RAID 0 mistake. Recovery possible? 1

[shock29]

Hi guys, I am new to setting up raid arrays. I think I just made a pretty big mistake. I'll try and explain my situation as simple as possible.

In my new system, I have 3 drives.

2 150GB raptors
1 2TB backup drive.

In my attempt to raid my 2 150 raptors together, I accidentally got the sata cables physically mixed up. When entering my RAID setup from boot up (CTRL-J), instead of performing a RAID-0 setup on the two 150GB drives, I RAID-0'd one of the 150GB drives, with the 2TB backup drive I have.

It didn't warn me about erasing any data, and didn't do a format of any sort.

Long story short - Even using parted Magic, looking at my 2TB drive, it shows there is only unallocated space...


Is there ANY way of getting the information on my 2TB drive back? again, I have done nothing other than raid 0 it with one of the raptors... The hard drive(s) had almost 0 activity after doing so, so i am guessing the information on my 2TB is still "there" somewhere... Is there any software, or option that I can do to retrieve the data on the 2TB, or is it simply gone.

Thanks so much in advance

-Trevor

 

[goombawaho]

Get a PC (any PC) up and running reliably. Then install the trial of GetDataBack for NTFS (assuming your drive had NTFS as file system) and connect your 2TB drive as a (slave) drive in that system.

Install the software on the PC, but NOT on the 2TB drive. Do NOTHING to the 2TB drive to preserve data.

Run GDB with default options and see what you can see. If you can see your data, you can recover it by buying the product. You will need ANOTHER drive to send the data to. The destination for the drive cannot be the same as the drive you are recovering data from. So you may have to buy another drive as big as the data that needs to be pulled off.

It will recover your data IF you can see your data when scan is done. There may be other products (free or not), but I have experience with this and I would trust my rear to it if I were in trouble.

The correct way to do what you were doing and avoid this easy mistake - don't even put the 2TB drive in the system until the RAID has been created and functioning. I have learned by mistake in a similar way.

 

[shock29]

goombawaho, with help from you and other forums, I was able to get 100% of my data back from the drive! I used TestDisk which worked like a charm (loaded through PartedMagic off of UBC).

Thank you so much. and yes, I most certainly will leave the 2tb drive disconnected while getting my raid0 set up - this time.

thanks again, cheers

 

[goombawaho]

You're seeing OTHER forums as well - we're crushed. We thought we were exclusive.........

So you ultimately didn't use GDB? One real nice thing about it is that you can use it under BartPE with a plugin from them on a non-bootable computer as long as you have a 2nd destination hard drive attached for the data to go to.

I was just looking at the TestDisk page. Funny, I always discount open source software as half-backed versus using a "real" commercial product. Just my personal gut reaction.

 

[technome]

Nice to get feed back on raid recovery software.
I suspect there was no format, and perhaps the partition parameters were just changed, you were lucky. In the future you should seriously consider not using raid 0.


........................................
Chernobyl disaster..a must see pictorial

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm

 

[shock29]

I would love to implement another type of raid. Problem is, my mobo (Asus P5QL Pro) doesnt support raid, so that limits me to getting a PCI-E (dont want to go PCI) RAID controller.

I want to run RAID-5 as I have several of these raptor drives, but the problem is, there are simply no PCI-E Sata controllers that have more than 2 internal ports.

I am open to any suggestions. I am looking for a performance increase, but would love to add some redundancy.

Trevor

 

[rclarke250]

Sure there is, Here is a cheap one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...yMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo

And here is an expensive one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816131004

Both do support raid 5, the second does raid 6, which will protect your data with 2 failed drives.

For those that live outside the USA, just use the links as a reference to locate the boards in your country.

 

[goombawaho]

Sorry to bump an old thread, but this statement was NOT what this thread was about: "Nice to get feed back on raid recovery software."

We weren't recovering a RAID array. We were recovering data on a standalone hard drive that had it's partitions erased as part of trying to set up a RAID.

RAID recovery is often very expensive and complicated and GetDataBack is not meant for that. The manufacturer has a different tool for that.