Recovering my data from a RAID 1 drive. Urgent advice appreciated

[sirgibby]

Hi

I am in a bit of a pickle and need some expert advice.
I am not a technician but have been around PC's for many years so am OK with reasonably straihgt foward issues.

THE QUESTION.

Can I take a SATA drive from my computer, put in into a USB craddle and simply extract urgently needed data from my HDD

The set up is 2 HDD in RAID 1 (mirror) configuration

(I know this is not a strictly TRAINZ question but, as TRAINZ is the only forum I frequent I am hoping someone can help me.)
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THE BACKGROUND

I have a great machine and it has two drives in RAID 1 (mirror) configuration.

Its under warrenty so the shop will fix the problem but, unfortunately, its an out-of-town warrenty which means it will be away for a week.

Because my backup drive was full, the backup yeaterday failed to back up a job I have been working on for a couple of weeks and I need that data fast.
Hence the reason for my question.

I am quite ignorant about RAID but have a USB HDD craddle that my old PC's HDD is in.
Does RAID affect the way the data is written to the individual drives and can I simply plug the drive into the craddle and extract the data?

any help greatfully appreciated.

cheers
Michael

 

[sirgibby]

THE FULL STORY ... My urgent need is to get the data but there may be a simple solution to getting my machine up and going by myself.

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The machine is a high spec ASUS machine with a RAMPAGE II GENE motherboard. Its about 6 months old and has built in RAID control.

In CMOS the MACHINE shows the HDD's under the MAIN menu but when I go into the BOOT menu the only choices are DVD, USB and Removeable device... no HDD.

The problem started this morning when I started my machine.
The start up screen said "OVERCLOCKING FAILURE. Enter setup or F2 to reset to default settings."
Assuming it meant default overclocking I pushed F2 and it started fine.

However when I restarted it a couple of hours later it gave me all sorts of strange warnings and wouldn't boot. I telephoned the technician who told me that I should not have pushed the F2 for dafault settings. He guided me through resetting the CMOS but now it wont show the HDD under the BOOT options.
The computer is under warrenty and he said send it back but its an out-of-town purchase and will take about a week and a half before I see it again. So I would like to try and get it going myself but I am rather ignorant about RAID drives.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

Michael

 

[narrowgauge]

Mike

I'm sorry I can not help you but have you plugged your problem into Google. That canvasses a wider field than the forum.

Try this "recovering data from raid 1" and read the first result

Peter

 

[sirgibby]

Hi Peter

Thanks for your thoughts.
I have been scanning the forums all evening for info on RAID. Its a bit scary ... but then I was scared to remove and clean my mouse ball when I first bought a computer 25years ago



I am having real difficulty finding help with this particular problem

1: Computer RAID setup WAS working fine
2: NOW Raid drives wont boot
3: They are not showing in setup BOOT menu choices
4: BUT raid drives show in setup MAIN menu.

One comment I came across was to do a BIOS recovery but that has lost me a bit. Also I am not sure how far to go in case I make things worse.
The dilemma of the novice!!

Michael

 

[narrowgauge]

Mike

If neither drive will boot, I think your problem might be the RAID controller. It seem unlikely that it would be a drive problem. As these are mirrored drives, taking one out into a caddy should not cause a problem, after all, reading a drive does not change the data. Just hope that if it was a controller failure it hasn't corrupted the data on the drive. Fingers crossed. Ask your technical bloke tomorrow. Separate it into two problems 1: Getting your data onto another drive. 2: Solving your RAID problem, at the worst you can alway run one drive in a non-RAID configuration and use the other for backup with a decent backup program

Are these IDE or SATA drives?

Peter

 

[Bohannon]

Hi Michael, If you go into the CMOS setup then goto: Integrated Peripherals, onchip ide device must be set to enhanced for Raid to be displayed.

 

[sirgibby]

Are these IDE or SATA drives

They are SATA drives Peter.

Just hope that if it was a controller failure it hasn't corrupted the data on the drive

Could be but it seems strange that it is showing the SATA drives as being there in the Cmos MAIN menu but not available in the boot choices.

goto: Integrated Peripherals, onchip ide device must be set to enhanced for Raid to be displayed

Does this matter that they are SATA drives.

 

[Bohannon]

Yes use SATA drives. Also you may have to reinstall the raid drivers that came on the 3.5" disk or cd.

 

[sirgibby]

Also you may have to reinstall the raid drivers that came on the 3.5" disk or cd.

Thanks for your thoughts Bohannan.
Being new to RAID its all unfamiliar territiory.

The RAID is built into the ASUS RAMPAGE 2 GENE motherboard (maybe all motherboards are) and the RAID setup is available at startup.
However it only gives the choice to Install or delete RAID drives.

If the drives are already showing installed in the CMOS setup do I need to reinstall or could that cause a problem?

Also someone suggested flashing the bios (I presume that simply means upgrading). Would doing that be a help or create more problems?

thank again

 

[Bohannon]

Hello again Michael,

Try this go into CMOS then goto

Integrated peripherals
Onchip ide device, "press enter"
it should look something like this

ide bus master = Enabled
on-chip ide-1 controller = Enabled
on-chip serial ata setting
sata mode = raid

In Standard CMOS features
hard drives do not show up in raid mode. Only cd/dvd drives show up

 

[ianwoodmore]

Michael,

I have similar setup to you.

I have just added an eSATA 1.5TB HD that was initially in a RAID config. I have run the same HDD in a non-RAID SATA port without problems.

 

[sirgibby]

Latest update ....

This morning I started my machine and it went through as far as looking for the boot device ... hung for a second or two .. and then went on into windows where it ran for a couple of hours until I restarted it.

During that time I was able to recover important data .... including the latest update to Murchison 3.

When I restarted it had the same problem as earlier .. couln't find the raid drives.:'(

Hello again Michael,

Try this go into CMOS then goto

Integrated peripherals
Onchip ide device, "press enter"
it should look something like this

ide bus master = Enabled
on-chip ide-1 controller = Enabled
on-chip serial ata setting
sata mode = raid

In Standard CMOS features
hard drives do not show up in raid mode. Only cd/dvd drives show up

I checked these and they where all enabled.




If it means anything I did notice the following in ONBOARD DEVICES CONFIGURATION which I am not sure of

J-Micron eSTATA/PATA controller ......enabled​

Controller mode ..... IDE (only options are IDE and AHCI)​

Michael

 

[sirgibby]

SOLVED!!!!! ..... I hope

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This morning I took the computer out of its shipping box (where it was packed ready to send back to the shop) and put monitor / keyboard / mouse ... and it started fine!! (as mentioned in previoud post)

Assuming problem solved I turned off and re-attached network and EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE ... and it stopped because it couldn't boot.

When I had my intial failure I had pressed F2 to change to defaults.
The defaults had placed the external HDD ahead of the RAID drives.

In the BOOT DEVICE PRIORITIES menu I only had three options ... USB / External HDD / DVD
I didn't realise that there was a separate field for the different HDD's. In there the External HDD was above the RAID drives and consequently the External HDD was the one that showed in the Boot Device Priorities.
When I started this morning without the external HDD th ecomputer had automatically added the Raid HDD to the priority list because the external HDD was not plugged in.

I placed he external HDD after the RAID drives and all is sweet now.

Thanks guys for your help and giving me some ideas that encouraged me to take it out of the shipping box and play a bit with the SETUP.

Michael

 

[narrowgauge]

Mike

You still have to wonder what caused your original problem. You have found the secondary problem but not the first one. Are you overclocking?

Peter

 

[sirgibby]

Hi Peter

I am not overclocking at the moment as the system was set back to default.
I don;t know what caused the overclocking issue. I did note, when I pulled the computer out from under the desk, that the grill was absolutely chocked. It has 5 fans and I imagine it will draw a lot of dust in so the clogged grill may have caused it to overheat (its cleaned now)

-------

As far as overclocking goes the system is all high-spec gaming which is factory biult for safe overclocking.

Right from the ASUS motherboard to the GTX295 video card. Also the CPU has factory built overclocking facilties.

The SETUP menu even tells you how to overclock and gives a pile of settings for it.

I guess that what it means is "it should handle it but not guaranteed".
My understanding is that these things have built in safeguards so that if you overclock too much it doesn't do any serious damage.

Another interesting thing I also noticed this morning in the PC setup menu is a choice for GAMING. This will temporarily disable a lot of stuff automatically for the best gaming performance

Michael