How to recover from RAID 0 Failure

[paptimus]

Hi guys,

I have just experienced my first blue screen crash in Vista64 while performing some dvd duplication . After the PC rebooted, it could not find the hard drives.

Going into the Intel Matrix Storage Manager it had the RAID Volume as such:

ID-0
Name - RAID0
Level - RAID0 (STRIPE)
STRIP - 128kb
Size - 931.5GB
Status - FAILED
Bootable - NO

I've read several threads around here and elsewhere to perform the deletion of the RAID Volume and re-creating the RAID volume as it was. Now status is detected as normal and bootable. Yet no hard drive is detected after a system reboot.

I've also booted with Seagate's SeaTools diagnostic program and ran both short and long tests and both hard drives passed the tests. Am I wrong to believe that my data is still present? Or at the very least the hard drives aren't damaged in any way?

I'm at a loss as how next to proceed and as one can see, I am completely clueless about this so if anyone can take the time to guide me through this issue and anyone else who could provide tips, advice and suggestions to avoid this situation in the future, it would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance,
paptimus

 

[boonality]

Unfortunately unlike all other versions of RAID, when a RAID 0 fails you must recreate it. With RAID 1 for example you could just blow away the raid config and recreate it after reseating a disk and it would rebuild.

 

[johneng]

Just thought I'd mention my RAID 0 worked great for a year on a dual boot system mainly using XP.

one day I booted up with Vista after about 1 hour it notified me of a RAID controller problem and comp would not boot up after that both drives are working fine on their own.

Could Vista be causing RAID probs?????

 

[hesskia]

Do you know how RAID 0 works? Half you data is on one drive, and the other half is on the second drive. When the array fails (one of the drives borks, or the file system becomes shoddy), you don't have access to your data.

 

[michiganteddybear]

the only way I know of (there may be ways I dont know of) is to send BOTH hdd's off to a data recovery service where they can attempt to recover the data. Not cheap. probably more reliable than some other methods that may exist.

 

[bobbknight]

Back up, back up, back up, Especially if you are using a raid 0 configuration.

 

[4745454b]

I've read several threads around here and elsewhere to perform the deletion of the RAID Volume

If you have done this, your data is most likely gone. Once you break/delete the array, the data is gone. Format the drives, remake the array, continue on.

I'd like to point out now something I've been trying to point out for awhile. First, this is the reason I call it AID0. There is no redundancy, you might as well drop the R. Second, in a two disk AID0 array, you have 3 points of failure, not two. One for each harddrive, and a third for the drivers. What the OP is describing here is what I hear most people complain about, not dying drives.

 

[asdasd123123]

You shouldn't do raid0 on basic drives, you should always pay the minimal premium for a WD raid edition, or simply use raptors.
They employ higher quality checks from factory, and also offer 5yr warranties.

And pretty much your problem, is the Seagate drives to begin with..
I don't think I ever had any more short lived drives than Seagates.

They've broken down, or one of them have, I find that seagate drives more often have broken circuit boards, than physically worn out like other makers.

 

[paptimus]

Thanks for your responses guys!

Popped in my Vista64 disc, ran the system repair utility, heck it even detected the drive/system as Unknown but it got the job done! Nothing lost, just as I've left it. This after deleting the raid volume not once but twice! I'm even grabbing a copy of SP1 update (for better or worse!).

On a more serious note however, any suggestions or recommendations on backup methods? Would external drives suffice or are there other or better alternatives?

Thanks again!

 

[mike99]

External drive with Ghost or Driveimage can backup you system.

Mike.

 

[Hatman]

Well if you just bought a single drive, doesnt have to be fast, you could simply copy and store files and programs on it without it even being used, so if the raid array fails you can copy it back on there right away.

Wouldnt ever reccomend raid0 for an OS though.

 

[hitok1ri]

Thanks for your responses guys!

Popped in my Vista64 disc, ran the system repair utility, heck it even detected the drive/system as Unknown but it got the job done! Nothing lost, just as I've left it. This after deleting the raid volume not once but twice! I'm even grabbing a copy of SP1 update (for better or worse!).

On a more serious note however, any suggestions or recommendations on backup methods? Would external drives suffice or are there other or better alternatives?

Thanks again!

To paptimus,

Because I am in the same predicament, I want to understand if this was the exact steps you did:

1. delete the array in intel storage matrix
2. recreate it under i guess the same name using the intel storage matrix
3. popped in your vista disc and ran its equivalent of the recovery console? my question here is did you just fix the master boot record, or what did you repair in particular or was there a giant magic repair button? reason is because i have the issue with xp and im trying to resolve my problem on those grounds
4. just booted up your system and everything worked like clockwork i assume?

Sorry this may sound like a few questions are tied in at the same time.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I look forward to hearing from you.

Javin

 

[Guest]

@ hitok1ri or anyone else... I know this thread is old but I just had the same problem and would like to answer the last post.

Yes delete the array taking note of the name of the array , then remake the array with the same name as it had (if you had SyStEm as the name write it the same way) now you can reboot with your vista/ win7 disk in the dvd. ( I am running win7) click load system repair in win7 and load your raid drivers then run startup repair. I rebooted and it worked like a charm, no hassle.

I don't know why this works as when you delete the array there is a warning saying it will delete all drive data, and the same message appears when you make a new array. But it does, so I am now making my backup and not complaining. But if someone know why this works I wouldn't mind hearing the details.

 

[mturner]

Hi guys,

I have just experienced my first blue screen crash in Vista64 while performing some dvd duplication . After the PC rebooted, it could not find the hard drives.

Going into the Intel Matrix Storage Manager it had the RAID Volume as such:

ID-0
Name - RAID0
Level - RAID0 (STRIPE)
STRIP - 128kb
Size - 931.5GB
Status - FAILED
Bootable - NO

I've read several threads around here and elsewhere to perform the deletion of the RAID Volume and re-creating the RAID volume as it was. Now status is detected as normal and bootable. Yet no hard drive is detected after a system reboot.

I've also booted with Seagate's SeaTools diagnostic program and ran both short and long tests and both hard drives passed the tests. Am I wrong to believe that my data is still present? Or at the very least the hard drives aren't damaged in any way?

I'm at a loss as how next to proceed and as one can see, I am completely clueless about this so if anyone can take the time to guide me through this issue and anyone else who could provide tips, advice and suggestions to avoid this situation in the future, it would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance,
paptimus

Pull the drives out and plug them into a known working computer to see if they turn on.
You will know because when they turn on they spin and you can feel it.

After you verified they both power up plug them back to the problem computer and see if they turn on there as well.

After that try to access your data.
If you can not access your data you will need to contact somebody locally that can help you in person or send the drives to an orlando data recovery company
or another data recovery company that is closer to you.

I hope everything works out for you.

 

[sub mesa]

Have you got your data back by booting Ubuntu livecd?

Oh you destroyed the RAID volume; gone is your metadata!

You can still recover the data, if you really want to ask me how.

 

[G6atToms]

On a more serious note however, any suggestions or recommendations on backup methods? Would external drives suffice or are there other or better alternatives?

If you are (by now) familiar with using RAID, you should know that one of the most basic yet easily employed and functional ways of live backing up is to use a mirroring RAID configuration.

RAID 0 which you are using now basicly writes half your data to DISK 1 and half your data to DISK 2.
RAID 1 which implements mirroring will write all your data to both DISK 1 and DISK 2, if one of the disks fail now then the other disk will still have all data and you can simply recover or replace the failed disk.

Ofcourse if you wish to continue to employ RAID 0's striping configuration and also use RAID 1's mirroring configuration you can choose for RAID 10 which is basicly a combination of both.

Half your data goes to DISK 1 and DISK 2, the other half of your data goes to DISK 3 and DISK 4.

You benefit of the speed of using 2 disk at the same time and if any disk fails you still have the data on the other mirror.

 

[Themilkman]

I wanted to take the time to respond to this post and bump it. I tried everything and was at the point of giving up with my raid failure. Next step for me was to delete the raid volume and reformat a single drive. But sure enough the procedure listed in this topic worked!

I deleted the raid volume, noting the name.
Rebooted
Created a new raid volume, naming it the same.
Rebooted with the OS disc in the tray.
Did a system repair, and selected startup repair.
It automatically rebooted and started up normal with all my files intact.

I am running a Gateway FX7026 64bit with Vista. Thanks so much for posting this. I would have hated to lose my data.

Forever grateful,
Themilkman

 

[popatim]

You do see this was a 6 month old thread right?

 

[luckyman1]

Hi, I have a vaio laptop include two HDD (2*250GB) which was RAID 0
Tonight while I was installing a software the blue crash has occurred and then it goes reboot but it shows that the second hdd has failed and then raid 0 has failed and it couldn't find a bootable device.
My files are VERY IMPORTANT to me and I don't have any backup
I noticed that two of you had this issue and it got fixed when new raid created!!!
I know there are some low-level hard reader software which can read files but I can't find them (most of them are along a small bootable application).
I need a tools in order copy my files before any raid creation
Thank you
Thank you