CMOS clear + ICH10R + Windows7 + RAID5 = failed

[coert]

After a power glitch my BIOS CMOS was cleared (despite the UPS). Windows booted *before* I had a chance to set the BIOS back to [RAID]. I did not initialize or format any drives in Windows, and quickly disconnected the power. I realized the BIOS setting "Configure SATA as" reverted to the default [IDE] mode. I changed this back to [RAID] and started the OS once more. The result?

Of the 3 drives discovered by the ICH10R controller in my RAID-5 array, just 1 drives correctly remains identified as "Member Disk" (ports 3). The two other drives were reset to "Non-Raid Disk" (ports 2 and 4).

I'm confident the actual data is still on the 2 drives and I need to get them back into the array without losing the data. I can use <CTRL><I> to get to the ICH10R config page, reset all to Non-Member and recreate the array? But I believe doing so will result in total data loss. Any suggestions on how to get those drive "re-labeled" as members of the array without losing the actual data.

Intel Matrix Storage Manager ROM 8.0.0.1038 ICH10R wRAID5

Port Size Type/Status(Vol ID)
---- -------- -------------------
0 279.4GB Non-RAID Disk (this is my system disk)
2 931.5GB Non-RAID Disk
3 931.5GB Member Disk (0)
4 931.5GB Non-RAID Disk

I switched back to IDE mode and am trying to use r-studio to recover the data. I know the stripe size (32k) and the drive order, and assume the order is left synchronous. But simple previewing jpg files shows parts of different pictures. The order of the drives is identical to what the ICH10R BIOS shows. I get the odd impression that Windows 7 tried to initiate the disks itself, because R-studio shows:

drive #1 SATA2 (2:1) 931.51 GB
- harddisk volume3 17 KB 128 MB
- basic data partition 129 MB 931.39 GB
drive #2 SATA2 (3:1) 931.51 GB
drive #3 SATA2 (4:0) 931.51 GB
- Microsoft reserved partition 17 KB 128 MB
- basic data partition 129 MB 931.39 GB

A similar problem but no solution is posted by wesleywilson on the Intel Forum. I copied some of his wording because it matched my problem exactly.
http://communities.intel.com/message/95083

Your suggestions are appreciated, because I just realized that my last daily backup is from almost two month ago, just before the backup unit's power cable got yanked out.

 

[wesleyjwilson]

This is wesleyjwilson and I am still dead in the water with 3 drives as members and 2 drives not.

Thanks,
Wes

 

[coert]

It took me a week, but I found a way to recover the data. R-studio is my new friend! I knew the block size and drive order (from the BIOS configuration page). After some experimenting with recovered JPEG files, I discovered the block order (Left Asynchronous). The recovery program was not free, but it was the best $50 that I ever spent.

 

[Froggie72]

Hi Coert,

I had exactly the same problem as you did! I bought R-studio and fiddled with it. At first i was able to recover but my recovered files where corrupt. I thought all my settings where correct because i was able to restore files. In the end i changed the Block order to Left Asynchronous (Continuos) and that did the trick!

Thanks for your post!

Regards Mark