Had to rebuild Raid 1 and now drives are EMPTY!!! HELP!!

[eno]

I have a old Asus A7N8X Deluxe that I use for file sharing. I have 2x 250gb SATA drives in RAID 1. I had to update the BIOS because I got a known issue with the RAID controller. I did take out the SATA drives and check them on my main system but after the BIOS update I deleted teh Raid 1 array since I couldn't do anythingelse with it, I then created the array by telling the drives to copy the data of 1 of them to the other. It took a while and at 3:25am while letting the dog out I came in here to check to see if it was done. It now showed both drives as current but once I booted into XP the system did not show the drives except under Disk Management, shows up as uninitialized disks. So I just took the drives out again and put them in my main system and same thing they have no drive letter and don't show any DATA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I need to use something to pull up the data on these, I did not format I just recreated the array in BIOS since I had no other option and set for manual creation to copy one disks data onto the other and after that noda, blank drives with no way to access anything in windows.

If you can help me I would be SOOO Grateful!!! Thanks for your time.

-eno

 

[Blain]

All that switching around, rebuilding and copying probably corrupted the data so that it can't be accessed.
There are services that can extract your data even from an array gone awry.


Folks, just another reason to use an add-in RAID card vs. whatever onboard controller your MB came with. :roll:

BTW, I'm assuming you did no backup before removing the HDs?

 

[eno]

Originally posted by: Blain
All that switching around, rebuilding and copying probably corrupted the data so that it can't be accessed.
There are services that can extract your data even from an array gone awry.


Folks, just another reason to use an add-in RAID card vs. whatever onboard controller your MB came with. :roll:

BTW, I'm assuming you did no backup before removing the HDs?

I just tried some trial software called Stellar. It's $100 though to recover the files but it did show all the files. I am curious how a add in card would of helped over my situation? Just because of the BIOS update? Wouldn't of had that issue with add in card.. What card would you recommend for a standard 2 or 4 port card?

What software would any of you recommend, if I have to spend money on one might as well get a good one.

And the files were somewhat backed up. I have a extra 80gb external that I backed up all my files months ago with, the main files I could lose are new recent pictures and about 100gb's of ripped CD's.

 

[eno]

Bump. IDeas anyone?

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: eno
Bump. IDeas anyone?

File Scavenger worked well for me. It changed all the names of the files recovered. But the files were intact for me to sort through.

 

[eno]

Do you think it would affect the WMA ripped CD's I put on those drives? I wouldn't want my Media Player to have the song titles and artist all screwed up. What do you think?

Also what is your opinion on the add in card over the onboard. I don't mind buying one if it would of helped in this situation. I want to learn from mistakes not make them again. Info?

 

[corkyg]

I just replaced my onboard SATA/RAID with an add-in PCI card. Reason? The plastic fitting around the mobo pins came off with a SATA cable. The pins got bent in the process, and they are extremely flimsy. In trying to get the plastic fitting back on, I broke a pin. That left no RAID capability on the mobo.

Before installing the PCI SATA/RAID card (4 ports) I cloned on of the SATA drives to a PATA drive using TrueImage. That was my backup.

Then, I installed the new RAID card with the pair of drives connected. I first had to remove the old array - then redefine the new array. In that process, it had to image the #1 SATA drive to the #2 drive. Took about an hour.

That worked perfectly - and a reboot got us back to normal with a good RAID 1 array. If all else fails, I still have the drive backup on a PATA drive - but it wasn't needed.

As was said above, you may have written too much new stuff to the drives. With RAID 1 you should have had two good drives full of data.

 

[Mogadon]

Download and burn a copy of David's Ultimate Boot CD.

Power up your machine with the CD in and set it to boot from the CD.

Select 'Hiren's Boot CD' from the menu.

Once that's loaded up it's pretty intuitive about where to go for what you want. There's plenty of software on that boot CD which will let you recover your data ... and it's free, check it out.

 

[eno]

Originally posted by: Blain

Originally posted by: eno
Bump. IDeas anyone?

File Scavenger worked well for me. It changed all the names of the files recovered. But the files were intact for me to sort through.

Yeah I tried File Scanvenger right after it happened. The trial worked and ended up buying it after waying my options. Only 50$ too. The file names didn't get changed to my knowledge at least and so far it looks like all has been recovered onto 2 external drives. I just ordered a 320gb Seagate to put into my external enclosure so I can make monthly back ups of my RAID and then unplug it from power and usb. Thanks for your tips, luckily my drives were in great condition and files were there just under the surface with no format or file overwrite. THANKS!!!!

 

[Blain]

I'm glad it worked out for you. I know that feeling of, "Oops". :shocked:
File Scavenger may have not been the culprit in my file names being scrambled. It may have been a corrupted OS that screwed them up.
No matter, I'm glad there are products out there that really work for people who can't afford to dump hundreds of dollars on data recovery.