How to recover data from dual mSATA in RAID 0 ?

[cat6meow]

Someone brought a laptop to me with a broken charging port. He tried disassembling the entire laptop and soldering a replacement charging port but he couldn't power on the laptop after trying that. The laptop is a ASUS Zenbook UX32VD-DS72. He didn't care a lot about the laptop anymore but wanted his personal files. I thought that'd be easy. I could take out the HDD/SSD and connect it to another computer to get the files. However, instead of a regular HDD/SSD I found this.

 

 

It is a dual mSATA SSD adapter. On the adapter board it says UX32VD_MSATA_BD Rev 2.1. I think the drives are in RAID 0 but I'm not sure if the RAID controller is on the adapter board or if the adapter is passing the mSATA connections through to the integrated Intel RAID controller and the integrated Intel RAID controller is doing the work. There isn't much info about this dual mSATA to SATA adapter on the Internet.

 

It looked like the adapter has a standard 2.5" SATA connector so I tried putting it in a regular SATA to USB external enclosure and connecting the enclosure to a computer. That didn't work. Windows asked to reformat two partitions and I told Windows "no." Instead of using an external enclosure I tried connecting the dual mSATA to SATA adapter directly to my computer's internal SATA and power ports. I still had the same issue. Windows wanted to reformat and showed the partition file formats as RAW instead of NTFS. Then at some point my computer began to refuse to power on with the adapter connected directly to the internal SATA port so I went back to using an external enclosure. I can see a variety of partitions in Windows' Disk Management in addition to the two that Windows wanted to reformat but can't access anything on any partition. I tried running Sandisk SSD Toolkit to see what drives are detected. Only one of the drives was detected for some reason. After using Sandisk SSD Toolkit to check the serial of the detected drive, comparing that to the serials printed on the SSDs, and moving the undetected SSD to the other mSATA slot, I see that the SSD in the slot labelled SSD_Port1 on the adapter board isn't detected suggesting the adapter board is bad. After some Googling I found one person who said that the adapter uses a nonstandard 3.3V SATA power connection instead of the standard 5V. I was able to repair the charging port of the laptop enough to power it on with the mSATA drives connected by using the dual mSATA to SATA adapter as shown in the picture. However, looking in the UEFI setup I see only one SSD and no bootable OS is detected.

 

The dual mSATA to SATA adapter board might be messed up because I connected it to a standard SATA data and power port or the owner did something to it. I'm not sure. Should getting a replacement adapter help? I can get a replacement from AliExpress for about $50 but I have to wait for 25 day shipping. Would this dual mSATA RAID to USB adapter work for recovering the data assuming both SSDs are OK? https://www.startech.com/HDD/Enclosures/msata-raid-enclosure~SMS2BU31C3R It is available on Amazon. However, this dual mSATA to USB adapter has a different RAID controller than what was used originally with the mSATA drives. Suggestions?

 

 

[Enderman]

https://drivesaversdatarecovery.com/

[WereCatf]

18 minutes ago, cat6meow said:

in RAID 0

You don't.

[ddennis002]

I have had to recover Hardware Raid 0 in the past due to motherboard failure and it was out of warranty. What I ended up doing was connecting each drive and used software to tie the drives back together and pull an image from each drive, then used another software to restore the images to a single large drive, on 2 1TB HDD it took about 12 hours. Its been forever since I had to do this. I will try and find the software that I used. It was all free.

[ddennis002]

44 minutes ago, cat6meow said:

Someone brought a laptop to me with a broken charging port.

Does windows detect both drives?

[cat6meow]

16 hours ago, Enderman said:

https://drivesaversdatarecovery.com/

I did tell then that they'd be most likely to get their data back by taking their laptop/SSDs to a data recovery specialist. Though, the specialists seem to often bill $200 - $300 per job.

 

15 hours ago, ddennis002 said:

Does windows detect both drives?

I mentioned that in my opening post. When using the dual mSATA to SATA adapter that came with the laptop, as seen in the picture, only one Sandisk SSD drive is detected- the drive in SSD_Port0 on the adapter board. However, if I move the undetected drive from SSD_Port1 of the adapter board to SSD_Port0 then it is detected. I'm thinking maybe if I just replace the adapter board I'd be able to boot the laptop. The trouble is I can't find a USA source for the adapter board so shipping is 25 days if not more. Or, I guess if the OS on the SSDs is messed up and won't boot I could boot the laptop using an Ubuntu live disc or flash drive and try accessing the files that way.

[ddennis002]

3 hours ago, cat6meow said:

I did tell then that they'd be most likely to get their data back by taking their laptop/SSDs to a data recovery specialist. Though, the specialists seem to often bill $200 - $300 per job.

 

I mentioned that in my opening post. When using the dual mSATA to SATA adapter that came with the laptop, as seen in the picture, only one Sandisk SSD drive is detected- the drive in SSD_Port0 on the adapter board. However, if I move the undetected drive from SSD_Port1 of the adapter board to SSD_Port0 then it is detected. I'm thinking maybe if I just replace the adapter board I'd be able to boot the laptop. The trouble is I can't find a USA source for the adapter board so shipping is 25 days if not more. Or, I guess if the OS on the SSDs is messed up and won't boot I could boot the laptop using an Ubuntu live disc or flash drive and try accessing the files that way.

Okay, sorry I didn't read the whole thing, just kinda skimmed it. So you can do it one drive at a time you will have to image the drives one at a time then use the images to splice the raid together. From there it will act as a Virtual drive, then you can copy from it to a new drive or wherever you need to store it. I been kind of busy today but let me look for that software and I can help walk you though it.

[ddennis002]

3 hours ago, cat6meow said:

I did tell then that they'd be most likely to get their data back by taking their laptop/SSDs to a data recovery specialist. Though, the specialists seem to often bill $200 - $300 per job.

 

I mentioned that in my opening post. When using the dual mSATA to SATA adapter that came with the laptop, as seen in the picture, only one Sandisk SSD drive is detected- the drive in SSD_Port0 on the adapter board. However, if I move the undetected drive from SSD_Port1 of the adapter board to SSD_Port0 then it is detected. I'm thinking maybe if I just replace the adapter board I'd be able to boot the laptop. The trouble is I can't find a USA source for the adapter board so shipping is 25 days if not more. Or, I guess if the OS on the SSDs is messed up and won't boot I could boot the laptop using an Ubuntu live disc or flash drive and try accessing the files that way.

Okay so here it is. http://www.freeraidrecovery.com/download.aspx

 

Install and open do one disk at a time. Like I said you will have to image each disk.

Open ReclaiMe put checkmark beside the disk you want to img.

Select arrow down beside Disks and select create IMG. I would name it the Serial Number of the SSD or number each physical SSD and corrispond that to your img name.

Do this for both disks.

Once both are imged, Select the arrow down and open disk img for both disks, then select Start Raid 0, this is going to do a few things to start it will look for disk order, strip size, and data offset. From there you should be presented with the raid img that has been stripped back together and you will beable to write this to a new disk.

 

This will take a long time to recover, and if you run into issues, take screenshots and post them here or DM me and I will do my best to help you out.

 

 

[cat6meow]

I found a used but working dual mSATA to SATA adapter board for the laptop in the USA and ordered it. However, ddennis002, I was curious if the software you recommended would work. So I installed it and made the images. It identified the RAID 0 array and now I see this:

 

 

What program did you use to recover your data for free? Clicking the "Run ReclaiMe to recover data" button prompts me to install a limited trial version of a program. No doubt to get the data I want I'd have to pay for the software. Looks like File Scavenger, R-Studio, UFS Explorer are limited trial software. I'm not sure about ZAR 8 and 9. The ZAR website offers ZAR X which is also free but limited trial software.

[cat6meow]

Do I just need to click "Create the array image file" button and then use a different free program to load and browse the image file. Or, should I get my hands on another empty disc and click "Write array to disk"?

[ddennis002]

31 minutes ago, cat6meow said:

Do I just need to click "Create the array image file" button and then use a different free program to load and browse the image file. Or, should I get my hands on another empty disc and click "Write array to disk"?

So if you have a big enough disk to copy to make sure its empty and formated, and use the Write array to disk. Select the target disk. Again this will take a bit, and it will copy the contents to the new disk just like if you were copy and pasting the data. 

If all goes well and you had no data loss due to bad hardware or anything like that you have the data on the target disk.

[cat6meow]

It worked. Thank you. Initially, Windows didn't give drive letters to the two NTFS partitions so I assigned letters and then Windows wanted to run Chkdsk. Looks like Chkdsk didn't mess up anything and all the files appear intact.