How to recover RAID0 lost after a upgrade to Windows 8.1

2

How can I recover software RAID 0 after formatting my primary OS drive?

I had the same issue as this post : I was previously running Windows 7 on a machine that had 4 physical drives and 1 SSD for the OS.The other 4 were a RAID 0 that was created through Windows 7 disk management.

Last month I upgraded to Windows 8, and the 4 drives that were part of a RAID are now just unformatted disks when looking in Windows 8 disk management. I tried to use Raid reconstructor as it is explain in the above post. It worked for 1 of the 2 RAID.

For the second RAID, the analyse of Raid Reconstructor failed to find the correct configuration so when I copy the data on another disk, I cannot open the .img like for the first RAID. None of the disks were formatted so the data should still be there but i cannot manage to access it.

NOTE: The folder Windows.old was deleted after the upgrade, so I cannot boot back to Windows 7. And no restauration point were create before the upgrade.

user2830344

Posted 2014-10-08T09:42:58.553

Reputation: 21

Answers

0

There are some things you really do not want to hear but it has to be said:

  • ALWAYS have a fresh BACKUP of a Raid-0-Array
  • you SHOULD RECOVERyour data from a Backup

Well - you would not ask this questions if you had the ability to recover your data from a Backup.

So i need to mention the following uncommon facts too.

  • NEVER try to recover a failed array on the original disks
  • Make a real 1:1-Copy with a Cloning Program of your Choice and try to recover your Data on the new cloned disks.
  • if you "repaired" something and it did not work you probably made it WORSE

There are professional Data-Recovery-Services out there (like http://www.krollontrack.com) but you should take in mind that the recovery of a raid array may cost a few thousand EUR/USD.

Martin Seitl

Posted 2014-10-08T09:42:58.553

Reputation: 428

Thank you for your advice :

  • it's not my data I try to recover otherwise I would have a backup
  • never use software RAID I know
  • I did not make it worse, I use RAID reconstructor to clone the 2 RAID on another disk (I use to 2 spare HDD of 1 TB). I worked for 1 of the 2 RAID-0, not for the other one.

The purpose of this thread is to hope someone had a similar problem while i'm searching for a solution. Maybe someone that already use RAID reconstructor of maybe another software

Telling me that I should have a backup is not helping me :( – user2830344 – 2014-10-08T11:31:29.590

Asked: 2014-10-08T09:42:58.553

Viewed: 596 times

Active: 2014-10-08T10:50:43.043