RAID Recovery

WPKenny

Resident Freddy
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
1,348
I've finally replaced my motherboard and the pc is sort of up and running.

My problem now is that I can't get onto the hard drives since two years ago I set them up as RAID 0 (striped) on my ASUS A7N8X Deluxe (rev 1.04).

The motherboard I have has RAID (of course) but when I try to tell it to use RAID 0 it tells me it wants to wipe the hard drives.

I'm in the process of still chasing ASUS for a replacement BIOS chip as I think that's the root of the issue on my non-working motherboard.


If I can't get the old mobo fixed I'm left with trying to recover my striped HDD's.

I've found a few programs that claim to be able to recover the disks but I can't for the life of me remember or find out at this time of night what the default stripe block was on the disks.

If anyone is better at google than me or knows of a program that might be able to guess at it and recover the disk I'd be very grateful.

I'm in the process of clearing out my external 300gig HDD so I can fit the recovered striped image on but I'm shooting in the dark until I can find the block size.

So I'm after help with any of the following:

1. A program that will recover the striped raid array and will also detect the block size. Perhaps one that doesn't need to create the whole image, it can just take starting chunks till I find te right block size?

2. A long shot but maybe I can re-flash my BIOS if someone out there has an ASUS A7N8X motherboard out there and can perhaps post me their BIOS chip (it's got AN8X2 1001.C written on it) so I can at least boot my computer and possibly replace the chips while it's running and flash my old chip? Or perhaps I can post you my BIOS if you're happier with that. I have no idea if BIOS are hot-swappable like that.

3. Somewhere that sells flashed BIOS chips to my specifications above.


Thanks in advance just for reading all this crap and double thanks if you can actually help :)
 

wyrd_fish

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 27, 2003
Messages
537
i dare say that asus will provide you with a new bios chip, if you're really nice

the a7n8x has a silicon image SATA RAID controller, what's the one on your new mobo?
 

WPKenny

Resident Freddy
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
1,348
The RAID chipset on my new mobo is VIA (urgh!).

At the moment I'm doing things the long way round.

At www.runtime.org I found a RAID reconstructor which makes an image of it's "best guess" at your RAID set up. Then you can use another bit of their software to recover the files in that image.

I set the reconstructor up last night and am currently recovering the image so I'll know in about 90 mins if it worked. I just need some files off it ASAP since this mobo recovery's taken WAY longer than anticipated. If it hasn't worked, I'll have to adjust the block size and start all over again. The data's there and still in tact...it's just getting to it that's the problem.

I guess I'll phone ASUS in the mean time....
 

WPKenny

Resident Freddy
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
1,348
I couldn't get in touch with ASUS over the phone but they did eventually email me. I've emailed a guy there who may be able to send me a replacement BIOS to see if that's the problem.


I'm in the process of recovering my data with the above software. It's done a cracking job. It's recovered everything as far as I can see and first tests seem that the data's intact (mp3's etc).

I'd prefer to recover my old mobo too if possible but I'm going to leave RAID well alone for now.
 

Mellow

Loyal Freddie
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
193
Load correct RIAD and disk drivers to ensure your motherboard can detect the hard disks.

Probably.
 

WPKenny

Resident Freddy
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
1,348
I managed to get all the data back using RAID recovery and getdataback and a 300 gig harddrive to copy the recovered data to before I could delete the original disks and copy it all back in their very much seperated state. :) Two 120 gig drives ain't that bad. :)
 

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