Western Digital RAID 0 Crashed, Need Help Recovering

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SidneyFalco

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Jun 28, 2015
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Hi all,

Hoping someone can help me, my RAID 0 configuration on my desktop recently crashed and I'm hoping it can still be recovered (All of the data is already backed up on my NAS, but I'd like to get the drives up and running again if possible).

This is what it looks like in Disk Management currently:

http://i67.tinypic.com/1z50qyh.jpg

Just so it's clear, other than the main SSD C: drive, I have two 4TB Western Digital Black Caviar drives that are supposed to be comprising the X: drive. Not sure what has happened that's caused them to be listed as basically three disks when there are only two physical disks in the system comprising the RAID, hopefully someone can shed some light on that.

The only thing I've done so far to try to remedy the situation is switch the configuration in BIOS for the drives from RAID to AHCI and then back to RAID as that's fixed previous RAID arrays that have stopped working, but as that has not worked I'm a bit out of my comfort zone and I'd like some advice before proceeding with any troubleshooting.

Thanks in advance for the help
 
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RAID 0 member disk failure

Since RAID 0 arrays are non-redundant, then if one of the member disks fails, then data that was on the failed disk is lost forever. Having data from the rest of the member disks you can try to recover files. However, only the files which are smaller than (N-1)*(block size) can be recovered. Even files smaller than that limit can be unrecoverable if the part of the file happens to be on a failed disk.

So in general, if one of the member disks fails beyond repair, it is impossible to recover data from RAID 0.


http://www.freeraidrecovery.com/library/raid0-recovery.aspx

if your / a member drive failed it all over but the crying ... you may repair the bios set up [be careful ] as long as the drives...
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SidneyFalco

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I just installed HDTune but oddly HDTune is stating that the size of each drive is 2199GB instead of the correct 4TB size.

There wasn't an option for drive health but I ran a quick error scan on both drives and it was 100% green healthy blocks for both drives.

Also I had run an extended Western Digital test on the RAID array two days ago and it was found to be completely healthy.

I think this is more of a configuration issue than a physical drive issue. I'm just concerned about fooling around with the settings as I don't want to do anything that may result in data loss as I'm not a RAID expert
 
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SuperSoph_WD

SuperSoph_WD

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Jul 30, 2014
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I'm truly sorry to hear about your degraded RAID 0 with the WD Black HDDs. :( Unfortunately, data recovery from such a storage configuration is almost impossible, which is why we always recommend regular backups of RAID arrays, especially RAID 0. This particular array has no redundancy and fault tolerance whatsoever, so once one of the HDDs fails, you lose the data on both of them.
I'd strongly recommend you get in touch with one of our Data Recovery Partners worldwide and see if they will be able to assist you. You should also run the EXTENDED tests from the Diagnostic utilities, including the Data LifeGuard tool and see what the S.M.A.R.T. results show about both WD Black drives.
If you suspect physical drive failure, then things might be even worse.

I'd also recommend you check this article from our KB about WD support of desktop drives in RAID configurations.

Keep us posted with the troubleshooting!
SuperSoph_WD
 
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SidneyFalco

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I appreciate the response, but I really don't believe that this is an issue with physical drive failure but rather the configuration of these RAID drives having gotten out of whack and can be corrected either through Windows or DOS by taking a series of simple steps.

I have had RAID drives stop working in the past and I've gotten them working by various simple fixes in the BIOS or elsewhere. This is totally out of the realm though of anything I've seen before so I'm hoping someone who is familiar with what Disk Management is telling me can walk me through a few steps because I'd rather be safe than sorry.

As mentioned before, I ran an HDTune Surface Test of both drives turning up no issues after the crash occurred. Also two days before it crashed, I ran an extended Western Digital Lifeguard tool test on the drive and it passed determining no issues (I was unable to run a S.M.A.R.T. test on either drive due to the drives being set up in RAID). Not to mention I have not seen anything abnormal in the performance of the drive in recent days and was able to play large 30 GB+ video files off the drive with normal loading times and no problems at all even on the day of the crash.

The data is not valuable enough to me that I would consider pursuing recovery through a professional company, but if there is a way I can fix this myself through Windows or DOS I would be willing to invest the time to do so
 
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SuperSoph_WD

SuperSoph_WD

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Well, you could try running the DOS version of WD's Data LifeGuard as well then, it will allow to perform the QUICK and EXTENDED tests on the both drives without booting into Windows and it might also help you check their SMART attributes, however, the SATA mode needs to be either AHCI or IDE for this to happen.
According to your Disk Management screenshot, it seems like one of the HDD has gone missing. This means that it's either corrupted or disconnected. I'd advise you to check the connections to it and also swap the SATA cable that is connecting it. If the same controller has more SATA ports available try swapping the location of that HDD as well.
If you right-click in Disk Management on the missing drive, you should have the option to Reactivate Disk which should mark it as Online like the other.

However, you would most probably need to re-configure the whole array afterwards, and format both drives in the process.
Since the data is not that important to you, rebuilding the RAID configuration from scratch shouldn't bother you so much.

Hope this works. Let us know it is going!
SuperSoph_WD
 
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SidneyFalco

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Thanks for the suggestion, that's extremely helpful and I'll definitely give these software a try.

How would i go about determining the drive order? Is it just which drive is plugged into the first controller and which is in the second or does it refer to something else?

Also the strip size is 128kb on this RAID configuration. Is that the same as the block size and if not, how can I determine that number?

Sorry if these are dumb/obvious questions, I'm far from an expert in RAID and given the current situation, this is not somewhere I'd want to make a mistake
 
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junkeymonkey

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Nov 11, 2013
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''RAID 0 (also known as a stripe set or striped volume) splits ("stripes") data evenly across two or more disks, without parity information, redundancy, or fault tolerance. Since RAID 0 provides no fault tolerance or redundancy, the failure of one drive will cause the entire array to fail; as a result of having data striped across all disks, the failure will result in total data loss''

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels


welcome to raid 0
 
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S Haran

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Jul 12, 2013
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Sometimes you can see the settings in your RAID config utility. But if not it is safe to guess at the RAID settings as the recovery software does not write to the RAID member drives. The good thing is there is not much guess work for a 2 drive RAID 0. And yes chunk/stripe/block size often refer to the same thing. If you are extra cautions and would like help shoot me a PM.
 
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junkeymonkey

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Nov 11, 2013
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RAID 0 member disk failure

Since RAID 0 arrays are non-redundant, then if one of the member disks fails, then data that was on the failed disk is lost forever. Having data from the rest of the member disks you can try to recover files. However, only the files which are smaller than (N-1)*(block size) can be recovered. Even files smaller than that limit can be unrecoverable if the part of the file happens to be on a failed disk.

So in general, if one of the member disks fails beyond repair, it is impossible to recover data from RAID 0.


http://www.freeraidrecovery.com/library/raid0-recovery.aspx

if your / a member drive failed it all over but the crying ... you may repair the bios set up [be careful ] as long as the drives are good

raid 0 is performance never put anything you don't want to loose on it or if so make x2 regular backups efforts 95 % of the time done for is done for and you start back from scratch like at first with 2 may as well be blank drives unlike a mirror array where you just can replace the bad drive

sorry for your loss
 
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