I recently found my computer off, and when I booted it up everything seemed to be 
working fine, but I quickly discovered that my storage raid was not in My Computer.

I keep all my files on a two disk raid 0, both WD Caviar 7200s at 250gb each. When 
I open disk management, they show up just fine, but they are unallocated space. I 
ran WD Lifeguard Diagnostics, they both passed fine. I have tried a few tools to 
try to recover the partition, but the problem is that none of them seem to support 
partitions spanning over multiple drives. One of them errored out when it found a 
500gb partition on a 250gb drive.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

- Patrick D

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Raid 0 has no fault tolerance, your data is probably gone,.

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Never store data on RAID 0.  You lose one drive, you lose everything as it is striped 
and that's why it shows 500 gig, because RAID 0 is the total capacity of two drives 
(250+250=500 gig)..  It may be faster, but it's like stepping off a cliff with no 
parachute.  Where as RAID 1 is fault tolerant because the data is mirriored to the 
second drive (250+250=250).  It's slower but you have a parachute if you step off 
the cliff.  ;-)  Therefore, if one drive fails, hopefully the other drive will survive 
and your data is safe (known as fault tolerant).  

RAID 0 needs a good back plan, no backup and your data is gone unless you have the 
money to have it professionally recovered, and then there is still no assurance that 
you can get anything back..

There is probably a reason your computer was off.  If it didn't shut down properly, 
for any reason, it can corrupt the drives, especially RAID drives, and hurt the HDD 
in the process.







On Tuesday, August 28, 2007 at 1:48 pm, Patrick D wrote:

>I recently found my computer off, and when I booted it up everything seemed to be 

>working fine, but I quickly discovered that my storage raid was not in My Computer.

>

>I keep all my files on a two disk raid 0, both WD Caviar 7200s at 250gb each. When 

>I open disk management, they show up just fine, but they are unallocated space. 
I 

>ran WD Lifeguard Diagnostics, they both passed fine. I have tried a few tools to 

>try to recover the partition, but the problem is that none of them seem to support 

>partitions spanning over multiple drives. One of them errored out when it found 
a 

>500gb partition on a 250gb drive.

>

>Any help is greatly appreciated.

>

>- Patrick D 

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

So is there any way of getting my data back? There must be a way of re-establishing the partition. I don't mind if the data is somewhat corrupt, there are just a few small files on there that I really need. Most of it was movies and software. I tried using WinHex, and it sees a partition on both drives, and everything I've run so far says the drives are kosher, but nothing so far has been able to recover the partition.

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Recovering, or attempting to recover a RAID 0 system is for the pro's.  It isn't 
easy, may take special software "IF" it can be recovered depending on the issue(s) 
involved.  Your data is "striped" between the drives, meaning that your files are 
divided between the two drives.  RAID 0 alternates between the two drives when writing. 
 That's why recovery is impossible to all but the experienced with the tools to do 
it with, only IF the drives can be read and depending on what caused the failures.. 
 If one or both of the drives are corrupted, the chances may be next to impossible 
to rebuild you data.  The software I use, isn't available to the public and is very 
expensive as is the time to do it, again with no guarantees.  I know of no decently 
reliable software available cheaply that can handle all RAID recovery situations.

I suggest that you Google with "recovering RAID 0 data" as the subject and you will 
find a lot of info and some recovery tools, but it's a crap shoot at best and expensive 
for the better tools.  Even then, there is a steep learning curve.

You will find links like this from Google:

 http://www.quetek.com/RAID_recovery.htm

This forum isn't the best for this type of issue unfortunately and can't point to 
a good one right off hand.  I would have to get my hands on the drives and test them 
myself to be able to really help, because depending on what happened, the advice 
could change and I don't want to be responsible for doing more damage.  :-(   Good 
Luck!!

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