In Short:
How to get the data of a disc that was in a RAID 1 (mirrored) system.

In detail:
I had a laptop that contained two harddisks that were setup in a RAID 1 system.
Unfortunately it died and as the last backup was some time ago, I want to save the data.
I hoped that in a RAID 1 system I can simply read one of the discs "normally" and bought an USB adapter to attach the 2.5 inch drive to the desktop. Unfortunately in Windows it did not show the drive (the drive had no letter) and I went into "control panel / admin / computer admin / drive admin" (I hope those are the right words, in German:
"Systemsteuerung / Verwaltung / Computerverwaltung / Datenträgerverwaltung")
It said the drive is not "initialiased". I let windows initialise the disc. It then says "not assigned" ("nicht zugeordnet") and in the right-click-menu offers to create a partition.
I then looked for tools and found "PC Inspector file recovery". This says it finds 4 partitions, if I understand correctly one is simply the complete disc. I then try to list the files/directories and now this happens:
For 3 partitions the list is simply empty. For one I see files and directories, but the names are gobbledigook (sp?) and also the sizes are obviously wrong (all are very large).

Strangely, twice it did show the correct list. Once I started to copy all files to a "good" harddisc but the program crashed. Thinking the issue might be too much data, after a reboot I only copied one directory as a test and that worked. Unfortunately the program crashed again soon afterwards and never again did I see a good list of files / directories :-((.

There is a combobox "usefat" where you can choose values like "none", "1", "2" etc and I am unsure which to use but have tried most combinations.

I then tried "hand recovery 1.0", but obviously this can only be used with partitions Windows knows about.
I then tried "hand recovery 2.0", which can find lost partitions, but it only found two, both of them roughly a megabyte in size.

Questions:
- Should a RAID 1 disc be readable without further HW/SW?
- Did I destroy something by initialising the disc?
- Any idea why "PC Inspector file recovery" first seemed to work and now does not?
- What should I do now?
- Would it help to investigate the other disc? I have not as IMO it would only make a change of the first disc has been changed and then obviously I want to be careful not to change the contents of the other disc as well.
- What other tool might help? I am willing to spend a bit of money.

Any help appreciated.

Joe runs RAID 1 so he will probably come along and help you. You should be able to mount that disk in another computer and read it. There is a way to mount it with a Ubuntu Live CD too, but I don't know the details about that as I've only dabbled with Linux.

Not sure about initializing if it's the same as a format. Quick format will leave the data intact and just deletes the beginning and end of the disk that shows where all the data is stored, similar to a library card system. Full format takes out the whole disk. As long as something does not overwrite the old data, it's still there.

Sorry I can't help you with your problem, but I had a similar problem last year. I couldn't get the info off the good HD. After 3 days of trying, I gave up and started with 2 fresh HDs and a new OS install. In those 3 days, I discovered that a RAID isn't all that great. No more RAID setups in my house.

Hi Osram, sorry to hear of your troubles. Joe is indeed our resident raid expert, but maybe it will be helpful if you can say what Raid Controller your laptop uses?

It's definitly not clear that a Raid1 disk can be read separatly, some may, some may not, depending on controller.

I would not touch the second disk until a clear process is established, possible you hurt the first one by initalising.

Maybe contact Kroll Ontrack (free hotline) and ask if they are selling any Lite Licenses of their products that can do a RAID1, or if they can recommend something:
http://www.ontrack.de/

These guys are the best data recovery specialists in the German Market. But their Professional Level stuff is pricey.

How dead is the laptop? If only the display died, maybe you could recover data over network. If other parts died, maybe it can be repaired?

Thanks for the help.

The controller is a
VIA VT6421

Hi Osram,

Different RAID controllers manage data differently. If you try to

---Should a RAID 1 disc be readable without further HW/SW?
Not exactly - this is a huge problem with RAID controllers. Different RAID controllers manage data differently. Your desktop controller may or may not be able to read the data placed on your disk by your laptop's RAID controller.

---Did I destroy something by initialising the disc?
* Nope, so long as you didn't re-partition and format it.

---Any idea why "PC Inspector file recovery" first seemed to work and now does not?
* (See first comment). This may also happen if you tried to restore files to the drive you were trying to recover from, try to boot from it, or otherwise modify it - which would make recovery harder/impossible. Other than that, I don't have a clue.

---What should I do now?
* It's best to just get an identical, replacement laptop from the manufacturer. You'll have to rebuild the RAID array, but at least you'll be able to read the data from your drives.

* If that's not an option, try to use your onboard disk controller instead of the VIA one and see if the data is there.

* Like Speedbump said, try to access the drive through Ubuntu. You'll need to mount it first. I dont remember where the menu is, but it should take you about 5 seconds to find. The drive icon should appear on the desktop when mounted. (Ubuntu wont help if the disk controller can't read the drive)

---What other tool might help? I am willing to spend a bit of money.
* I swear by GetDataBack and Disk Commander. GDB was $60-70 IIRC. A regular consumer can't get Disk Commander anymore (long story), but download this 30-day free trial of Microsoft DART. Disk Commander is a part of ERD Commander. http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-Up-and-Recovery/Diagnostics-and-Recovery-Toolset.shtml

Try the trial of GetDataBack first. You can't recover files, but you can see what Partitions and files are on the drive, and how likely they are to be recovered.

Again, those options will only help you if your desktop's disk controller can read the RAID drive's data. Good luck.

Thank you.
A quick test with the trial of GetDataBack shows the correct directory structure and names, correct files (name and size) but all file contents seem to be wrong (like using contents from a different file. I will look more in the evening, I am at work now.

Joe to the rescue (or not, actually).

The only guaranteed way to read a RAID array as it ran on your old system is to connect both drives to an identical RAID controller. This is why it is critical that a RAID array never be your only backup system. Enterprise solutions use redundant RAID arrays and/or backup the arrays to external drives or to tapes. At home I have a RAID 1 array, but I also back this up onto an external drive periodically, and then I store the external drive out of the house.

I have never tried pulling one drive out of a 2-drive RAID 1 array and connecting it to a separate computer. I certainly would never do anything to that drive, such as initialize it, on the separate computer because you might compromise the array.

Ok, I will have another look into running the laptop. Unfortunately I a fairly sceptical :-(.
No progress on GetDataBack, I changed the optiosn somewhat, but the result is exactly the same and I doubt GetDataBack will solve my issue.
I am installing UBUNTU on an USB stick right now.
Anyway, thanks all for now, I will be back if/when I have more questions. I certainly did not expect reading a RAID 1 disc to be that hard :-(.

You could give Recuva a try: http://www.piriform.com/recuva

There is no harm in running the system on only one drive for a while and then re-attaching the old drive. The outdated drive will be re-synched with the current. That is the whole point of RAID-1.
You can do the same with any RAID-5 too (just dont remove more than one drive at a time).

I dont know about the toy-RAID controllers, but Adaptec's dont change the file-table on RAID-1 drives. This so you can take any one RAID-1 drive and connect it to any IDE/SATA controller to access it's content.

Concur, but the scenario is this case is that the original RAID controller is no longer available.

That is a nice feature of the Adaptec RAID controller. Given the problems Osram has experienced in trying to access the contents of these drives, I'm guessing that his controller isn't (wasn't) as nice.