NAS Hardware RAID-0 Failure; Recovery?

[Daedalus357]

Hello,

My NAS's hardware based raid borked on me recently, and despite my attempts at re-flashing the firmware I cannot access the data on it. The data on it is considered "mission critical", so wiping the drives is not an option for me in this case.

Is there any way to recover the data on the hard disk (i.e.: setting up a software raid on a tower PC or connecting the two HDDs individually and copying the data to an external drive)? **As far as i know, both drives still work.**

I have some experience in data recovery, but it is very limited and I have never tried to perform it on a RAID array.

If anyone can offer some advice, I would greatly appreciate it. (and please, as i said before, to wipe the drives and start over is *NOT* an option for me...)

Thanks,

-J

 

[WyomingKnott]

While it may not be an absolute limitation, "common wisdon" states that you need an instance of the same RAID controller to attach those disks to. Too many controllers do things just a little differently from each other.
Got a spare? If so, just pull its drives (which don't contain any data that you need), put in these drives, and see if it can read the data.

Please note that mission critical data should be backed up. RAID 0 is more fragile than a single disk, since each file is spread across both disks and the loss of either disk will destroy all of your data. May I suggest that, if you do manage to get the data back (the best of luck to you!), you move to a RAID 1+0 structure with a spare controller in a drawer? But RAID 1 is not a substitute for backups; as you have learned, a dead RAID controller can make the drives worthless.

 

[Daedalus357]

Please note that mission critical data should be backed up. RAID 0 is more fragile than a single disk, since each file is spread across both disks and the loss of either disk will destroy all of your data.

Thanks for the reply,

I will try your suggestion of putting the drives into another enclosure (never even thought of that!).

As for the array being RAID 0, it was not by my choice. The array was already set as 0 before i joined the company, it just happened to break while I was working here! hah, irony.