i have a computer setup with a raid array (two 120gb drives to make one massive drive... well, massive at the time) that suffered a drive failure. I believe one of the drives is still good, but the other is most likely dead.

Is there anything that I can do to recover some of the data on the good drive? Also, is there a way to determine which is the bad drive?

 

First of all, a forum for S2000 enthusiasts is hardly the place to start off asking. Just open up the case and feel which hd is still spinning. The price it'll cost for you to recover 120GB of info from a laboratory would be emmense. I saved 2 of my HDs from middle school and high school hoping that one day, I'll have $10,000 to spare and recover my old photos.

If the HDs are still spinning, but the files are just corrupt, try buying a program called R-studio. It's totally worth the $100 and saved a 3rd HD of mine.

Also, don't bother with raiding into one big HD. What's the point? Unless you're running a server and need every HD in there to carry the same info for backup, don't bother.

 

This thread will get moved to our computers section, which is where you will be more likely to find answers anyway.

We would also need to know what kind of raid array this is, 1 or 2? Are you using it for speed or redundancy?

 

...Feel free to move it into the computer section...

I'll check out that R-studio program. Can I run that program from a CD? Cause as it stands I can't boot into windows at all.

Btw, it's a raid 0. Which unfortunately seems to mean when a drive fails I'm screwed.

 

It's just a program on a CD, so you'll have to transfer your HD to a working computer. Only bootable CDs I know are antivirus programs.

 

you should feel the rotational mass if a hard drive is spun up so remove hd from the case and connect power and data lines, should be able to feel when it gets spun up.

 

With RAID 0 the files are written across both hard drives (Striped RAID). The idea is to make some computer functions faster by reading and writing to two hard drives simulatneously. The problem is, with two hard drives you have double the odds of a catastrophic hard drive failure.

If either of the hard drives has failed, your files are unrecoverable because half of each file is located on the other hard drive. That's the simple answer anyway.

Lots of CDs are bootable. The WindowsXP CD is for example, as is the installation CD for nearly every other operating system. Additionally, you can create your own bootable CD to include various programs and tools, or you can download one of the many ready-to-use system recovery bootable CDs. There are also operating systems with system recovery tools that can run from floppies, USB drives, or memory cards.

The thing is, even with an operating system and recovery tools running from a CD, you still can't recover data from a hard drive that won't spin.

I guess the last thing you want to hear is a lecture about how you should back up your data and files regularly... so I'll leave now.

Best Luck,
-Bob

 

Correctomondo~ This company http://www.ontrack.com/ would do the lab work in physically extracting info out of the HD. The percentage of recovery, is very high. The percentage of your bank account that this process will cost is also very high. I read that NASA used this laboratory to recover data from their damaged shuttle black boxes (you'd think NASA would have their own facility).

So your best solution now is to see if the HD is spinning. If it is, take it out right away in case the problem worsens and use it only for recovery with the R-studio CD.

 

you know, you could somehow "obtain" a copy of Ontrack Professional and use its Raw Recovery to recover your data...

 

...how?! if you don't wanna spill anything over the internet, pm me?