Stupid RAID-0 problem... please help

[Helly]

So i just reinstalled win10 (which failed but thats not important right now), and before doing that i disconnected all my HDD's so they wouldn't get in the way of the installation (happened before). I have 7 HDD's connected and while reconnecting them after the install i connected the wrong cable to the wrong drive.

 

To be clear here, i have 3 WD blacks in raid-0 and 3 1TB raptors in raid-0 all connected to 1 controller on my mobo (x99 deluxe). Next to that i have 1 WD black, to store some crap, which is connected to a different controller on the x99. I switched 1 raptor with the sepperate black by accident. Then the x99 decided to just kick the raptor out of the raid-0 array completely and make the array FAIL.... now the drive thats kicked out is working 100% but is showing up as a non-raid drive.

 

My question is simple, how can i recreate the array or put the drive back in without losing data. There is crap on that thats not been backed up yet that i REALLY need.... is there any way?

[Naeaes]

Man, that sucks. If I were you, I'd take a raw sector clone of each disk to get some leeway working stuff out.

 

There are controller-specific distinctions but with no drives actually broken, I'm thinking it's just the RAID array meta-data that's gone. If it wasn't for the important data, I'd try building a new RAID array with the same settings but that's a huge risk. But since there's important stuff involved, try a recovery first. This free trial claims is't able to tell if it could recover before forcing you to buy it. I haven't used it my self so I can't verify. I've only ever recovered by re-doing the array. I've even done it on a different but identical motherboard but that was long time ago. An X58 setup if memory serves.

[Helly]

Yeah, getting an answer took to long so i went with the re-doing array option which i found in different places and heard about before.... i think i messed it up though cuz i made it the same way but nothing happened and i still have no data... So was kinda depressed and ready to start crying .

 

So out of desperation i just initialized the disk as a GPT drive (which it was), created the partition without formatting and try to run a recovery program on it. As far as i know this is a massive long shot or its even impossible.... but from what im seeing here is that the program is actually finding my files... so theres a chance i can recover at least some stuff. Fingers crossed i guess... will know tomorrow cuz this is going to take a while

[scottyseng]

Yeah, getting an answer took to long so i went with the re-doing array option which i found in different places and heard about before.... i think i messed it up though cuz i made it the same way but nothing happened and i still have no data... So was kinda depressed and ready to start crying .

 

So out of desperation i just initialized the disk as a GPT drive (which it was), created the partition without formatting and try to run a recovery program on it. As far as i know this is a massive long shot or its even impossible.... but from what im seeing here is that the program is actually finding my files... so theres a chance i can recover at least some stuff. Fingers crossed i guess... will know tomorrow cuz this is going to take a while

 

Yeah, RAID 0 is pretty sensitive to losing any disk, even by accident. That really sucks though. I hope you can get your data off of it.

 

I don't think there's any way to rebuild the array without losing the data.

[Captain_WD]

So i just reinstalled win10 (which failed but thats not important right now), and before doing that i disconnected all my HDD's so they wouldn't get in the way of the installation (happened before). I have 7 HDD's connected and while reconnecting them after the install i connected the wrong cable to the wrong drive.

 

To be clear here, i have 3 WD blacks in raid-0 and 3 1TB raptors in raid-0 all connected to 1 controller on my mobo (x99 deluxe). Next to that i have 1 WD black, to store some crap, which is connected to a different controller on the x99. I switched 1 raptor with the sepperate black by accident. Then the x99 decided to just kick the raptor out of the raid-0 array completely and make the array FAIL.... now the drive thats kicked out is working 100% but is showing up as a non-raid drive.

 

My question is simple, how can i recreate the array or put the drive back in without losing data. There is crap on that thats not been backed up yet that i REALLY need.... is there any way?

 

Hey there Helly,

 

This is really unfortunate, I'm sorry to hear that. Rebuilding a RAID0 arrays is very tricky and with little chance of success. It is really up to the specific controller and how it works. I would contact the manufacturer of the motherboard since you are using its controller for the RAID arrays. They might be able to provide you with some additional info and maybe give you some guidelines on how to resolve this.

One small note: WD Black and WD VelociRaptor drives are not designed for RAID arrays and have a higher chance of dropping out of the array and corrupting the data. Because of that I strongly recommend having backups of your important data on a separate drive that is outside of the array. 

 

Captain_WD.

[Helly]

Well thanks for the reply there. Worked on this all day yesterday and most of the day today...

 

I tried several programs (file scavenger, test disk and RAID reconstructor). Unfortunately for me they require several different things to do with the drives. Such as break the array and making them all separate drives and they can also scan the array after recreating it. Which i have now done multiple times. File scavenger gave me pretty much every file i had on there to view but since breaking and recreating the array a few times im getting less files now.

 

I NEVER formatted any drive, i only initialized the array as a GPT after recreating it... i have no idea if that was a good idea or not, but i was unable to recover ANY data. I did try a few times and it gave me either heavily corrupted data that was unreadable or in the case of photos and videos they were working and showing but crap and full of artifacts so also corrupted and unusable.

 

I have given up getting any data now and just want to get back to doing stuff on my PC again... I've also installed so much crap on my new win 10 installation now (which won't activate for whatever reason...) that i'm gonna have to reinstall it again. I've lost a few things that hurt but most of the stuff i have older backups of so it's not the end of the world... On the bright side, i had so much crap on there i needed to go through and delete that i now don't have to do anymore

 

In case someone else finds this topic hoping to restore their RAID-0 array, i would try RAID-reconstructor. I feel it gives you the best chance of giving you ur data back but be careful not to do anything to the drives before trying it. It's probably what cost me my data, rushing to try something....

[Helly]

And here we are again, just under a month later, and it happened again. This time i did NOTHING with cables.

 

I am having trouble with my motherboard since i bought it, unstable behavior, so i thought a bios update would fix some issues. Asus had a few new bios updates on their site and in the fixes it actually says stability fixes. So updated the bios. Not knowing it would reset my bios and clear my OC settings. Not a big deal since i remember them mostly. I was actually having flash back to what happened in the start of this topic. My RAID array breaking... but that was because it booted with 1 wrong drive connected, not the same thing so it won't happen now right?

 

WRONG. After i noticed the bios was reset, i shut off my pc, disconnected all my drives except 1 (the one NOT in an array), and put back all my settings. Including setting my SATA controller to RAID. I rebooted and everything worked fine. The system booted to windows and i shut it down to connect the drives. If you reading this, are you thinking my RAID arrays should be broken and not work anymore? If so then please tell me WHY. Because is REALLY don't know.

 

anyway, the system decided to not kick 1 drive from the arrays but THREE! 1 from the first array and 2 from the other, breaking BOTH my arrays and costing me a significantly more amount of data this time. A small upside to this is that i could really properly test the programs i used before. DO NOT use RAID reconstructor. IT DOES NOT WORK! I tried everything and it wouldn't find anything useful. Instead use filescavenger, because right before i started typing this i did 1 last try and it succesfully recovered a movie recording i made of a game. All working and without any kind of corruption. It does need to have the drives in the right order, but if anyone needs it i can type up a small guide of getting your stuff back with this.

 

When i started typing this i was PISSED, which is the weakest word for it really, now by the end i recovered a full folder of movie files which are all good and without corruption so now im happy i got at least some stuff back . This is however on just 1 of the arrays, the other has bigger problems i think. Will try that one later.

 

Please, if someone knows why this happened, LET ME KNOW! Because i am now considering of just buying a hardware raid card so i can avoid the onboard stuff all together..... my hart can't take another one of these days i think.... nor can all the stuff around me cuz next time, im gonna break something...

[Helly]

Final update on this, although i guess no one cares, i have now recovered 100% of my data without any corruption or broken files. Took hours to copy my stuff to a backup drive and back to a new array but it's all working.

 

still want to know why this happened but i guess either no one here knows or no one that read this knows. Only sad part is that i wish i knew this the last time so i could have recovered that data as well . Anyway, glad i got all my stuff back this time.