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RAID 1 disks lost all data

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  • Storage
August 30, 2014 1:54:40 PM

I'm having a really strange problem, and I'm not sure what the best next steps are. I'll give a really detailed explanation, please bear with me.

I have a computer with a RAID 1 array on it. Decided to add another hard drive just for storage. I had a 2TB drive I wasn't using, so I grabbed a brand new SATA cable and plugged it in (computer was off & unplugged). Went to start up the computer and the BIOS had a problem, asked me to enter it or reset to default. I went in and put the SATA settings back to RAID and whatnot, then rebooted. Couldn't boot, something was corrupted. I put in the win7 disk and tried to repair, but it didn't even see the OS. I used cmd and diskpart, and it showed the volume in RAW format. I took out one of the RAID disks and put it on another computer. It could access it normally, no problems. Did a disk check, not sure if it actually helped. Most of the files are from 2011 (probably around when I first built it), with a couple more recent ones. Clearly nowhere close to up to date.

Meanwhile, with only one disk not in RAID, suddenly windows recognizes that there is a boot sector problem on the primary computer. I tried to use the win7 disk to repair it, and this time it works. It repairs and boots, but the graphics card wants me to reboot to finish installation (why it needed to reinstall I don't know). I did, and I'm right back to windows recognizing a boot sector problem. Repaired again and ran an in depth disk check, so far I can boot fine. More of the files are present, but it's still nowhere close up to date. My antivirus (NOD32) says it hasn't been updated since 2011 (not true). It's now using a bubble screen saver. I didn't know that even came with windows. There's no one around who would have changed it. WD SMART test passes on both drives.

I'm currently running Recuva on both drives to see what I can get back. Important stuff was backed up, but there's a lot I would like to find again.

Questions:
1) Can anyone provide a reasonable theory as to what happened? Adding another hard drive hardly seems like it would have caused this.
2) Why was one of the RAID disks so far out of date? Did I not set it up properly, or is it more likely to be related to whatever caused this?
3) Is this indeed a hard drive problem, or is it more likely there's something wrong with the motherboard?
4) What about a virus? I've never met anything NOD32 couldn't handle.

My current plan is to rescue what I can and try and use the 2TB as the primary drive. I'm going to try and put it in the RAID instead of the out of date drive and mirror it so I don't have to reinstall everything, but I don't know if that will work. If the same thing happens with the 2TB then it's clearly not a hard drive problem. Is this reasonable or does someone have a better suggestion?

I would greatly appreciate any help or advice here.
Thanks,
--RikkiUW

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