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Shaggy

Hi,

Fairly new to this forum, so forgive me for coming on here with problems

Anyway... i recently had the BSOD!...Nothing i could do resolved the issue... So i decided to get a new SATA Hard drive and install WIndows XP on that to get me up and running again...

I desperately do not want to lose the files on my old drives...!

Before i had the BSOD, the Dell system was running a Dual SATA HDD setup Raid 0. (2 x 250GB Drives)
I have managed to get hold of an External USB HDD dock for them both, and mounted them into the enclosure and plugged in to PC.
THe PC knows they are there (assigned Drive letters F&G to them) but i just cannot access them at all?? it says i have to Format them before being able to use?? WHich obviously i dont want to do?? I went into the Dsk manager, and they are classed as RAW drives??

Does anyone have any ideas??

Please PLease help! i Have many many sentimentle pictures and files on there which are priceless to me.

Thankyou in Advance

Mike

Shaggy

The only thing i can think of is that maybe the other Drives are running a different file system?? which in turn cannot recognise data from the other old drives???

I know that my new HDD is running the NTFS file system?? Maybe the other 2 Drives running as a Dual HDD where Fat-32?? although i cant actually remember what file system they ran, so i am at a loss.

ih8bills · 12:47 AM

HI Shaggy--
It is the way that raid arrays store files --not the file system-- and I don't think you will like the explanation:

From Wikipedia:

There are various combinations of these approaches giving different trade offs of protection against data loss, capacity, and speed. RAID levels 0, 1, and 5 are the most commonly found, and cover most requirements.

RAID 0 (striped disks) distributes data across several disks in a way that gives improved speed and full capacity, but all data on all disks will be lost if any one disk fails.

RAID 1 (mirrored disks) could be described as a backup solution, using two (possibly more) disks that each store the same data so that data is not lost as long as one disk survives. Total capacity of the array is just the capacity of a single disk. The failure of one drive, in the event of a hardware or software malfunction, does not increase the chance of a failure nor decrease the reliability of the remaining drives (second, third, etc).

RAID 5 (striped disks with parity) combines three or more disks in a way that protects data against loss of any one disk; the storage capacity of the array is reduced by one disk.

RAID 6 (less common) can recover from the loss of two disks.

RAID 10 (or 1+0) uses both striping and mirroring.

I do not say there is no hope at all but you might have to pay for data-recovery service or software

This software here raid-recontructor is $99.00 US

Runtime Software Purchase

but if the one drive does not spin-up at all I think you may have to go see a professional $$$$

above all-- before spending anything research until your eyes bleed. Naught worse than spending, and getting poor results.