Raid 0 Recovery Curveball

[Atnevon]

Hey Everyone,

So, I had someone leave an older XPS laptop with me, and turns out that the second drive of its RAID 0 setup is messing up somehow.

Now, I have a few ideas of how to correct this, but, also, wonder what would be the best way to go about it.

First and foremost is recovery. My 680i board has the outlets to do RAID, but, is it possible to take those 2 drive, make the formation, and have them at least read on my desktop rig to get them backed up (or at least file folders to do so)?

Second, is repair. I know I used Spinrite for my single drive, but, i do not have RAID experience whatsoever.

Is there any easily guide-able advice for my first time looking into this to first, get the data, and second, repair (as a bonus. I want that data first)

Thank you to anything you can offer,
-At

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

http://spench.net/drupal/resources/raid0

i would type a long thing. but recovering raids can be a bitch if you dont have all the info of the drive and partition sizes and etc..

 

[slyfox2151]

unless the chipset on the laptop is the same as on your 680i motherboard then no you wont be able to just transfer the disks over,


the best way i have found to recover a raid array is to use, http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm
however it is not free, the trial version should tell you everything about the raid settings such as the stripe size ect.




if you have another disk around that is the same size or larger, you could copy the image over of the HDD that keeps screwing up, then you just swap in the new disk into the raid array and see if that solves it.

 

[Mussels]

no its not possible.


without the same SATA controller and ALL drives from the RAID 0 array, you're screwed. data recovery is impossible since you literally only have half of each file.

 

[slyfox2151]

no its not possible.


without the same SATA controller and ALL drives from the RAID 0 array, you're screwed. data recovery is impossible since you literally only have half of each file.

if the 2nd disk is not working at all then this will be the case ^

 

[Mussels]

if the 2nd disk is not working at all then this will be the case ^

since he said the 2nd drive is messing up (AKA, not working in the laptop) then i take that to be the case.


He cant swap the drive for a spare, nor it is likely he has an identical laptop to try the RAID array in.

So he cant replace the drives, cant replace the laptop, and cant get it working in its current setup...

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

i missed the second drive being messed up.

How is the 2nd drive dying?? its it bad sections on the disk? or is it the controler board from the hard drive?

 

[exodusprime1337]

it's not a laptop, but yes if the second drive is physically failing then the raid array is pretty much gone. if the drive is not yet failed completely, try getting everything off the array asap before it completely fails on you. I've seen some crazily damaged drives work out, and quantum drive out of an imac from like 10 years ago came into my office the other day with a horrible whining noise(think blower belt on hot rod) and i got some 16gigs worth of files off before it failed, all this persons music, oddly(some sick pron), and their pictures(more pron) and documents.

 

[Mussels]

it's not a laptop, but yes if the second drive is physically failing then the raid array is pretty much gone. if the drive is not yet failed completely, try getting everything off the array asap before it completely fails on you. I've seen some crazily damaged drives work out, and quantum drive out of an imac from like 10 years ago came into my office the other day with a horrible whining noise(think blower belt on hot rod) and i got some 16gigs worth of files off before it failed, all this persons music, oddly(some sick pron), and their pictures(more pron) and documents.

?

its a laptop.

 

[slyfox2151]

?
http://img.techpowerup.org/110121/Capture259.jpg

its a laptop.

yes it is infact a laptop, from the OP's description, however that should have no effect on anything...


so it is irrelevent.

if the second drive is physically failing then the raid array is pretty much gone. if the drive is not yet failed completely, try getting everything off the array asap before it completely fails on you.

+1 as i already said, try to make a mirror image of the whole drive and put it onto another disk, then try to recreate the array. if for some reson the chipset rejects the new disk and wont let you recreate the array there a few tricks left to get the data back, but only if you have both halves of the array intact

 

[Atnevon]

Hey Everyone,

I've been busy as hell, so here is an update:


I noticed that int he menu, the system was still bootable, and went into Windows. Though very sluggish, it made it to windows normally after 2 or 3 boots.

In the Raid Screen that flashes before the boot, it shows Drive 0 as "Errors Detected", and drive 2 is fine. I try and make a new Profile, but it says "Not Enough Space". If I delete the current, then, it seems to want to format.

Well, here is what I have done. I decided that the RAID0 is to much trouble for me, and the main user, I am going to scrap it. Its an older unit, so, why bother? I am going to just format the drives, check for the health, and reinstall a copy of Win7 X64 and just run 2 hard drives. One with the OS, the other purely for storage.

I think this is best for her in a long run for her needs, and not to play lazy, but I do not feel my current knowledge and skill can effetivy get the unit back to what it was before. (If I don;t do somethign, they will plop down 2K on a MacBook Pro So in order to save them LOADS, I believe this is the best coarse)

The best news is because I was able to boot into Windows (Vista btw...) was able to fulyl back up all of her documents, pictures, ect. (all non pron, cause, apparently girls don't need it) This now lets up have a full list of options.

Yes its awesome she can do RAID. It would be cool to have. But, I will NEVER do a RAID 0 to anyone. A 5 system would be the only I would do. Because it keeps failures to a minimal, and lets backups happen as they could.