One drive of RAID 0 array unplugged, is array lost?

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jeffreygeee

jeffreygeee

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Jan 4, 2014
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Hello all, I am having difficulty with my RAID 0 drives.

I have two Caviar Black 500gb drives in RAID 0. Today I cleaned my tower and it seems one of the power cables came loose during the cleaning. I first noticed after I booted the computer back up and a few shortcuts were showing missing links. I immediately shut down and plugged the drive back in, however, it still is not being recognized properly.

Disk management prompts me to initialize the disk:
hilAAUH.png


Have I completely buggered my array?

ps. It might be worth mentioning that I overclocked my 2500k up to 4.5 between the cleaning and discovery.
 
Solution
Ijack
Well, it doesn't really matter if it fails as you would never have anything important on it that you can't afford to lose. So, particularly on software RAID and cheap controllers, the designers are not going to go to much trouble to build in protection against an event that is extremely unlikely to happen. (A physical failure of a drive is far more likely than someone starting it up with one disk disconnected, and there's no protection if that happens.)

And if it does happen it's of no real consequence, just an inconvenience, as you wouldn't have important data on a RAID 0 array. Perhaps proper RAID controllers have this sort of protection built in as they are not designed down to a price and, in general, are far more versatile and...
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RealBeast

RealBeast

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You may well have broken your array, very easy to do when using a motherboard raid controller. They usually don't have repair options either.

If you Google it, there are a bunch of solutions to repair using third party software, most doesn't work -- but some of the solutions that cost money may work. Depends if it is worth your time and money to find out.
 
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jeffreygeee

jeffreygeee

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Jan 4, 2014
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Is there anything I can do to try to salvage it? Maybe ZAR?

Edit: Thanks. I'm curious as to why it was so easy to destroy the set up. Something like this could happen very easily in many other ways. Why isn't the system more protective?
 
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RealBeast

RealBeast

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You can try all the stuff that you have time to try and cross your fingers, they sometimes work.

 
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jeffreygeee

jeffreygeee

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Jan 4, 2014
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A little extra digging is showing that the two drives are still being recognized as RAID 0. I've tried a few programs, but none will work since they require multiple drives to be selected for recovery.

Is it possible that there is a simple solution or is this just wishful thinking?
 
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jeffreygeee

jeffreygeee

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Jan 4, 2014
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I'm not terribly worried because I only use it for games from Steam and Origin which are obviously replaceable, however, I was using it to store some very old music/photo/document files which I may or may not have a backup of somewhere. I'm just not sure and I'd like to try everything before I give up.

Ironically I was thinking about migrating to a RAID 10 set up earlier in the day as I have two Caviar Greens of the same capacity.
 
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RealBeast

RealBeast

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Greens are the worst choice for an array, they constantly break the array with their frequent head parking.

I would just use a single HDD (SSD if you want more speed outside gaming) and then do reasonable backups with any number of backup solutions.
 
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S

smitbret

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If it were a hardware RAID this might be the case, but Greens are fine for a software RAID where the drives are connected to the motherboard.

The curious thong I don't get is how the PC booted at all if half the RAID 0 was offline.

 
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jeffreygeee

jeffreygeee

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Jan 4, 2014
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I think that might have been my concern (something like 3 years ago) and was ultimately why they are just sitting idle in spare bays.





Plot twist: RAID 0 wasn't the boot drive.

I'm curious as to why there are no fail-safes to prevent this kind of damage. It seems like too stupid of a cause for the amount of damage done.
 
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Ijack

Ijack

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There are no fail safes because RAID 0 is not designed for safety but for performance. If one disk goes the array is trashed. OK, so the disk didn't go as such, but booting without it connected was the same thing.

RAID 0 is hardly ever a sensible choice unless you can absolutely afford to lose everything on the drive at an instant's notice. There are no fail safes.
 
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jeffreygeee

jeffreygeee

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Jan 4, 2014
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I knew as much going in, but it seems unreasonable for it to be so sensitive. It sound's like it was designed to fail.
 
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Ijack

Ijack

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Jul 30, 2008
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Well, it doesn't really matter if it fails as you would never have anything important on it that you can't afford to lose. So, particularly on software RAID and cheap controllers, the designers are not going to go to much trouble to build in protection against an event that is extremely unlikely to happen. (A physical failure of a drive is far more likely than someone starting it up with one disk disconnected, and there's no protection if that happens.)

And if it does happen it's of no real consequence, just an inconvenience, as you wouldn't have important data on a RAID 0 array. Perhaps proper RAID controllers have this sort of protection built in as they are not designed down to a price and, in general, are far more versatile and resilient.
 
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Solution
Dr-Kiev

Dr-Kiev

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Aug 24, 2010
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There is a simple solution. Use Winhex there is reconstructing array option. Choose raid0 , set drives in correct order with correct stripe size (128s by default) .
If everything is ok, you will see your data.

 
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