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Recover RAID 0 Data after format

C

coldfission

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 28, 2005
Messages
95
I have a RAID 0 array that has all of my files on it. My motherboard that did RAID 0 ran away, so i bought an external RAID enclosure
http://www.ampaqs.com/ED-35-DUAL.html

This external enclosure wants to format my array before it can be used. I haven't done this yet, because i'm not sure if this is the best way to get the info.

Is there any way to recover my old data from the array?

I have "GetDataBack" to recover data.
 
Yuck! The problem is, in Raid0, half of each individual byte of data is written to one drive, and the other half is written to the other drive. If you were connecting them back to the exact same controller, it should read the raid info on the 2 drives and restore the array. If you are connecting to a different controller, it would not be able to decode the array info, and would simply assemble a new blank raid.

Where this gets tricky is syncing up the 2 halves of each individual byte of data. I highly doubt the new controller will line things up exactly the same as the old controller, so as the unformat or recovery program tries to read the data off of the array, the 2 halves of the bytes may be mismatched and be gibberish.

There are some recovery services I have heard about that can recover data off of Raided drives, but I do not know of a program for home use that can. Whatever you do, do not let the new controller format the drives if you want to try and recover the data. That will only complicate things.

Wish I could be of more help.

Don
 
DonDon said:
Yuck! The problem is, in Raid0, half of each individual byte of data is written to one drive, and the other half is written to the other drive.
Click to expand...

While I agree with the rest of your post, I've never heard of any RAID controller that uses 4-bit chunks; I think that would be very inefficient. Chunk sizes on the order of 64 KB are more reasonable.


I think it would not be difficult to write a program to properly interleave the separate chunks, if the chunk size was known, and it would probably even be feasible to determine the chunk size forensically based on some data known to be on the array, such as a file at least as big as twice the expected chunk size (or a few in case some are fragmented too much).

Still, be that as it may, the simplest solution would be to find a motherboard with the same fakeraid chipset as was used originally.

-Corey
 
Oops, yer right. I remember now. Hadn't looked at the Raid 0 theory in a while.

It is usually broken up in chunks that are some multiple of the sector size.

Don
 
Runtime.org - makers of GetDataBack also have RAID Reconstructor - http://www.runtime.org/downloads.htm

I used this software to recover a RAID 0 array for a customer after his RAID controller had a hiccup. You first run RAID Reconstructor to assign the drives in the array and then you save a file of the setup. Next, open GetDataBack and load that setup file and away you go to recover the data. Worked excellent and I was able to recover the entire RAID 0 volume.
 
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