Need some expert help with RAID 0 recovery options

[Cr0nJ0b]

A bad thing happened the other day....

I'll admit that it was my stupidity that started all of this off. It started with a simple re-install of Windows 7. I have an SSD for the OS and a RAID 0 set for my data. The problem is that I forgot to unplug my RAID 0 set when i did the install...and somehow MS decided to stamp a 120MB recovery partition onto the front of the data volume. The first thing I noticed was that one drive of the raid set was set as a "non-member disk", so my RAID 0 failed. I went back in and broke the set and re-established it, which put things back to "close" to the way they were. With some partition software like testdisk, I was able to see the old files and partition. I was able to pull some (a lot) of the files back out and they are in good shape. My issue is that one large file (a backup) hangs the system when I try to save it out. In fact, whenever i pull a lot of data (more than a few GB) the system will totally lock up. My thought is 1) there is an error in the recovered partition that locks the OS when it's touched or 2) there is a hardware issue with one of the disks that is causing the lockup.

I'm just trying to see if there are some good low level tools that I can use to inspect and put files out that would be able to handle something like a bad block or sector or something.

thanks

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

Well after some hard work and troubleshooting I established that it wasn't the RAID partition that was causing the lockup. it had something to do with the motherboard and various SATA chipsets. My guess is that they were interfering with one another or something like that. Maybe shared IRQs, but I'm not sure. I will have to investigate that further after I finish my restore.

In the end I put the old motherboard in with the broken raid 0 set and did the same recovery steps. Basically just put all the drives in the right order and setup the RAID0 again. I used diskInternals to do the partition recovery with no lockup so far (500GB into the restore). Once i'm done with this, I'll put the new motherbaord back in and reinstall everything. Testdisk and diskinternals are both great programs for RAID revocery...I also ran across a free raid recovery program that was terrific. I forget the name, but if you google free raid recovery it's the only one out there. It took the original 4 drives and figured out what order they go in and then was prepared to image the data back to another set.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I also ran across a free raid recovery program that was terrific. I forget the name, but if you google free raid recovery it's the only one out there. It took the original 4 drives and figured out what order they go in and then was prepared to image the data back to another set.

RAID Recovery Software - the only FREE tool

Need to recover a failed RAID? Do not rush to send it to a lab, try our read-only free RAID recovery software which recovers most common RAID types.

www.freeraidrecovery.com

Sounds like an awesome tool. Great find!

 

[aigomorla]

This is late.. but all whose reading this.

Raid 0 is a dead end almost.
Recovery is almost impossible as half your data is gone in the event of a HDD failure, and even if you do a recovery (corrupted array and not drive), the file names will be so jumbled, its almost worthless.

So 2 cents.. if you R0.... Expect all the stuff there expendable.
Everytime i put my bet on R0 i have lost, which is why the only time i R-0 now is for Games or a Plex Transcode Dump, or to do stupid things like test my 10GBe connection and watching those numbers climb to 1.1gb/s transfer over network for giggles.

 

[pugh]

Ah loved it for games.. But no way would I trust any RAID on a mobo controller... Back that thang up!