Lost my RAID 1 array, now what?

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FromTheLou

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 2, 2006
Messages
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Back story:

I have Foxconn 6150k8ma-8ekrs motherboard with intergrated Raid 0/1.
I had two maxtor 250GB SATA drives in RAID 1.
The machine was unplugged for a while awaiting a new power supply.

Fast forward a couple months and we arrive at this morning.
I swapped the parts into the new case w/ PSU. How ever the PSU only has 1 SATA connector. So i figured that since it was a RAID 1 array I'd just run with one HDD until I picked up an adapter.

Wiped the OS (seperate IDE HDD) and reloaded WinXP.

This whole time during bootup the NVIDIA array manager shows that I have a degraded array and shows one drive as a member of the array.

After loading the forceware drivers the array manager pops up a message that I have a new disk. I cancel the disk configration and proceed to install the remaining drivers and Windows updates.

Upon reboot the NVIDIA array manager during the post no longer shows a valid array.

After pulling hair thinking I lost my data, I connected a second psu to the second HDD and jumpered it so that it was on.

Turned on the machine and now it shows no array still and that I have two disks that are blank.

My only options at this point are to create a new array, format and lose the data.

Best I can tell the drives lost their array configuration, but I currently don't have access to the last 8 years of pictures I've taken. (And to make it worse my online data backup subscription lapsed a few months ago and I no longer have access to it).

Is there any software out there that can recreate the array configuration information and place it on the drives?

I know that there is software for RAID 0 and RAID 5 arrays but I have been unable to find anything for RAID 1 arrays.

Any thoughts or ideas that I could try to recover these invaluable pictures?

If my last resort is a data recovery service that is the route I will take, if possible I would like to try a free or cheaper method first.

Thoughts, ideas?
 
Have you tried plugging one drive in separate? You may have lost the array setup, but you might be able to see one of them separately.

 
Yep, tried that.

Now no matter which drive is connected, it shows as no array.

All the posts that turned up in a search were for RAID 1/5 arrays so the tools that they recommended won't work.

I dl'd Raid Reconfigurator but it was only for RAID 1/5 arrays.
 
He doesn't mean as an array. RAID 1 volumes are just copies. I can pull a drive off of any of my RAID 1 arrays, put it on any regular hard drive controller, and read/write data to it like normal.
 
Exactly. Losing the raid configuration doesn't necessarily mean that you lost the data. Plug in one drive and boot up. Open Disk Management and see whats there.
 
Another note. Im not sure how your ports are configured, you may need to turn off RAID in the bios, or plug the drive into a port thats not configured for RAID.

 
And I am an idiot, this is the last time I work on a computer with little sleep.

After disabling the RAID in the bios, I was able to access the data on one of the hard drives. Backing up now to a network share and after confirmation that the online backup was successful I'll recreate the RAID 1 array and move the data back.

Thanks for all the help everyone!
 
And I am an idiot, this is the last time I work on a computer with little sleep.
Click to expand...

We've all made that mistake before. The sleep thing, not the raid thing.:D

Don
 
Glad you were able to get at your data Lou. I know how scary it can be when you think you might have lost something as important as all your photos.

 
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