Thrashed RAID0 -- advice needed

chaotika · 05-29-2007, 01:36 AM

Setup:
2 Western Digital 100 GB PATA drives in RAID0 on a Promise controller
Windows XP

Here's what I think happened:

1) Ribbon cable goes bad on one drive
2) BSOD, reboot
3) Controller throws RAID error
4) I attempt to rebuild the array, possibly changing the stripe size
5) Reboot
6) Unpredictable behavior from the drive, disappearing, etc. I finally replaced the data cable
7) Reboot
8) during the next boot, CHKDSK ran automatically and destroyed the drive's directory structure, moved everything into a series of dir####.chk folders, and then deleted everything.
9) The hardware is working perfectly now, but the data is destroyed.

Since then, I believe I have avoided writing to the drives, so the surface data should be unchanged. Depending on how CHKDSK works, the surface data (not the MFT) may be largely unchanged from the original RAID configuration.

I've used GetDataBack to recover files from the drive, but anything over about 60K is completely corrupted. Some image files show visible evidence of interleaving. I have Runtime RAID Reconstructor, but I don't have a drive yet large enough to take the image, though it's the next thing I plan to try.

The data isn't worth the cost of a data-recovery service, but some of it is quite irreplaceable.

Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Jon

Houndog777 · 05-29-2007, 08:01 AM

There's a data recovery program with quite good reviews here....
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/download.htm
Change the language at top of page.

05-29-2007, 01:36 AM	#1 (permalink)
chaotika Registered User Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 2 OS: WinXP	Thrashed RAID0 -- advice needed Setup: 2 Western Digital 100 GB PATA drives in RAID0 on a Promise controller Windows XP Here's what I think happened: 1) Ribbon cable goes bad on one drive 2) BSOD, reboot 3) Controller throws RAID error 4) I attempt to rebuild the array, possibly changing the stripe size 5) Reboot 6) Unpredictable behavior from the drive, disappearing, etc. I finally replaced the data cable 7) Reboot 8) during the next boot, CHKDSK ran automatically and destroyed the drive's directory structure, moved everything into a series of dir####.chk folders, and then deleted everything. 9) The hardware is working perfectly now, but the data is destroyed. Since then, I believe I have avoided writing to the drives, so the surface data should be unchanged. Depending on how CHKDSK works, the surface data (not the MFT) may be largely unchanged from the original RAID configuration. I've used GetDataBack to recover files from the drive, but anything over about 60K is completely corrupted. Some image files show visible evidence of interleaving. I have Runtime RAID Reconstructor, but I don't have a drive yet large enough to take the image, though it's the next thing I plan to try. The data isn't worth the cost of a data-recovery service, but some of it is quite irreplaceable. Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated. Thanks, Jon

05-29-2007, 08:01 AM	#2 (permalink)
Houndog777 Registered User Join Date: May 2007 Location: Scotland, UK Posts: 2,683 OS: XPpro sp3 My System	Re: Thrashed RAID0 -- advice needed There's a data recovery program with quite good reviews here.... http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/download.htm Change the language at top of page.