Can I recover data from RAID 1 drive after Windows installation?

1

I had a RAID 1 setup on Asus motherboard on windows XP. At some point one drive failed and I took it out. For a long time I continued to use the remaining drive without replacing the bad drive and ignoring the critical RAID error message.

Then a few days ago I disconnected the remaining good RAID drive (which was my D: drive) and installed Windows 7 on my C: (non-raid). Then I plugged my raid drive back in but Windows does not see it.

How can I recover the data from this drive?

If I cancel/disable the RAID configuration in the BIOS would I lose the data? Or would the drive become a regular non-RAID drive? (wishful thinking).

Would I be able to read it if I plugged it into another PC?

user479556

Posted 2015-08-07T14:01:14.300

Reputation: 11

Answers

2

This question cannot be answered precisely without knowing what you are actually using for the RAID - whether it is motherboard RAID (which chipset?) or software RAID (Windows/hacked) or a standalone RAID card (what make/model?)

However, in general disabling the RAID on a motherboard will cause all drives to show up as normal standalone drives to Windows. Most RAID-1 setups when converted in this way will just appear as a normal drive. Some use proprietary metadata that may or may not offset the start of the true partition table causing Windows to fail to recognize it if taken out of RAID.

qasdfdsaq

Posted 2015-08-07T14:01:14.300

Reputation: 5 762

It's an Asus motherboard RAID. Does Asus place this metadata in the front of the drive? – user479556 – 2015-08-07T15:58:43.057

1I disabled the raid in the bios and rebooted. Started disk management. The drive showed as 'foreign'. Selected it and applied 'import foreign' and after that it showed in windows 7 and all the data seems to be fine. Thanks for the help – user479556 – 2015-08-07T16:55:46.240

Sounds like you were using a dynamic disk in addition to motherboard RAID. Not that it makes any difference at this point. – qasdfdsaq – 2015-08-10T11:10:28.613

Asked: 2015-08-07T14:01:14.300

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Active: 2017-10-20T05:02:26.603