[ErikTheBearded]

Hi, my PC froze up and when I booted it back up, I received the failure notice as seen in the attached pictures. I'm pretty much in the dark when it comes to partitioning/hardware, the computer was recently given to me by a friend. I'd like to know what my options are from here as far as repair or file recovery. Thanks.

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It was RAID0, which is not really RAID, but AID as there is no redundancy. Half the data is gone and depending on how exactly it was stripped, there might not be much you can do except to start over. This is the point in time in which a backup would come in handy.

It might be possible to salvage some data from the one existing drive, but I suspect it would be time consuming.

Sorry.

[Kemasa]

It was RAID0, which is not really RAID, but AID as there is no redundancy. Half the data is gone and depending on how exactly it was stripped, there might not be much you can do except to start over. This is the point in time in which a backup would come in handy.

It might be possible to salvage some data from the one existing drive, but I suspect it would be time consuming.

Sorry.

[ErikTheBearded]

I suspected as much. I wish I had backups, but I don't.

Now, how would I go about salvaging whatever I can? Time is not an issue.

[iammykyl]

Gday.
It is important that you do not disconnect/remove the drives.

From you second screenshot, what options do you get from "4 Recover Volume Options"?

[ErikTheBearded]

I definitely won't unplug anything, no worries there .

Pictured below are the options from the section you requested.

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[Kemasa]

Now, how would I go about salvaging whatever I can? Time is not an issue.

You can hire a company, or you can manually review the data on the disk to see if there is any complete valid data. There might also be some programs which allow you to try to recover data on the disk, but the problem is half of the disk is gone.

It is also possible to get the failed disk repaired. Depending on what is wrong with it, if it was the controller board on it, you can sometimes replace the board, with the same firmware version, and get it to work again.

If you send the disk in, you would need to make sure that they don't wipe the data on the disk.

[Kemasa]

From you second screenshot, what options do you get from "4 Recover Volume Options"?

Is it RAID0, there is no parity information, no redundant data, so it is not possible to recover data on a RAID0.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid0

[ErikTheBearded]

Now, how would I go about salvaging whatever I can? Time is not an issue.

You can hire a company, or you can manually review the data on the disk to see if there is any complete valid data. There might also be some programs which allow you to try to recover data on the disk, but the problem is half of the disk is gone.

It is also possible to get the failed disk repaired. Depending on what is wrong with it, if it was the controller board on it, you can sometimes replace the board, with the same firmware version, and get it to work again.

If you send the disk in, you would need to make sure that they don't wipe the data on the disk.

I accept that half the data is gone. However, how would I go about manually reviewing whatever data may remain on the disk? Also, what sort of recovery programs do you recommend?

[Kemasa]

I accept that half the data is gone. However, how would I go about manually reviewing whatever data may remain on the disk? Also, what sort of recovery programs do you recommend?

I use Linux, so my answers are going to be a bit different :-). You can boot the machine using Knoppix and use od, strings or other commands to search for specific data.

I don't know of any specific recovery problems, although I have seen some discussed here.

Is there something specific that you are looking for on the disk?

[ErikTheBearded]

I don't know of any specific recovery problems, although I have seen some discussed here.

Is there something specific that you are looking for on the disk?

Just family photos and videos. I'll try Knoppix and see how it goes from there.

Thanks, I'll drop by later if I have more questions.

[Kemasa]

For those files, you can't just look at the data, you need to have a tool to search for the files as there is nothing obvious that it is what you are looking for.

You can copy the disk to another drive, then work with that to protect the original data.

[ErikTheBearded]

For those files, you can't just look at the data, you need to have a tool to search for the files as there is nothing obvious that it is what you are looking for.

You can copy the disk to another drive, then work with that to protect the original data.

I have a spare HDD, what't the easiest way to copy over the data?

[Kemasa]

Well, the way that I do it is to boot Knoppix, make sure that I know which drive is which, then use dd to copy the complete disk.

For example, once you boot knoppix, open a terminal and then "su" to get into root.

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=32M

Just make sure that the drives are correct, otherwise you will wipe out the data. It takes a long time if the drive is large.

[iammykyl]

use S.M.A.R.T. to identify the bad disk.
I don't know if it can tell you if the controller is bad.

I have read some good reports for recovery data using this program, > http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/