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How to recover files from a Raid 0?

I am working on an Alienware that is a few years old and no longer under warranty. Both of the drives in the raid pass the DFT and they both seem to be in healthy condition. However i cannot get any of my boot disks such as Barts PE or ERD commander to boot up so i can see the files. How do i go about repairing the raid with out deleting the files?

cuziyq

Is this a software RAID or a hardware one? If it is a soft RAID, you could probably boot off a Linux "Live" CD and use the LVM to mount the array.

If it is a hardware RAID, BartPE or ERD commander wouldn't be able to see the array without a driver, which means you will have to slipstream them in. You could make yourself a WinPE 2.0 boot CD. That would allow you to load drivers from a USB stick after the fact.

If it's a hardware RAID and it somehow got currupted, you're screwed.

rindi

First make sure you have a place to copy the data to. Then run the raid reconstructor on each disk, which whill create an image of that disk and then merge the images together. After that run getadataback on that image. Both utilities are available from here:

http://runtime.org

metrogeeks

ASKER

"If it is a hardware RAID, BartPE or ERD commander wouldn't be able to see the array without a driver, which means you will have to slipstream them in."

Can you elaborate a bit more on how to do this? I am also looking into the runtime.org items...

cuziyq

Slipstreaming a driver into your BartPE disk is a pain in the nuts. There's plenty of info in the 'net about it and I'd really not like to get into it here. But the basic gist is that you grab the drivers for the array controller, modify a couple of files on the BartPE distribution, and then reburn the disc. Don't know how it works for ERD commander.

Here's the official instructions
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/help/english/drivers.htm

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arthurjb

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metrogeeks

ASKER

Even using the Demo from Runtime.org i was unable to see any of the information on the raid. I assume that the data is corrupt and i will rebuild the RAID. This computer came from Microsoft with this configuration and I will try to put it back in that same configuration as it is more of a gaming computer than it is a daily use machine. I thank you for all your help.