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RAID0 fail backup recovery

L

Liger88

2[H]4U
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Messages
2,657
Well about a week ago I was fortunate to backup my RAID0 array for the first time in 3 years (yes I'm horrible) and if fate was on my side, 5 days later it all crashed.


In an effort to be brief, lets just say using Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 hasn't given me the best of luck, neither restoring to the original/rebuilt RAID0 array, or in its current form separated into three 640GB WD Blue drives. I've tried there WinPE to recover with little to no luck. Alternatively this is where I'm at now and while this may be a shot in the dark I figure ya'll would be the ones who could figure this out.

Having separated the RAID0 array after the crash in the Bios to 3 individual disks, I started rebuilding from scratch on Disk 1. Decided since the Recovery CD failed to recovery my already verified Image Backup that maybe if I rebuild and just load the program I can do a recovery through the Windows Environment. This however failed as well and Disk 2 and Disk 3 were left completely formated and blank.

After a couple of days of playing around I finally found a method of restoring and figured I'd do this on Disk 2 while my bare bones Windows 7 install on Disk 1 was being used. All went well, after 3 days finally some success!

Now, a minor issue (I say minor because I can now run that image off Disk 2 like I wanted and my data is intact :D) is that I can't run this recovered image from Disk 2. If I set in the bios to run Disk 2 it gives me Boot Manager missing error. The information is ON THAT DISK, but having tried both methods known to fix the bootldr/mbr using the Windows 7 DVD, neither have worked. However, if I boot from Disk 1 then I get a boot prompt that says:

Windows 7 <-------------Disk 1's own bare bones Windows 7 install I used to recover
Windows 7 <-------------Boots to Disk 2

Memory Diagnostic

Now this is not making much sense to me. When I restored to Disk 2 from Disk 1 everything went fine, so what is causing Disk 1 to see both its own OS plus Disk 2's? I'm thinking that somehow during recovery Paragon got the bright idea of adding Disk 2's recovery partition into its boot manager, but nothing I've done has been able to rebuild the revcovered boot manager while booting through just Disk 2. Is this common or is there something I can do for those familiar with Paragon Backup & Restore to do to remedy the situation?

Like I said, it isn't a big deal right now because I can still access my original files although in an unusual way, but if I could solve this glitch I would. I still have the original backup image in case this is a Paragon issue thats my fault.

Thanks for any and all help in advance and sorry to make it so long lol.
 
You're situation is confusing to say the least.

I you have 3 drives in a RAID0 array, AFAIK, no data can be recovered unless all the drives are connected at the same time.

Like I said, your situation is very confusing to me.

I'm not even sure where Paragon Backup & Recovery fits into this situation.:confused:

You can't recover anything from a single disk in RAID0.
 
Did you do a disk image back up, or a file backup? If you have a disk image backup, what I would do is if you can find a way to mount the backup image as a filesystem or treat it as an archive file, I'd just do a fresh reinstall of the OS and work from there.

I feel like using disk images to back up data is a lot more hassle than its worth (in particular proprietary backup software). Its great for system snapshots and what not like imaging a freshly installed OS. However for backing up data having it in a universally readable archive or file system format is much less stressful when doing recovery.
 
Old Hippie said:
You're situation is confusing to say the least.

I you have 3 drives in a RAID0 array, AFAIK, no data can be recovered unless all the drives are connected at the same time.

Like I said, your situation is very confusing to me.

I'm not even sure where Paragon Backup & Recovery fits into this situation.:confused:

You can't recover anything from a single disk in RAID0.
Click to expand...


Yes it's quite complicated to explain everything in detail just because of all the random steps I've taken over the past 4 days to recovery the data. The 3 disks were in a RAID0 array, but I used Paragon Backup & Recovery to make a bit-for-bit backup of the entire RAID0 array seen as only one drive in Windows 5 days prior to the array crash. AFAIK this is possible although can cause problems like I'm having know trying to restore that backup from one much larger volume to now just a single drive from the RAID0 array that no longer exists (I removed it after crash so now it's just 3 separate drives seen from the original RAID0 set up).

devman said:
Did you do a disk image back up, or a file backup? If you have a disk image backup, what I would do is if you can find a way to mount the backup image as a filesystem or treat it as an archive file, I'd just do a fresh reinstall of the OS and work from there.

I feel like using disk images to back up data is a lot more hassle than its worth (in particular proprietary backup software). Its great for system snapshots and what not like imaging a freshly installed OS. However for backing up data having it in a universally readable archive or file system format is much less stressful when doing recovery.
Click to expand...


Yeah I see what you mean. It's a full on cloned disk image bit-for-bit from the RIAD0 array (640GB x 3 = 1.7TB seen in the image archive as being the original source). I can manually move all the files over if I have to via a transfer with the mounted volume which I might get around to doing in a month or so as I'll just buy a single SSD to replace the RAID0 and never deal with RAID again. It's great when it works, but recovery is every bit the pain I've read from people who've had to recover from a RAID array.

I just find it so strange that after disabling RAID entirely in the bios and reformatting all 3 hard disks, that Disk 1 with just a bare bones Windows 7 install, has gobbled up the boot manager of the recovered Disk 2 so essentially the data is all on Disk 2 but the boot manager is on Disk 1 lol.

Like I said, at least this temporary hack is working until I can get a single SSD to fully rebuild and copy what files I can. Don't think I'll bother with RAID or disk imaging again. Not nearly as enjoyable to work with when things break unlike a good ole file transfer does.
 
Don't think I'll bother with RAID or disk imaging again.
Click to expand...
Even if you don't use RAID you'll either need to clone or image your important data.

I've run RAID0 with 3 drives for @ 2yrs and have no trouble reinstalling the array from my Acronis image on my server.

I'm not familiar with Paragon but i'm sure it could have been done with the correct settings. My Acronis has the option to "switch to disk mode" which allows a single disk or RAID restore.

Seriously, I think reading the instructions would have solved your problem.

Good Luck! :)
 
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