Double Hard Drive Recovery

[katerinrin]

Hi guys, noob here!

How do I recover files from 2 SATA hard drives (They say HDD1 and HDD2)? I know you can create an external hard drive out of one by hooking it up to an enclosure. But what do you do with two of them? Should I treat them as two separate hard drives and recover one by one?

Any help is appreciated!

[Vulcan]

Appropriate answers to your questions depend on you explaining the following:

- Are these your drives? If not then you may not be able to answer all the questions below, but please answer as many as possible of the following:
- Where did these drives come from exactly - e.g. inside a laptop? External storage device? Somewhere else?
- How were they configured in that device e.g. RAID1? JBOD? RAID0? something else?
- What symptoms does each drive have now?
- What is the make & model of both drives?
- What happened to cause this situation where you need to recover data from both drives e.g. was something containing both drives dropped, or something else?
- What tests have you done so far, and what were the results of each test?
- What level of skill & experience do you have with data recovery?
- How valuable is the data on these drives?
- Do you accept the risks of DIY recovery attempts, including that you might cause permanent unrecoverable data loss, though your actions?

[katerinrin]

- Are these your drives?
Yes
- Where did these drives come from exactly - e.g. inside a laptop?
Gateway P-172X FX laptop
- How were they configured in that device e.g. RAID1? JBOD? RAID0? something else?
It says its RAID 0
- What symptoms does each drive have now?
They sound like they are functioning properly (but the laptop cannot boot properly, as I suspect there is a problem with the graphics card)
- What is the make & model of both drives?
Seagate Momentus 7200.2
- What happened to cause this situation where you need to recover data from both drives e.g. was something containing both drives dropped, or something else?
The graphics card crashed, I'm pretty sure
- What tests have you done so far, and what were the results of each test?
None
- What level of skill & experience do you have with data recovery?
None lol
- How valuable is the data on these drives?
Pretty valuable (documents and years worth of photos)
- Do you accept the risks of DIY recovery attempts, including that you might cause permanent unrecoverable data loss, though your actions?
Yup, I want to learn, so I want to be careful, but I accept that there is the risk of losing the data

[lcoughey]

So, the data is valuable...but you are willing to lose it all so that you can learn? Might it be wiser to seek the assistance of a data recovery professional who will get your files back and then you can play and learn after you get your drives back?

[katerinrin]

I mean, I don't want to pay more than a couple of hundred for the recovery. The files are pretty valuable (memories), but they were partially backed up, so it will not be that big of a deal if I lose them.

[Vulcan]

As usual, Luke makes a very valid point. Here are a few comments:

If you are prepared to take all the risks of DIY, then I would make full raw clones of those drives onto other storage first (using image files or separate drives as the targets, your choice, but make sure you understand the difference between those two). You must get the direction of the cloning (source to target) correct. You may find that there are problems cloning one or both drives, as no testing of them has yet been done - be aware of that possibility. Without data recovery experience, even successful cloning can be a challenge. Make sure to take appropriate anti-static (ESD) precautions when handling the drives. It will probably be easier to use a desktop system, not a laptop, to do the cloning. In case of any read problems with a drive (and sometimes in other cases too), there can be disadvantages when using USB during cloning.

After creating the clones (image files or different drives) put the original drives away safely and use RAID recovery software to (try to) reconstruct the RAID 0 volume from the clones / image files, and see what state the underlying filesystem(s) are in - they might be usable as-is, or more work may be required.

You will need empty/unused storage for the clones, and to hold the data recovered from them (if recovery is successful).

Expect to spend (perhaps lots of) time on research and trial-and-error. Searching the forum for previous RAID recovery discussions may be helpful to you. You may want to practice these procedures using unimportant drives first, but you can't predict exactly how the "real" drives will react. Part of the cost of professional recovery is that you're paying for experience, and for the skills to cope with what might happen. Without having that experience, there are many possible mistakes that you could make - but good luck

[fzabkar]

Some free RAID reconstruction software you could try are DMDE and mdadm.

[katerinrin]

Thanks, guys! I'll update on the outcome

[Sam Verdi]

Good luck