Rebuilding a RAID

[Ingemar]

After I swapped out my motherboard, I realized that my 140GB drive is actually two 70GB drives in a RAID. (OK I admit the only reason I know this is because someone more tech-savvy than me rebuilt the computer). However, neither of us know how to recover the data from the array.

Uh... help?

[termyt]

So you've swapped out your motherboard and can no longer set those drives up in the same raid configuration (I think that is RAID 1)?

You are in trouble.

I'm far from an expert in such matters, but I don't think you'll be able to get the data off of them easily if they are not in the same raid configuration.

Can you put your old motherboard back in (or did you replace it because it failed)?

[Ingemar]

I swapped out the motherboard because the original one died.

When we first installed the drives to this motherboard, the RAID utility simply read "Detecting array..." However, it doesn't mention drive size, etc. I don't think it's possible to create a new array without deleting everything in the drives, though somehow it manages to create a new array even though I select "No" when it prompts me to delete everything.

My friend tested out the drives on his (apparently superior) motherboard and still couldn't piece everything together.


I did notice that when I created this "array" and set it as the primary bootable HD, the computer was able to recognize it had a Windows installation, however I wasn't able to load the OS even in safe mode. I think that's a sign.

[Mithrandir]

I would suggest booting off another drive and trying to get at your data by mounting your "new" array as drive D (or whatever).

[Ingemar]

This stripe does appear in My Computer as logical drive D:\ but is apparently unreadable/corrupted.

Would switching around the connections of the SATA cables to the mobo make any difference?

[Saj]

What Mith said.

and to answer your last question, yes and no. from the mobos perspective, if your trying to create the raid from the bios, it wont matter unless you cant rearrange the drives in the setup. in windows it will because it will automatically make sata 1 the first drive on the array and sata 2 the second.

What you need to do is a little swapping in the computer. first thing you need to do is boot off another drive to get into windows. once you do that, mount the 2 drives as a raid(make sure it doesnt do a format!!!!), and see if you can get in, if you cant unmount the raid, swap the cables at the drives them selves, and see if that works and do every thing again.

If none of this works ( i honestly doubt it will ) the data on the drives are now lost in the binary abyss.

Ive been running off a raid on my computer for a while now, and ive lost things in the past because of a mobo dieing, or one of the drives dieing. When i do my next upgrade (my mobo is dead again!!) im going to go with 1 really big (1tb ftw) drive. I suggest you do the same, even if your a gamer, it wont matter. Raid 1 is marginally faster then a single drive and a lot more volatile. Also try to remember to keep important things backed up some where else, like an ipod or something.

[mechana2015]

I've never understood using raid zero (the type of raid that this sounds like) for anything other than super high end software, since the difference in load time is negligible in current day except for the largest files. Raid 1 or 6 makes more sense as it acts as a sort of backup, or just using each drive as an independant drive (HD 1, HD 2 etc.) to protect data. Is there any consumer benefit to using a Raid zero array?

[Ingemar]

That just happened to be the way my computer was sold to me.

If I ever get this data back, I'll never use RAID again.

[Ingemar]

once you do that, mount the 2 drives as a raid(make sure it doesnt do a format!!!!), and see if you can get in,

Exactly how do I do this from my alternate Windows boot?

[termyt]

I've never understood using raid zero (the type of raid that this sounds like) for anything other than super high end software, since the difference in load time is negligible in current day except for the largest files. Raid 1 or 6 makes more sense as it acts as a sort of backup, or just using each drive as an independant drive (HD 1, HD 2 etc.) to protect data. Is there any consumer benefit to using a Raid zero array?

Actually, I believe this is RAID 1. RAID 0 uses two drives in the place as one - when you write data to a hard drive, it gets written to both so that is one drive fails, no data is lost.

RAID 1 combines two drives into one logical drive making a single drive roughly the combined size of the two. It is slightly more efficent than what a drive of that size would be since it has twice the reader heads and thus the heads do not have to travel as far to find the data you are looking for.

Unless you are a real performance nut (or need more space than the biggest drive out there and for some reason do not want multiple drives in the machine), just get a bigger drive, it's more cost effective anyways.

[mechana2015]

http://www.howtofriends.com/raid/ <<<Definition I found of RAID types, which claims that RAID 0 has no parity and splits the data in stripes across all drives. RAID 1 appears to be the mirroring type of RAID that instantly backs data to a second drive. Also back checked it with an engineer to make sure I wasn't crazy.

[Mithrandir]

So your MB is able to see part of the data on the "new" raid, but the machine cannot access the data. That is not a good sign. I was hoping you'd have something wrong with the way the machine accessed the boot partition, but it does not appear that is the case. Do you still have your old MB? Could you put the disks back into that, and grab the data off it? You'd have to reformat when you put it back in the other computer, but it *should* at least be able to get you your data. Alternately, you may have to try and find another MB somewhere to use.

You might check and see if you can find a utility online that can build a raid array from disk images (that can emulate older MB drivers). Then you would just need to raw image each of the drives, and try to work from that. It's a long shot, but that's about the only other option I can think of at this time. SORRY!


- Mith

[Ingemar]

[Prof. Farnsworth]Great news![/Prof. Farnsworth]

I was able to find a freeware program called Raid2Raid that was able to read the new stripe I created. So far, it works OK.

http://www.diskinternals.com/raid-to-raid/

[Mithrandir]

Sweet! Let me know if that allows you to get all your data back, I know a few people who were looking for a similar tool.

[Ingemar]

It does get my files back, in working condition. (Admittedly, I don't need ALL of them back as some things are shameful and unedifying to my Christian walk). For instance, I recovered my Valve folder and Steam was working as it was before my motherboard fried.

[Mithrandir]

I will make a note of it. Thanks for the update!

[Saj]

Nice little app!