Hope someone can recommend something to get me out of this ditch
LaCie Ethernet Big Disk 1TB, dies (clicking sounds from within, no recognition on either 100BT or USB).
About 700 GB of data down the toilet. I cracked it open, took out the disks and threw them into my desktop (WinXP). Drives spun up and seemed fine. That's where I made the mistake of trying to rebuild the RAID. Didn't work (obviously, since the volume is formatted under Linux, as I learned later). Got RAID Reconstructor SW. For that to work I had to delete the RAID array I created because that app tries to put together 2 drives when they are not arranged in a HW RAID array. No dice. At that point the original RAID configuration was probably lost. Tried a couple other things with no progress. Got another known good EBD box, same as mine, swapped out the drives, no pulse. swapped out just the second drive to see if I could get the data off the tail end of the JBOD (assuming it is JBOD), but nooo... Even though the drive is still recognized (OS being on the first drive of the JBOD) the logical volume doesn't work and no data can be recovered.
At this point I don't care to re-build the EBD so much as I want to get my stuff off this doomed array. The good LaCie box could not recover it. Nothing that I could run on my WinXP box could recover it (I ran apps that can see EXT2/3 partitions and/or analyse raw HD data).
I don't have a Linux box and I am a noob in Linux. I know there are tools out there for getting raw data off a drive even after it's been formatted (which mine haven't - they lost the boot sectors). Assuming the original array was JBOD, the 2 drives should have my data contiguously, not even striped accross them, so if I get the right tool I should be able to copy it off.
The big question is - what is the right tool and how can it be used to get the data off these darn drives?
I am even considering setting my desktop as a dual boot machine with Ubuntu, but I would need step-by-step instructions on what to do after the installation is complete...
So at this point, I have 1 good EBD complete with a working set of 2 500GB drives arranged the same exact way as my original one was (down to the share names and list of users and passwords) and the gutted original EBD box with a suspect power supply, a suspect controller card and 2 raped 500GB drives with about 700 GB of stuff I am dying to get back but no good boot sector. I got a Seagate utility that can copy a drive sector by sector, but what I need (I am guessing) is a way to copy just the boot sector from the 2 good drives to the 2 raped drives. Would that work??? Anyone know how to do that???

EDIT: Removed potentially helpful suggestion from my post.

Cross-posting to multiple topics within one forum is very annoying, you frankly aren't that important. (this isn't to say that anyone else is either)

When you connected the drives top your Windoz box, did you write a signature to either drive, i.e. initialize it?

These LaCies often have bad caps in their power supplies; they will deliver the correct voltage but insufficient current. Maybe you did a lot of unnecessary surgery and killed or maimed the patient in the process?? (Clue: clicking when in the LaCie enclosure; no clicking when removed).

You have no idea what you are doing (first mistake: not imaging the drives) and if you really want to let someone else try to fix up the mess you've created, you need to stop NOW.

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I agree with juno-ats, you wasted your time, corrupted your data, and forced us to read multiple posts all for a faulty power supply.

_________________
Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

jono,
When I connected the drives to the Win PC, I used the Intel Mobo's own BIOS RAID utility to configure the array as RAID0, then, when that didn't yield a visible logical volume under Windows I went back to the same RAID configuration utility and deleted the array to let the RAID Reconstructor app see the individual drives (it only operates under this condition).
I did not write anything to any of the drives under Windows and Windows never recognized either the array I sheepishly created or the individual drives enough to even assign them a drive letter.
The only modifications I've made to the drives were those caused by the RAID configuration utility.

I very well may have butchered the patient myself by messing with the RAID configuration
I did check the power supply output levels first thing and they were ok when unloaded (I wish I could check them under load). The first thing I tried after cracking the LaCie open was provide power to both drives off the desktop's supply, but that didn't revive the LaCie box. I thought one of the drives was either dead or close to it. I didn't have a way to image them at that point. I definitely should not have attempted to re-build the RAID array, but that bridge is burnt now. In my defense I was acting on a tip dug up in a forum similar to this one that lead me down that path. Rookie mistake. Lesson learned. What's next?

dellguy,

horrors!
But surely you're exaggerating - the worst I've forced you to do (forced?!) was to read multiple subject lines....
unless of course you did read all the identical posts and compare characters to find differences... if that's the case I do know a capable shrink who could help... If you help me get my data back I'll give you his contacts

Seriously, folks, a question about swapping out the PS wouldn't be worth bringing up on a data recovery board.
Anyone care for a data salvage mission?

It sounds like the BIOS controller wrote to the drives when you tried to set them up with the RAID controller. That's bad.

Case in point: A school system sent us a RAID 0 that used a proprietary configuration of a Linux-based OS. They didn't tell us (until we cross-examined them later) that their techs hooked them up to Windows and blew the partition map and heaven knows what else. What should have taken a day or two to reconstruct took 3-4 weeks to scan for RAW files. At least you admit what you did.

A defective LaCie power supply will measure correctly until placed UNDER LOAD.

If you want to troubleshoot anything, you have to work from the simplest to the hardest, and best practices requires that you do it in a way that you can recover if something goes wrong. Expensive lesson, eh?

We normally charge a kilobuck to recover these LaCie drives that haven't been dinked with. We usually don't charge if we can't get the data back. In this case, we (and probably anyone else) would charge you for labor to attempt it, whether successful or not.

_________________
http://www.datasaversllc.com

Ok, you zorked it. Intel Matrix is a somewhat odd RAID implementation. Throw it in the garbage.

And don't cross post.

jono,
I hear ya. But what happens to the drives when the RAID controller creates a stripe array spanning them? And what happens when the said array is deleted by the said controller?

First you never gave your location, maybe someone is close enough
to help you.
The drives are probably fine, but the data may or may not be lost.
When you created the array with the controller, it wrote data to the
drives, when you deleted the array, it wrote data to the drives.
SO, the original configuration information at the very least has been
overwritten.
It may still be possible to recover your data, but it won't be near as
easy as it would have been had you not taken the steps you did, but
I guess you have realized this by now.

It is almost impossible to try to explain to someone how the data
might be arranged on the 2 drives as there are several possible
senarios. It could be just JOBD with linux file system. It could be
JOBD with a linux file system wrapper and then a windows file system
embedded within.It could be Raid 0 with linux, or Raid 0 with linux
with windows file system embedded.Or any of several other senarios.

At this point it will take someone with experience and time to recover
you data ( if it's still possible).
My suggestion is to state your location and see if anyone is in your
area that is capable to recover your data. ( and I don't mean your
local computer store)


PS. It would be nice if you could restrict you posts of this problem
to one thread.

Steve,
Thanks for the info
I am in Los Angeles.
I am trying to understand the "mechanics" of what exactly happens when the array gets created by the Intel's HW RAID controller and what happens when it gets torn down. I know data gets written to it, but where is it written and how much data? The operations happen very quickly. I have 2 drives from an identical box from the same manufacturer that works. Would it be possible to identify the exact RAID and partition configuration by inspecting either the corrupted drives with Runtime's DiskExplorer (or similar) or the good drives, or contacting LaCie directly? Would that shed light on what can be done?

This thread is now merged with this one:
need-help-lacie-external-raid-array-t11455.html
and this one:
need-help-lacie-external-raid-array-t11454.html

From now forward, any replies to these 2 threads shall be posted here.
Feel free to visit the 2 stubs to catch up on the previous posts related to this issue.
Thanks,

Well I too sometimes use runtimes disk explorer, but it is really only
effective with either ntfs or fat32 depending on the version you have.
A better program for comparing data on disks is winhex.
But herein lies the problem. The drives that are messed up,already
contain much data, so the new drives won't have the same info.
While you may (if you knew what you were looking for) study the
new drives, you have modified the originals to the point you have
nothing for a reference point, so comparing old and new won't help.
It's going to take someone with a good knowledge of the different
file systems to "hunt" for file system fragments.
The one thing you don't want to do is write ANYTHING to the old drives.

It makes it very difficult to recover data with any kind of directory structure

_________________
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Quick question.
What's the best way to write a set pattern (not necessarily all 0's) to the entire disk?
Also, what is the minimum width of data that can be written to a HD in a single write operation. The i/f is SATA, so obviously the data comes accross that pipe a bit at a time, but it is de-serialized before it gets dumped onto the platters. So what's the size of the smallest "quantum" of data that can be dumped onto the platters in one platter write op? This is not an O/S or FW question, rather a HW question.
Thx

Huh? What does this bit of arcana have to do with data recovery?

Maybe if I was smarter, I would understand how this relates to the task at hand. As far as I'm concerned, you might as well be asking how many angels can fit on the head of a pin . . .

_________________
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jono, does that translate to "I don't know"?

The first question is a "Software" one, the second is a "Hard Disk Drive Technology" question, but due to popular demand those threads have now been merged with this one.

Anyone else know?

How about, "I don't know, and I don't care."

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Fair enough. Attempt registered.
Anyone else?

You could give the illusion in software of writing bit by bit, but that would be an abstraction, as the entire sector including the bits you didn't change would be rewritten each time you wrote a bit or byte level change. The smallest unit you can write is a sector, which is generally 512 bytes, though some devices use different sector sizes. Each time you change anything, be it a bit, a byte, or all 512 bytes, the entire sector has to be written.

Writing of a smaller amount is accomplished through reading the entire sector, modifying it in the desired way, then writing the entire sector back to the disk.

Why do you care? Your question is of a theoretical nature, and not practical to what you are doing.