ACK!! When RAID 0 dies....

[FyreLance]

As a last resort, trying to see if any of my fellow geeks have any ideas on recovering my drive....

Somewhat recently I backed up my boot drive, formatted and reinstalled Windows, and then reconfigured my boot drive to be two 40GB drives in an IDE RAID 0 (striping) configuration. Well, lucky me, looks like one of the drives must've died, because the machine would no longer boot. Unfortunately I had not gotten a backup yet (I JUST set this up). So after trying to get the thing going for a while (without success), I installed Windows (XP) on another drive in my system ("Storage") and booted the machine. Now the RAID volume shows up, as "Local Disk ( G: )", but when I try to open it, it says "G:\ is not accessible. The device is not connected." The drive does not show up in the disk manager.

I tried to run OnTrack EasyRecovery software to see if that would help, but whenever I select any of the recovery utilities, the program quits, before I even tell it what drive to look at. Both the full version and trial version do this.

Checking "Properties" on the drive shows Used and Free space at 0 bytes, capacity 0 bytes, file system RAW. Trying to Error-Check the drive does nothing at all. Checking the hardware tab reveals "This device is working properly."

I am running out of ideas, and I am afraid to touch or remove the drives, because once the RAID array is gone from this machine, there is absolutely no chance of recovering my data (not that things are looking hopeful anyway...)

Does anyone have ANY suggestions? Luckily my massive music collection is safe (different drive), but if I lose this data, all of my work files from music I've composed, GIGABYTES of pictures, videos, important documents, all of my e-mail since 2001, saved conversations since late 90's... all will be gone. Obviously RAID 0 scares the crap out of me now and I should've known better to get a backup sooner, but I kept putting it off, and just as I was thinking to get ready to do it, the machine decides to crap out.

The RAID controller is an IDE HPT374 on my Abit AT7 motherboard.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!!!

 

[FyreLance]

I think I'm gonna give this a shot next: http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm

Anybody have any experience with it?

 

[Biggerhammer]

I feel for you.

Do you have another machine, or at least another RAID controller, to try this RAID out bypassing this controller?

 

[shud]

This is why RAID 5 is glorious (you'd need a 3rd drive, though, I think).

I don't have too much experience with RAID problems, but I feel for ya.

 

[yacoub]

Just another example of why you separate your OS drive from... everything else (of value)! You can use RAID 0 for your OS drive to decrease load time and improve performance and whatnot, but you REALLY don't want to be caught with your pants down like this by having valuable data on the RAID'd drive(s).

 

[FyreLance]

Yes, and as I said, I should've known better, but it's too late for that now... any suggestions on recovery without sending to a data recovery business would be very helpful

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Okay, is this a SATA or PATA drive? I'm guessing PATA. I would hook it up to the motherboard (sans RAID) and see if BIOS sees it. Then do the other one. If it sees them both, grab another (not any that were on the RAID 0 array) drive and install Windows on it, and plug in the two drives into the RAID array controller, and see if you can install the driver for the RAID array and get the array back up.

If you turn off the drives, remove them from the system, and then put them back, the information on the drives, as well as the array itself, will still be there. If you lost one of the drives, and it is actually dead, then there really isn't anything that you can do.
Tas.

 

[FyreLance]

If it sees them both, grab another (not any that were on the RAID 0 array) drive and install Windows on it, and plug in the two drives into the RAID array controller, and see if you can install the driver for the RAID array and get the array back up.

I have already done this, per my original post... no dice

I did not try connecting them individually though to see if they both show up, will have to try that.

 

[MobiusPizza]

Try that software you post there. Shouldn't need a RAID controller to do that. Just plug each drive in normal IDE channel

 

[FyreLance]

Currently I'm using a demo of Active@ UNDELETE which is supposed to be able to recover data from lost RAID arrays. I currently have it doing a low-level scan which will probably take ~6 hours. Then it will try and recover anything that is 64kb or smaller (demo limitation, should be enough to tell if it will work). If it works, I'll probably go ahead and buy the program (~$35) and try to recover everything.

 

[cbuchach]

What I would do is test the two drives individually with the drive testing utilities most manufacturers offer. For example IBM/Hitachi has their drive fitness test which can test individual drives in an array without damage. If the hard drives test fine then you can look at other things like making sur ethe controller is properly configuerd and the drivers in Winodws are correct, etc.

 

[So]

Which is why, if I ever get around to building that TB server, it'll be 4 400's or 5 300's in raid 5.

 

[imported_Kensai]

When RAID0 dies, it's gone. That's why we use RAID1, RAID5 or any other parity based RAID.

 

[beatle]

Try deleting the array in the array manager and recreating it with the same stripe size. My RAID-0 config broke for no reason last week (drives were still fine) and deleting the array and recreating it did the trick. Just be sure NOT to initialize the drives or touch the MBR.

 

[FyreLance]

Originally posted by: beatle
Try deleting the array in the array manager and recreating it with the same stripe size. My RAID-0 config broke for no reason last week (drives were still fine) and deleting the array and recreating it did the trick. Just be sure NOT to initialize the drives or touch the MBR.

Hm that's interesting... that would appear to be the same situation with me... I don't think the drives are bad. Once I'm done exhausting all my other hopeless data recovery methods I'll give this a shot... thanks!