Power failure - now my Raids are gone. HELP!!

[alistair1]

I have (had actually) two RAID arrays on my machine. One was a RAID 1 system disk (C used for my apps and OS and was comprised of two 320Gb drives. The other was a RAID 0 for data (D and was comprised of two 500Gb drives.

We had a power cut (lasted about a minute) and when I turned my PC back on the BIOS seemd to have reset itself to default settings. Date and time etc. all were reset which was not a problem but so was the SATA setting reset back to IDE instead of Raid. If I change the SATA setting in the BIOS back to Raid the machine will not boot up.

If I leave the Raid settings in BIOS at IDE, Windows boots up and in Windows Explorer I now see two 320Gb drives (C: and E with exactly the same OS and Apps content so clearly the RAID 1 has just split into two disks and the content is good.

I also still see the D: drive in Windows Explorer but no files show up and under properties it shows 0 free space and 0 used space.

In the Intel Raid software utility I still can see the two Raid arrays as set up.

The mobo is an Asus P5K-E with intel chipset and I have used the onboard Raid controller.

Is there a way I can get the Raid arrays back without deleting all the data? Any Raid experts out there?

 

[GhislainG]

If you lost your BIOS settings, then your battery is most likely dead and it should be replaced.

You'll definitely have to configure the RAID in the BIOS. Unfortunately the RAID has to be sonfigured to access the RAID0. Once configured, will the system boot if you remove the 320GB drives from the array and boot from a single drive? A safer solution is to use a properly configured BartPE CD (one that includes the RAID drivers) and see if you can access your RAID0 without having to break the RAID1.

Since you use RAID0, you should have connected your PC to a properly configured UPS, i.e., one that shuts down the system after n minutes of power outage.

 

[enlightenment]

I helped several people with broken RAIDs using FreeBSD as recovery operating system. It can use its own software RAID and have access to (NTFS) partitions. Unless the data on the disks themselves is corrupted, this procedure should result in 100% recovery of your files.

If you need help, read this article: http://www.fluffles.net/blogs/3