RAID 0 Recovery (Hopefully)

[TVo]

I have 2 WD 250GB HardDrives here that were part of a NAS box (Iomega) and due to some sort of power issues, one of the HDs has lost it's "formatting" and shows up as Unallocated. I am pretty reasonably sure that nothing has been removed from the drive. There has been no low level formatting (or any formatting, for that matter) but only 1 drive out of the two is showing up as having partitions.

I have quite a few tools at my disposal. As of now, I have both Hard Drives hooked up (using IDE cable) to my main workstation, and it's currently being backed up by Acronis (I assume this is a sufficient backup process with RAID?). I have purchased RunTime's Get Data Back NTFS and Raid Reconstructor. I tried a basic scan with the Raid Reconstructor program, but it didn't seem to work out (aka I didn't know what I was doing). I'm pretty familiar with GetDataBack, but I don't think Raid Reconstructor worked properly.

I have 2 working Hard Drives in which to back up or use however I may need to at my disposal.

How should I go about recovering this RAID 0? I am pretty sure the data is still there, but I'm not sure how to reconstruct the RAID or how to recover it once that is done.

Any suggestions?

I do also have Ubuntu installed on this workstation as a second OS if I need to use Linux tools.

I can't even tell you how much I would appreciate any help I can get.

Thanks!

 

[TVo]

A little update:

I used the program Diskinternals Raid Recovery and I was able to see some files! This is great news that the information is still there!

I still have 2 problems.

1. None of the filenames are named properly.
2. The Diskinternals Raid Recovery program is around $300... A little expensive for what I'd like to do. Granted, if I can't find another way to make it work, I will purchase it.

I hope this helps a little bit since the data is still there and recoverable! I just need to find some free/cheaper programs to use.

 

[sub mesa]

If you lost the metadata, which i assume you did, you need to use manual recovery methods.

This can be done with most OS; Windows has commercial utilities like RAID Reconstructor, Linux has its native pseudoRAID driver which can be managed with mdadm. Under FreeBSD you can use GEOM to create a software RAID.

I think you may want to try utilities under Windows first, since those have a GUI. Working with Linux commands would work too, but comes with the potential risk of user error; potentially destroying your data. Your data should still be recoverable, though.

Try some suggestions and let me know how it worked out. Cheers!

 

[TVo]

I have a full copy of RAID Reconstructor but it isn't able to detect the RAID Type.

I have a free version of R-Studio and it sees some files, but none of them are named and when I recover any of them often times they're corrupt.

I'm willing to try the Linux commands or whatever I need to as I have an Acronis Backup of both drives, and any damage done I can re-clone to the drives.

As of not the one drive is in perfect condition, the other drive has lost it's Metadata, and the raid programs I have tried have not yet been able to autodetect the settings.

I don't know what the block size is (or how to find it), number of rows, or which sector it starts in.

How do I find that information in order to tell the programs how to find stuff?

Is it possible for me to re-create the RAID 0 and then use a data recovery program after that? (I assume that's what I've been trying to do, but as stated above, I can't figure out the settings on automatic).

Thanks for the reply!

 

[dEAne]

In R-Studio you can creates image files for an entire Hard Disk, Partition or its part. Such image files can be compressed and split into several files to put it on CD/DVD/Flash or FAT16/FAT32. Then the image files can be processed like regular disks from here you can recover files successfully.

Raid Reconstructor is a good software, I guess you have not done it right - here if you like more info>
http://www.runtime.org/howto.htm

 

[TVo]

I have solved my problem!

I was going over every inch of the how to's in case I missed something. I was doing everything the howto said, but still was having no luck.

Then, I saw something mentioned about NAS Raid Recovery, and clicked on their link for it.

Runtime NAS Recovery

IT WORKED! Holy cow but I downloaded the trial version, analyzed my drives, and the entire file system was there and ready to be recovered! I purchased the product right away ($100 but I've been spending so much time on this it was totally worth it) and lo and behold I was able to recover EVERYTHING!

Thanks guys for the help and making me keep using my brain. I appreciate everything, and I hope this post may help someone else in the future.

I'm so happy ahahah!