Howdy. ‘Yet another knucklehead who has been too lucky for too long in never experiencing a HDD failure -- hoping for some help. This site has been highly educational, but most of the threads I'm reading are (probably) too dated to provide guidance which is specific/accurate enough. That said, I’ve read of situations virtually identical to mine where data was successfully recovered, so I’m hopeful.
The situation:
Seagate 4TB External HDD suddenly failed – no external signs of power, no funny noises, drive letter no longer appears in Windows (mounts) – just suddenly stone-dead. Consists of 2x 2TB Samsung HDD’s connected to a dual SATA-to-USB 3.0 adapter card. Published reviews say Seagate put the HDD’s in a RAID 0 array for faster performance. If only I had known this manufacturer chose the most failure-prone RAID configuration . . .
On the hunch the SATA card (only) failed – not either of the HDD’s -- I installed the 2 HDD’s in a new dual-bay enclosure. The new enclosure has DIP switches for setting various RAID configurations. In RAID 0, Disk Management (in Windows 10) shows the drive with 4TB of unallocated space – and needing to be initialized. (I understand that initializing would deprive me of any hope of accessing RAID 0 metadata between the two disks – so I haven’t done that.) I understand (from older posts) the data is not accessible because Windows is unable to read the metadata format on each of the HDD’s for Seagate’s original RAID 0 configuration – which is almost certainly different from the RAID 0 controller configuration in my new enclosure. Setting the enclosure’s DIP switches to a no-RAID configuration (i.e. JBOD: “Just a Bunch of Disks”) shows two, 2TB HDD’s in Windows’ Disk Management screen – as one would expect. Again, the Disk Management screen says the drive space is unallocated, and needs to be initialized.
First Question:
These indications SEEM to suggest that my original hunch was correct: both of the HDD’s are still functioning properly, and the Seagate SATA card failed. Or am I jumping to conclusions?
Most folks who have had RAID 0 recovery success-stories seem to have booted their PC’s to a Linux OS (Ubuntu), connected their original RAID 0 HDDs to the PC with no RAID protocol set in their enclosure – and the drive simply pops up on the Ubuntu desktop, with all of their original data intact. This is *supposedly* because Ubuntu can read the HDD’s original RAID metadata in the last sector on each disk and has decoders for all major RAID controller metadata formats – regardless of manufacturer.
For me, that didn’t happen. Ubuntu “see’s” two 2TB HDD’s when I look at a list of connected drives, (just as Disk Management did in Windows), but no reading of original RAID 0 metadata seems to have occurred, because the complete 4TB drive (with its data) does not appear on the Ubuntu desktop as others reported it would.
Second Question:
I feel I may be coming close to recovering my data with the Ubuntu approach, but I am altogether clueless on working Ubuntu from the “terminal.” (I could barely even figure out how to open the “terminal.” So I would need you to be VERY explicit on how to navigate to various Ubuntu tools, pages, commands, protocols, etc.) But with that said, what am I missing, what should I be attempting within the Linux OS at this point? OLD posts (7+years) here reference the need to install a multi-disk driver (“mdam package”) for Ubuntu to be able to read the RAID parameters, but today I’m not sure – nor do I have any idea how to install software in Linux!
I’ve searched for various Windows-based software recovery tools that seem to fit my situation. “Raid Reconstructor” (ver 4.0) for example, receives rave reviews from some, but when it attempts to read my two HDD’s RAID 0 metadata, it gives me a “no significant results” warning message – and suggests I pay $300 for Runtime to determine the RAID 0 parameters for me instead.
Last Question:
Can anyone recommend a simple, robust, Windows-based software recovery solution for this situation?
Thank you!
The situation:
Seagate 4TB External HDD suddenly failed – no external signs of power, no funny noises, drive letter no longer appears in Windows (mounts) – just suddenly stone-dead. Consists of 2x 2TB Samsung HDD’s connected to a dual SATA-to-USB 3.0 adapter card. Published reviews say Seagate put the HDD’s in a RAID 0 array for faster performance. If only I had known this manufacturer chose the most failure-prone RAID configuration . . .
On the hunch the SATA card (only) failed – not either of the HDD’s -- I installed the 2 HDD’s in a new dual-bay enclosure. The new enclosure has DIP switches for setting various RAID configurations. In RAID 0, Disk Management (in Windows 10) shows the drive with 4TB of unallocated space – and needing to be initialized. (I understand that initializing would deprive me of any hope of accessing RAID 0 metadata between the two disks – so I haven’t done that.) I understand (from older posts) the data is not accessible because Windows is unable to read the metadata format on each of the HDD’s for Seagate’s original RAID 0 configuration – which is almost certainly different from the RAID 0 controller configuration in my new enclosure. Setting the enclosure’s DIP switches to a no-RAID configuration (i.e. JBOD: “Just a Bunch of Disks”) shows two, 2TB HDD’s in Windows’ Disk Management screen – as one would expect. Again, the Disk Management screen says the drive space is unallocated, and needs to be initialized.
First Question:
These indications SEEM to suggest that my original hunch was correct: both of the HDD’s are still functioning properly, and the Seagate SATA card failed. Or am I jumping to conclusions?
Most folks who have had RAID 0 recovery success-stories seem to have booted their PC’s to a Linux OS (Ubuntu), connected their original RAID 0 HDDs to the PC with no RAID protocol set in their enclosure – and the drive simply pops up on the Ubuntu desktop, with all of their original data intact. This is *supposedly* because Ubuntu can read the HDD’s original RAID metadata in the last sector on each disk and has decoders for all major RAID controller metadata formats – regardless of manufacturer.
For me, that didn’t happen. Ubuntu “see’s” two 2TB HDD’s when I look at a list of connected drives, (just as Disk Management did in Windows), but no reading of original RAID 0 metadata seems to have occurred, because the complete 4TB drive (with its data) does not appear on the Ubuntu desktop as others reported it would.
Second Question:
I feel I may be coming close to recovering my data with the Ubuntu approach, but I am altogether clueless on working Ubuntu from the “terminal.” (I could barely even figure out how to open the “terminal.” So I would need you to be VERY explicit on how to navigate to various Ubuntu tools, pages, commands, protocols, etc.) But with that said, what am I missing, what should I be attempting within the Linux OS at this point? OLD posts (7+years) here reference the need to install a multi-disk driver (“mdam package”) for Ubuntu to be able to read the RAID parameters, but today I’m not sure – nor do I have any idea how to install software in Linux!
I’ve searched for various Windows-based software recovery tools that seem to fit my situation. “Raid Reconstructor” (ver 4.0) for example, receives rave reviews from some, but when it attempts to read my two HDD’s RAID 0 metadata, it gives me a “no significant results” warning message – and suggests I pay $300 for Runtime to determine the RAID 0 parameters for me instead.
Last Question:
Can anyone recommend a simple, robust, Windows-based software recovery solution for this situation?
Thank you!
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