazed at how easy everything went. The fact that I didn't need to actually rebuild the array onto new disks but the software could just rebuild it (i.e. piece it together) live and allow me to browse/export the files was just fantastic.

I'm not sure if UFS explorer would have detected all the information since it just prompted me to enter it. It may have had that option, but because I happened to get that info from RAID Reconstructor first meant there was no guess-work, etc.

I recommend UFS for other people facing a similar problem.

Tip for next time, if it is able to rebuild the array and mount it as a drive letter and not sure if this software did that or not, use Macrium Reflect, which is free, to clone to a good drive so that you can just boot right off of it.

Otherwise GOOD JOB!

 

[bhendin]

Tip for next time, if it is able to rebuild the array and mount it as a drive letter and not sure if this software did that or not, use Macrium Reflect, which is free, to clone to a good drive so that you can just boot right off of it.

Otherwise GOOD JOB!

I don't think the software allowed mounting as a drive letter, though I was so excited that I was just able to browse the tree and export the contents I grabbed the data off as quick as I could!

In my case, it was unnecessary to preserve the drive in bootable format since the reason I was recovering was the laptop itself was not bootable due to MoBo failure. I would have to do a clean install if I wanted to reinstall these drives in their SATA adapters in another system.

 

[drtweak]

Tip for next time, if it is able to rebuild the array and mount it as a drive letter and not sure if this software did that or not, use Macrium Reflect, which is free, to clone to a good drive so that you can just boot right off of it.

Otherwise GOOD JOB!

I don't think the software allowed mounting as a drive letter, though I was so excited that I was just able to browse the tree and export the contents I grabbed the data off as quick as I could!

In my case, it was unnecessary to preserve the drive in bootable format since the reason I was recovering was the laptop itself was not bootable due to MoBo failure. I would have to do a clean install if I wanted to reinstall these drives in their SATA adapters in another system.

With windows 10 that isn't as true anymore. I have swapped hard drives with Windows 10, without issue, many times.

But either way glad you got what you needed.

 

[USAFRet]

With windows 10 that isn't as true anymore. I have swapped hard drives with Windows 10, without issue, many times.

Win 10 is better than previous versions, but its still a crapshoot.
I've seen it work, I've seen it fail.