Windows Home server destroyed my raid..

[freaksavior]

Exactly as title says.

I had about 350gb of music, movies, games, pics, things like that on my drive, normally, i would just do a data recovory (thats gonna be fun) but it split the drive into 2 partitions.

A 20gb "sys" file drive and a 545 "data" drive.

Can i just use ntfs get data back and it will do the same? or do i need a raid edition or what? i lost a crap load of stuff i need back

My raid didnt get destroyd, just the partition table. Home server formated 596 gb and then made it 576 and 20gb. I deleted them both to make one drive with vista install disk, installed vista (on non raided drives)

thanks for the help guys

 

[Pinchy]

Have you got a second PC / motherboard thats RAID ready?

I know when my array died it was unbootable, so I stuck the array into my second m-atx comp and it installed the hard drives as per normal (windows did it, no drivers needed)...so I was able to get my data back.

 

[GLD]

Could it be...........................Satan???

Just kidding. But could it be a crap drive and not a crap OS? Just saying.

 

[CrackerJack]

try:

http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm

http://www.salvagedata.com/

good luck

 

[Deleted member 3]

"killed my RAID" is a bit vague. First of all Windows can't mess with your array, so I doubt the array is damaged hence this should have nothing to do with RAID. I suspect it's more of a file system issue.

Also, care to explain how Windows did this? I see no information on the actual issue in your post.

 

[freaksavior]

When you install windows home server it asks you to format all your hdd's.

I unplugged my raid array so it wouldn't mess with them.

I installed windows home server, and rebooted into it.

I plugged in my raid drives, and it came up with my old mbr asking to boot to xp or vista wich neither of was installed.

I reboot to disc with all drives plugged in.

I attempt to repair the os install (wich says nothing about formatting this time, just repairing) it formats "system volume" and finishes the install.

The raid data drives have been wiped and split.

 

[theeldest]

Freak,

I have had a problem like this. I had a RAID setup and Windows would sometimes decide to overwrite the bootsector, and I'd lose partition information. (I'm sure I did something, I just never knew what it was).

There's a Boot Disc that floats around, I think it's called no warez. It has some utilities on it. One of which will let you restore the backup boot sector. If that doesn't work, it will search the disc for partition information, and it'll let you restore a previous partition scheme.

I'll see if I can find you that link. It worked for me 3 or 4 times (then I just got rid of the RAID because I'd kept messing it up)

 

[freaksavior]

Freak,

I have had a problem like this. I had a RAID setup and Windows would sometimes decide to overwrite the bootsector, and I'd lose partition information. (I'm sure I did something, I just never knew what it was).

There's a Boot Disc that floats around, I think it's called no warez. It has some utilities on it. One of which will let you restore the backup boot sector. If that doesn't work, it will search the disc for partition information, and it'll let you restore a previous partition scheme.

I'll see if I can find you that link. It worked for me 3 or 4 times (then I just got rid of the RAID because I'd kept messing it up)

ok, thanks m8, i'll try it and look for it when i get home.

this is the second time i have done this. i like having the raid so i can do a back up and reformat but it didnt work this time.

 

[freaksavior]

Here are my options

edit: i just relized i had some family pictures of our vacation on this drive

 

[AsRock]

Exactly as title says.

I had about 350gb of music, movies, games, pics, things like that on my drive, normally, i would just do a data recovory (thats gonna be fun) but it split the drive into 2 partitions.

A 20gb "sys" file drive and a 545 "data" drive.

Can i just use ntfs get data back and it will do the same? or do i need a raid edition or what? i lost a crap load of stuff i need back

My raid didnt get destroyd, just the partition table. Home server formated 596 gb and then made it 576 and 20gb. I deleted them both to make one drive with vista install disk, installed vista (on non raided drives)

thanks for the help guys

I've had problems with Vista and raided drives but never XP x64. Sounds all kinda odd.

 

[freaksavior]

ok, so get data back see's the partition tables but it doesnt find the latest one, whats the deal?

I really need this stuff back.

 

[candle_86]

take it to a date recovery specalist, they can recover anything you want

 

[freaksavior]

take it to a date recovery specalist, they can recover anything you want

yeah. for a price.

if worst comes to worst i will

 

[AsRock]

yeah. for a price.

if worst comes to worst i will

not sure if this would work and would likely screw any chance of recovery. I was trying to find a way to remove a drive from a raid 5 and make it raid 1 well as you know this is possible but i tried anyways lol. i removed the drive on boot were you make the raid setup and it messed the whole raid up lol..

How ever i was able make a raid 0 out of 2 of 3 of drives to find one partition out of 3 had survived the other 2 partitions had OS's installed on them which did not show up as workable.

Thing was all the data of the NONE OS partition was in perfect condition.

 

[freaksavior]

^^ what?!

 

[Pinchy]

You tried what I said in post 2?

It should work provided you didnt manually split the 2 drives, which you didnt..

 

[AsRock]

You tried what I said in post 2?

It should work provided you didnt manually split the 2 drives, which you didnt..

Dayum, must be going blind lol.. Well i did with mine and made a raid 1 which used to be a raid 5 and when it came time to install OS windows detected one of the old partitions which was from the raid 5.

So i had a raid 5 i wanted it as raid 1.

i removed 1 drive from the array( the last ) and the Raid failed so i made a raid 1 array. On boot of the XP CD when it came to choose partitions 1 one 3 partitions survived.

C: and D which had the OS did not work after but the E drive which was just for spare data was un touched.

 

[theeldest]

Freak,

One of the Utilities on that boot cd will let you browse the files that it finds with each partition table. (if that makes sense).

So if it finds some partition information, it'll load the directory/file tree and let your browse the files. Then you have the option of writing that partition info or just recovering some files.

When I get home, I'll try to figure out how to get to that. I've always had to spend about 10 - 15 minutes trying to get the right part of the right utility.

 

[freaksavior]

i got it.

thanks guys