Restore RAID 0 on new MB

[SlewiG]

Dear Community,

my old DELL XPS 630i (or better the Motherboard) stopped to work last weekend. All fans spin up to maximum and thats it (no boot). They keep spinning with maximum speed. (So if someone knows how to fix this, my other problem is solved).

So I tried to connect my two 1TB drives to a new MB, just to find out that they were configured as RAID 0 with NVIDIA MediaShield (Yes, I never did anything to them since I got the PC).

So here is my Question:
How can i recover my data? / How can I recreate my RAID 0?

I read sth. about Ubuntu and I created a bootable USB with Ubuntu already. I tried to assemble the drives (with mdadm), but it failed; I cannot mount the drive(s).

Is there a way to access the data? Is NVIDIA RAID as Software RAID available?

Best regards,
SlewiG

 

[RealBeast]

Unfortunately, there is no real standard for exactly how RAID is built (each manufacturer kind of does its own thing as far as details) and even if you had been using a high quality expensive add in card for RAID (say an Adaptec or LSI) there is a good chance that you would not recover the data without an identical or at least compatible upgrade card. It is unlikely that you will recover the data. RAID 0 is *not* a good idea because there are multiple ways to lose data particularly using bios based RAID.

Hopefully, you have a backup of your real important data.

If not, you can try using the trial version of RAID Reconstructor assuming that you can get the drives to mount at all without rebuilding them, which as you already have learned is a difficult task at best. Even recovery firms are not that great at recovering a pair of 0 drives, but if it is exceptionally valuable data you can try sending them to Seagate Recovery and get a very substantial quote and a fair possibility of recovery.

 

[SlewiG]

Thank you for the advice so far!

Another question (related to this): Is a 2TB drive enough to create an Image of an 2TB RAID (made out of two 1TB drives) or do I need more free space?
The actual data should have a size of 1TB or less.

 

[RealBeast]

Yes, 2TB is sufficient to image a 2 x 1TB RAID 0 array.