Recovering my RAID0 drives

[JJ1815]

Hi everyone, I'm going to start by saying I'm just a regular home user, and have little experience in the field of hard drive recovery, so here's my story.

I used to have a Dell XPS M1730, about 9 months ago, when it was 5 years old, it started to show just red/green/blue/white/black screens, I could do absolutely nothing. I thought it was due to the GPU so I bought a replacement, but that only gave me some grey/white blur on my screen.

I then had the motherboard declared dead by the local computer store and they offered me to try and recover my data from the drives. A week later there still hadn't come up anything. I took them home and only found out later, after contacting specialised data recovery companies, that my drives were actually configured in a RAID0 setup, and that it would be nearly impossible to recover the data from that, as you need a functional mobo from the original computer to do that.

I have been pondering about the idea to spend €2000 on the recovery because I'm really missing my files and I've been regretting every day that I waited so long to do a backup.
So, because of that my question, is there anything more I could do?

Thanks in advance
J

Edit: Information on the computer/drives that I can think of could be useful
Computer:
Dell XPS M1730
Windows Vista

Drives:
Hitachi
RAID0 Setup - 2 drives
Capacity: 160GB/drive
SATA 3.0Gb/s
RPM 7200
Firmware# CA1H
HDD: 7K200-160
Model: HTS722016K9A300

[pcimage]

€2000 ???

Assuming the HDD's are reasonably OK and it's "just" a RAID rebuild then it shouldn't be much more than €500 I would say.

[lcoughey]

Yup, send to pcimage. You definitely don't need a working system and unless both drives are in horrible shape, the price shouldn't be anywhere near what you were quoted.

[labtech]

Not directed to the OP, just in general:
I realize that there is a perception out there that DR is expensive, but some of these perceptions are ridiculous and simply not true.
Cost really depends on the circumstances.
Often, cost is low, way below the public perception out there.
Just have to find the right places.

[lcoughey]

Not directed to the OP, just in general:
I realize that there is a perception out there that DR is expensive, but some of these perceptions are ridiculous and simply not true.
Cost really depends on the circumstances.
Often, cost is low, way below the public perception out there.
Just have to find the right places.

I'd like to add that many times that prices tend to be high are due to the damage caused by non-professional data recovery attempts.

[labtech]

Not directed to the OP, just in general:
I realize that there is a perception out there that DR is expensive, but some of these perceptions are ridiculous and simply not true.
Cost really depends on the circumstances.
Often, cost is low, way below the public perception out there.
Just have to find the right places.

I'd like to add that many times that prices tend to be high are due to the damage caused by non-professional data recovery attempts.

True that

[JJ1815]

I find it indeed ridiculously high, especially since there should be no physical damage at all. Thanks for the replies guys, I'll definitely look into the recommendations!

[fzabkar]

A RAID 0 rebuild is something that a DIY-er should be able to do, if both drives are physically OK. All you would need to do would be to create a software RAID using free tools. Some experimentation with stripe size might be necessary, although there are tools that can determine the RAID parameters automatically.

[Dmitri]

I used to have a Dell XPS M1730 ... I then had the motherboard declared dead by the local computer store and they offered me to try and recover my data from the drives. A week later there still hadn't come up anything.
...
So, because of that my question, is there anything more I could do?

since there should be no physical damage at all

If there was no accident that could have killed your motherboard (and could do the same with the drives therefore), so the drives are indeed OK physically, then we can perform diagnostics and data recovery remotely, without need to ship anything.
Diagnostics is free.

But if at least one of the drives is failing, then I'd suggest to seek for the DR company who will image that drive properly.

[data-medics]

Assuming that both drives spin up and are recognized by your OS. Buy yourself a couple of SATA/IDE to USB adapters, clone or create images of both drives, buy a license of R-studio, and install TeamViewer version 7 on your computer.

Then myself, or another guy on here like Luke from RecoveryForce will perform the recovery remotely for you for a few hundred $$ via PayPal.

Trust me that's the cheapest way to get a RAID rebuilt you can ask for.

[fzabkar]

DMDE can reconstruct a software RAID, as can mdadm (Linux).

RAID Reconstructor is one commercial tool.