Successful data recovery ?

[Danb]

The unthinkable happened... I run a SATA RAID 0 array on an NF7-S - with four partitions. I was copying a bunch of files around different partitions and the PC locked up (another story ) and it BSOD'd. When I tried to reboot, it appears there had been corruption on the c: partition . It looks like the FAT is corrupt and it reports boot_device_inaccessible.

I've booted to a Windows desktop with a different PATA drive in, and all the partitions apart from the first are working fine. The Windows install won't recognise that the drive is formatted. CHKDSK, scandisk and the recovery console all crash or lock up reporting a crc error.

I've also tried:

Stellar Phoenix
Restorer 2000
ESS Fast File Recovery

All seem to lock up when it comes to analysing the drive.

Now you might think that all hope is lost, but the weird thing is that if I boot with a Win98 floppy I can see the files on the drive just fine... So, does anyone have any other suggestions for software I can try, or anything else I can do ? I REALLY would like to be able to recover the files in a way which isn't over a DOS prompt with truncated filenames !!

Dan

 

[djnes]

I always turn to Ghost in this situation to recover my data.

Someone remind me why anyone still uses RAID0 anymore? Isn't that myth busted enough?

 

[Danb]

Can Ghost recover data from a corrupt disc ? I thought it could only recover to a previously stored image (whch I don't have).

I don't imagine my next install will be to a RAID 0 array

 

[djnes]

Ghost has a few options to recover data from less than perfect hard drive conditions. Check in the options for the different settings, including raw write, etc. Once you get the image created, Ghost Explorer will let you pull out the files you want.

 

[Danb]

I've finally found a piece of software able to browse the RAID array and copy files off it - called PC Inspector File Recovery.

Now, if only I could just fix the drives instead, but I still think a full reinstall is on the cards.