Removing RAID 0 drives for repairs

[enever]

My laptop has died and it looks like being a graphics card problem.

I need to send it to Sony, however the INSIST on factory setting every computer they receive regardless of the problem and the data on my HD is too important. (last time i had an external hinge repaired and they still wiped the drives, even after asking not to and they have said they will not budge on that stance)

My problem is that my drives are two 250GB drives set up in a RAID 0 configuration (making one big 500GB drive). My worry is, that if i remove the drives and send the empty laptop to them, they may only put one of there own hard drives back in and somehow ruin the RAID 0 configuration.

Is this something I should worry about? is there a chance that by removing my HD's and them tinkering around they could ruing my RAID setup so that even if they cant wipe the drives, when i get the laptop back, the two drives will not be able to be read as one?

thanks

Simon

 

[vibe]

Yes your fears are valid, restoring factory settings will probably reset the SATA mode to IDE in the BIOS and not RAID - this may well wipe any data about your RAIDS - backup data to an external 1st.

TBH - even if they gave you a 100% guarantee that they would not mess up your RAID I would still tell you top backup your data. A 500GB disk must be all of £30 these days, it's just not worth the risk, especialy when using RAID0

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

Actually you're pretty screwed here. If they're gonna wipe it they're gonna wipe it. The problem is that RAID is proprietary to each system that uses it. In other words you cannot read the data that is on them even if you hooked both of them up to something else. The best thing to do would be to find a raw bit for bit backup software. This should copy even the configuration data. Do this with both hard drives. When you get it back wiped, cross your fingers and restore the images and hope it worked.