Raid 0 recovery

[ThrowAwayMobileAccount]

First, I am a regular user on this site. My username is Goatsniffer. I only have access on my mobile for an extended period of time because of a move to a rural area. Neowin does not allow me to reset my password on their mobile site and all attempts to view the desktop site have failed. So anyway, I was compelled to create this new account after reading this thread.

I would like to apologize to the OP on behalf of the community here. You came here requesting help, and you got mostly jerkhole responses about people defining RAID to you and telling you you're screwed and you should have had a backup. I'm even more disappointed in Budman, who is usually very helpful; he's helped me in the past multiple times. He read your request for help and basically told you that you deserved it and then preached his personal views about backing up.

So let's clear up some things and then provide some help.

1.) To sinetheo, you wasted OPs time by telling him his RAID-0 is not a RAID. Problem solved, right? Then you tried miserably to define a RAID yourself. It seems to me like you were attempting to describe RAID-5 as the definition of RAID itself. "Many experts and myself agree" that RAID-5 is not the only RAID level that exists, and also why don't you go Google the ramifications of RAID-5 with large capacity disks if you want to agree with experts.

RAID-0 might not be part of original intended use of the technology, but it exists none the less and just about any RAID system allows the use of it because it does have its own intended uses.

No clarity on the definition of RAID will recover OPs data.

2.) To Budman. I respect your knowledge and I have no beef with you in general. I will continue to respect that knowledge and seek it when needed, but let's call you an EMT because of your professional experience in your professional field. When responding to the scene of an accident (even if the person was texting while driving) do you usually stand over them while they ask for your help and tell them what they should have been doing instead, and what you usually do to be a safe driver? Do you show up just to put up a sign that says "this is what happens when you don't do what I do?". No. You don't. If you are going to do that at all, you do that after you provide the assistance. OP is a person in need of help because something that is important to him is in danger of being lost.

Is everyone an industry professional? No. Some people are hobbyists, and I seriously doubt he knew the dangers of how he was storing his data, and the pitfalls of not backing upon. This could be a learning experience though, and he doesn't have to give up on his data and feel bad about himself because YOU know better.

So now I'll offer my help.

I have personally recovered data from a failed RAID-0 array built on an onboard Intel sata controller. I assume you were using motherboard raid options and not an addon card or software raid. That would be good news because onboard raid options are usually simple and are less likely to have a foreign structure.

I used R-Studio to virtually reconstruct the RAID and then used a 4GB+ file aware file recovery software to pull readable data from the drive. It sounds like the file size issue might not be a concern of yours, but it's good to know that a lot of undelete software can't recover single files that are over 4GB in size.

Don't give up, your 0's and 1's didn't all invert polarity on you. Most likely your critical data is there. It's possible that your RAID config was forgotten by the controller, or that a drive was discarded from the RAID as soon as a single inconsistency was discovered. It highly likely, especially with smaller files, that the data is all there. If you had the RAID connected using an external dock or eSATA, is possible the controller could not identify the drives briefly and invalidated the RAID structure. Unfortunately you can't just rebuild the structure, you almost always have to recover what you can, nuke the array, and then start over. Parity or mirror based RAID levels allow you to rebuild, but not selectively, you have to wait for the entire array to be reconstructed from the parity or mirror data. Some RAID controllers let you backup the RAID structure information independently, so if that's an option available to you in the future you will be able the merits of it.

I'd even offer to help you recover the data if you could get me images of the two drives.

For a long time I trusted RAID-0 with important data. Heck, the first server I made for my media was a single first-gen WD Green drive. I took my chances like a lot of people do because I didn't realize the risks, didn't have the money to throw around, and didn't know my options. I am sorry this happened to you, first the drive failure, and then the immeasurable frustration of jerkhole forum users who use your situation as an opportunity to berate someone for not measuring up to their own standards and to preach those standards like they are gospel.

Please keep us updated. If there is anything more I can do to help, I will.