Restoring external WD 'My Book Essentials' to factory..

[rrw4rusty]

Hi,

My worst nightmare; external backup disk crashed then a day later my desktop would not boot win7 or safe mode. RAID 0 data (10 years worth) inaccessible, must reinstall OS which will wipe data. Dell support (Alienware Aurora) says only way to save data is to send to expensive recovery experts. First I will try to recover RAID image using ReclaiMe to a new WD 1.5 TB My Book Essentials external drive... but this will wipe that disk and the backup software that comes on it. So, I need to restore it to 'factory' afterwords.

I think what I need to do is:
1. Copy all the software and files from the 'My Book'
2. Then, nuke the 'My Book' with the RAID image and then copy my data off
3. Format the 'My Book'
4. Copy the programs and files (step 1) back to it.

Questions:
* Does this sound right?
* Would I do a regular win7 format on the 'my book' drive?
* Are there any special considerations?
* Are there any hidden partitions to worry about on the 'my book'?

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!!
Rusty
..

[einstein9]

Hi,

My worst nightmare; external backup disk crashed then a day later my desktop would not boot win7 or safe mode. RAID 0 data (10 years worth) inaccessible, must reinstall OS which will wipe data. Dell support (Alienware Aurora) says only way to save data is to send to expensive recovery experts. First I will try to recover RAID image using ReclaiMe to a new WD 1.5 TB My Book Essentials external drive... but this will wipe that disk and the backup software that comes on it. So, I need to restore it to 'factory' afterwords.

I think what I need to do is:
1. Copy all the software and files from the 'My Book'
2. Then, nuke the 'My Book' with the RAID image and then copy my data off
3. Format the 'My Book'
4. Copy the programs and files (step 1) back to it.

Questions:
* Does this sound right?
* Would I do a regular win7 format on the 'my book' drive?
* Are there any special considerations?
* Are there any hidden partitions to worry about on the 'my book'?

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!!
Rusty
..

[harddrivespecialist]

You can always image your RAID to a file on your external drive.

[rrw4rusty]

You can always image your RAID to a file on your external drive.

Did that but for some reason the most important files were missing. There is no reason for any files to be missing... the drives are 7 months old, arn't making weird noises and it was a restore point that made the OS unbootable (even in safe mode). I'm going to repeat the process before sending it to a data recovery company.

Rusty