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Restore software raid after reinstall Windows 2003 server

Our server has 5 disks, the first is disk for the opperating system. The other 4 are 1 TB each and are configured as a software Raid 5 set.

After a crash of our windows 2003 standard server I did a reinstall of windows. But windows doesnt recognise the raid set anymore, but just 4 disks. Is there any solution to fix this issue?

Thanks in advance,

infombp

ASKER

leegclystvale

I don't think there is as the RAID information is held in a file in Windows somewhere. Unless you can get this file back, it will be gone forever I'm afraid. This is the downside of software RAID. Get yourself a hardware RAID controller...expensive but worth it.

ben1974

Hope you have a backup on tape somewhere, software RAID is not worth the title or the piece of paper its written on. Whenever RAID is used for Fault tolerance, use HARDWARE RAID.
Solution, leave your system well alone and contact a RAID/Disk recovery company who can take the disks and extract the information, do not mess with them. If your company data is on this set of disks and you dont have a backup then don't even attempt to read them.
Next time you set this system up, get a hardware RAID card, have 2 disks as RAID 1 for your O/S and then setup those disks again using RAID5.

maze-uk

Apparently, DiskInternals (http://www.diskinternals.com/raid/) has a solution. I've never used it so I cannot recommend it.

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maze-uk

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ben1974

Yes that looks OK, give it a go.

leegclystvale

Yeah that does look cool. Never thought it was possible once this config file had been deleted

infombp

ASKER

RaidRecovery of Diskinternals solved the problem and I was able to restore the raid set! Thanx