Please help, my RAID 0 failed

**Erik** · April 29, 2007, 12:06 PM

Hi, I'm having a serious problem, hope somebody here can help me.

Today I decided to clean up the insides of my PC by re-routing most of the power- and data cables. (I was hoping to get better air flow because my 8800 GTS was getting really hot)

But when I started it up again my RAID 0 array wasn't working anymore.
I have a Gigabyte GA965G-DS3, two 320 GB SATA hard-disks (in RAID 0, using the on-board RAID controller) and one 120GB IDE hard-disk.

At startup all hard-disks get recognized, but the RAID menu says something like this:
120 GB NON-RAID
320 GB RAID INCLUDED
320 GB NON-RAID

640 GB RAID FAILED

I think all disks are still intact, but for some reason one of the SATA disks is no longer recognized as a RAID disk as it should.

I'm currently running file scavenger in an attempt to recover my data.
It's taking a long time to complete but so far it seems to find all my files.

problem is: my data will not fit on a single 120GB disk, so I can't simply recover all my data and re-install the RAID array, so I'm hoping to find a way to repair the array without loosing the data on the disks.

Any tips/suggestions?

Does anyone know what will happen if I remove the RAID array and re-install it using the same stripe size?
Will the existing partitions/data be lost, or is there a chance that everything will go back to the way it was?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

UPDATE:
I know what I did wrong now:
I tried connecting one of my RAID drives to a different SATA connector, but this didn't work because (as I know now) only two of my six SATA connectors support RAID.
Oddly enough connecting the hard-disk back to the correct connector doesn't solve the problem: the RAID array remains broken.

In an attempt to recover the data I connected both RAID drives to non-RAID SATA connectors, and now the entire RAID array is gone.
So I made a new array with the exact same settings, hoping I can stall recover the lost partitions and files (using several programs now).

Help is still greatly appreciated....

**Gaius Baltar** · May 01, 2007, 07:49 AM

Backup - invest in an external hard drive. They are cheap now, you can get 250 GB for ~100 USD. In this case can be used for recovery.

**Erik** · May 01, 2007, 09:20 AM

I do have an extra hard disk, and I backed up all my important data (ie: my best quality porn

)
I just didn't back up everything because my second hard disk is just 120GB and can't contain everything from my 640GB RAID array.

Anyways: I managed to recover almost all my data by using a program called file scavenger and a stack of DVD-R's to store it on.

I did have to re-install windows and copy everything back to my RAID disks.
It was about a days work all by all, but everything is fine now.

I still find it odd that it's so easy to destroy a RAID array: disconnect a disk and you are screwed.
And there was no warning about this in the manual.
I hope Gigabyte develops some kind of restore utility in the future.

**kshcshbash** · May 02, 2007, 03:58 AM

You may wish to use "dd" on Linux...

**Erik** · May 02, 2007, 04:23 AM

Originally Posted by kshcshbash

You may wish to use "dd" on Linux...

What's that?

**kshcshbash** · May 02, 2007, 05:04 AM

Let's you move the binary data, basically.

**Erik** · May 02, 2007, 05:33 AM

Originally Posted by kshcshbash

Let's you move the binary data, basically.

I already managed that under windows with "file scavanger", but thanks anyways.
I will remember it when I install Linux which I'm planning to do as soon as I have a few days off.

My problem wasn't accessing the data, but restoring the partitions.
File scavenger had no trouble locating the directory structure and all the files (after telling it the correct disk order and stripe size), but it can only read from the failed disks, not repair them.

So I had to copy all my data do a 3rd disk, then create a new (empty) partition on the RAID disks and copy everything back again.
A real pain because I had to burn about 10 DVD-R's (plus fill my 120GB hard-disk completely) to store everything I had on those disks.

**kshcshbash** · May 02, 2007, 06:20 AM

Ah, I misunderstood your problem.

that's a hell of a lot of DVDs...how much did you pay?

**Erik** · May 02, 2007, 07:06 AM

Originally Posted by kshcshbash

Ah, I misunderstood your problem.

that's a hell of a lot of DVDs...how much did you pay?

I think it was 18 euro's for a spindle of 25. (so about 7 or 8 euro's for 10).
They are 16 speed, which is more expensive than 8 speed but time is money....
I bought them a while ago.

It wasn't really the costs, it was the trouble.
It took me almost a full day to repair everything. (including several hours of searching for a solution).