Oh dear God.... HELP!

[raptor13]

First off, sh|t.

That said, here's what happened:

I have a RAID 0 array of two 120gb drives. I also have a 200gb boot drive running WinXP Pro. Everything was working great, everything was wonderful. I just recently picked up a 250gb drive which I was going to swap with the 200gb boot drive. I'm thinking I'll make the swap, install Windows on the new drive, and Windows will see the RAID array just like any other hard drive. I didn't install Windows to the RAID array or anything like that so Windows should just recognize it, right? Wrong.

I get the new copy of Windows running but the Computer Management tool lists the RAID array as unallocated (and unpartitioned, for that matter) space. That's not good, I think. I throw the old 200gb back in, boot up, and suddeny it's copy of Windows also says the RAID array is unallocated space!!! "Oh no," I think. Now neither boot drive recognizes the 200gb of stuff on the RAID array.

I'm thinking that, somehow, the new version of Windows must have just labeled the RAID as unallocated stuff. It must have cleared the master file list or whatever that stuff is. I just don't know. The important thing is that I get all my stuff back.

That leads me to data recovery of which I know nothing... Any help? I'm desperate!

 

[ZL1]

raid specs/raid management ?


D

 

[everman]

If all else fails, I wonder if you can use Knoppix to rescue your data?

 

[raptor13]

The RAID controller is the integrated ATA controller in my Epox mobo. It's listed as an "ITE IT8212 ATA RAID" controller. The motherboard is an Epox EP-5EPA+ based off the Intel 915P Grantsdale chipset. Both drives in the array are Western Digital 120gb 7200RPM drives with 8mb cache (model 1200BB, I think?).

Everman: I haven't heard of Knoppix... I'll Google now!

Edit: EEK! :Q Linux! I have zero Linux eperience so Knoppix doesn't sound like it's for me.

 

[SickBeast]

AFAIK you need to somehow modify the boot.ini file. Don't quote me on that unless I'm right tho.

 

[Amaroque]

I had a similar situation a while back. I used a program called "R-STUDIO" here I was able to recover everything off of a 500gbsoftware RAID 0 array.

1) I would attempt to recover the MFT first.
2) I don't know if this will work with hardware RAID. It should if the controller is present.

 

[ZL1]

where you at on that raid management ? did you initially set it up in win or via the controller's bios ?


Thanks
Dan

P.S. any changes in main bios while the upgrade ?

 

[Amaroque]

Oh, also... Don't use the shareware version, and make sure you follow the instructions closely. It's $80, but well worth it IMO.

I hope this program helps you. I know how I felt when I thought I lost ~300gb of stuff.

 

[slash196]

Man, another cautionary RAID tale.

 

[raptor13]

I initially set the array up with the controller BIOS. It's been working perfectly since day one (until now ) and I did nothing with the BIOS. The only thing I did was swap the drives and install Windows on the new one. Then I swapped them back. And now I'm here.

Amaroque: I looked at that software and while it looks like it would do what I want, I'm not yet prepared to pay $80 for it when I'm guessing there's a free utility out there somewhere. I'm worried about my data, sure, but I know the drives weren't formatted. The stuff is there, Windows just isn't seeing it. Not yet.

I'm running a program called GetDataBack right now. It's going through and identifying all the files on the array and isn't having any problem doing so. It ought to be finished in a few minutes so hopefully that will take care of my problems. I'll keep you guys posted!