RAID 0 recovery

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lelias2k

n00b
Joined
Aug 10, 2006
Messages
27
Hey all,

One of the HDDs in my RAID 0 set up got corrupted and now windows says it is unpartitioned space. There's no hardware failure as far as I know...

My boot HDD is separate, and when I'm in windows explorer it can see all the files in the RAID set up, but a bunch of the files are showing size as 0 KB.

Any ideas on how to recover my files?

I've been looking into GetDataBack.

My main question is how should I move on. Should I reformat the disk, repartition it, and try to recover the files then?

Will repartitioning delete my files forever?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

PS: The set up has two 160GB HDDs :)
 
While repartitioning won't "technically" delete your files forever, it does make it harder to recover them. Partitioning the drive only changes the partition table, so the data itself is still on your disk. Formatting your drive will either erase the file headers on a normal format (File A is 2MB spread over X sectors) or it will erase the header AND the data. Any way you look at it, you do NOT want to partition or format your drive until AFTER you've recovered your data. (Note - I'm not certain "header" is the appropriate terminology)

The easiest way to restore your files would be to restore them from backup. If you're asking this question, though, I'll assume you don't have a backup.

I've heard a LOT of good things about GetDataBack. I'd download and use that, first. If that fails, and the data is important, send the drive to a facility specializing in such things. If the data is not important, give up. Partition, Format.
 
I appreciate the feedback TeeJay. I'm going to give GetDataBack a try tonight.

There's some data that is not backed up, and is important, so it will be worth a try.
 
GetDataBack just worked again for me on Tuesday, saved my butt many times, great app and well worth the few $$ it costs:D
 
So I tried GetDataBack and the files it was recovering were still showing size as 0KB.

I decided to restore the partition using Partition Magic, wondering if that would give GDB access to the other disk, but the results were the same.

Tried Convar's PC Inspector File Recovery, since the Smart Recovery for SD cards worked wonders for me in the past, but the results are the same. I can find the files, but the size is still 0KB...

Anybody knows of anything else to try before I reformat my drive?
 
You need to use raid reconstructor first, create an image of the raid 0 and then use getdataback.

Hope you have a drive big enough for the image, and I hope you remember your stripe size/etc. Is this a hardware raid0 or software raid 0?
 
Tried using RAID that before, but I thought that since my array is setup that wasn't a problem.

RAID Reconstructor asks for what disks form the array, but it doesn't show them separate, only one big 320GB drive, so I can't really move further... or can I???
 
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