Disaster Recovery HELP !!!

antc · 26 Jan 2008

Well, last night my raid zero array died. This was basically used for my OS drive. However in the my pics folder was stored my whole image library in a lightroom DB. The plan was to get this backed up to an external drive last weekend but me being me never got round to it. Well low and behold it failed last night and now the system doesnt boot into windows what so ever. Advanced options dont work, ASR doesnt work. The two 36 gig raptor drives are connected to an intel matrix controller built into my mobo. Basically the system will boot to the vista splash screen with the green loading bar then a i get a brief flash of blue screen then it reboots and loops and does the same thing. I did once and only once recieve a stop code of 0x0000c1f5 which when googled gives the advice to basically reinstall the OS, which is fine, but i need to recover data first. I know its my own stupid lazy fault for not backing up sooner.

Can anyone suggest any ways of getting data back from a raid zero array?

I have already emailed off to http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.co.uk/
for a data recovery quote. Will wait to see what they come back with. Need to get 30 gig (last 2 and a bit years worth) or images plus maybe a few gig of general data although no where near as important as my images.

I cant believe I have been so stupid

:bang:

Matt Charlton · 26 Jan 2008

See if you can't get into recovery console - I can't remember if its an option in vista setup or you might have to use a windows XP cd.

do a chkdsk /r on your array and cross your fingers.

Hopefully that'll sort it.

Darryn · 26 Jan 2008

From your explaination it sounds like the RAID is still working, so all might not be lost, just Windows currupt... id highly recommend downloading a Linux LiveCD and see if that sees the drive, then if it does copy what you can off onto the External drive.

antc · 26 Jan 2008

problem is i do have another two drives connected to the pc, one empty in fact but as i have raid setup it sees raid as the only hdd in the machine in the bios so its not as if i could just stick in a spare hdd, install and OS and then try and view data on the array once into windows.

Banath · 26 Jan 2008

Use the recovery console on the installation CD (if vista has this?) then use the fixmbr command to re-write the master boot record this has fixed a lot of PC's that have gone wonky on me in the past.

Dogfish_magnet · 26 Jan 2008

Hi

I use a product called Acronis true image for data recovery - i have NOT used it with a raid set but it will support raid - it will allow you to create an image of the drives to a DVD or a external HD (as it is a bit copier it will allow you to copy corrupt data), you can then mount this image as a drive in windows explorer and drag and drop any data to the PC. As long as the corruption is not in the photos database you should be able to get it back.

Matt Charlton · 26 Jan 2008

Banath said:
Use the recovery console on the installation CD (if vista has this?) then use the fixmbr command to re-write the master boot record this has fixed a lot of PC's that have gone wonky on me in the past.

If the vista screen is appearing then the MBR is fine. chkdsk will fix it whereas fixmbr will not.

Chappers · 27 Jan 2008

Have you tried booting into safe mode. This loads only minimal drivers and may get you to a point where you can retrieve the data.

antc · 27 Jan 2008

Darryn said:
From your explaination it sounds like the RAID is still working, so all might not be lost, just Windows currupt... id highly recommend downloading a Linux LiveCD and see if that sees the drive, then if it does copy what you can off onto the External drive.

Right, this man deserves a beer. Using an ubuntu live cd i have been able to recover 18.5gig of the 28 gig of images. However when i viewed what was in the my pics folder i couldnt see any of the lightoom folders or the yearly folders i have created. The folders of images i have recovered so far seem to be a selection of events from my 2006, 2007 and 2008 folders i had setup within lightroom.

Any more ideas at all?

asab · 27 Jan 2008

can't you mount the HD in another PC and get at the data there?

buzzby · 27 Jan 2008

As said i would try booting in safe mode.

I have also had some success in the past using a windows live boot cd called bartpe
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Ihad something on the bartpe disk tht set up all of the hard disks as an ftp server so i could download them all on a different machine. This may be better than a linux disk as this is booting windows so it will not have any problems with windows filesystems.