How to determine if Knoppix can read my Raid 0
In brief, my story first:
A week ago I knew nothing about Raid.... Unfortunately, now I know a little bit more :cry:
What happened was that I got a warning in WinXp SP2 saying that something was about to happen. I was instructed to update my backup immediately, wich I did(photos and my database managing these). I went to bed and the next day my computer did'nt start and now I'm seeking for a way to rescuee my "nice to have" documents and files.
I put in a new 500gb sata disk, but I do not know if Knoppix (5.1) is able to write to it, wich I intend to do. I used gparted to format it(fat32), but I'm not sure if I did this correctly. However, Knoppix reckognize this disk as /dev/sdc
Before I try to use dd_rescue, wich I have read a lot about(still not sure if understand all this), I would like to know if there is a way for me to determine if knoppix is able to read my Raid 0 array(2x250gb sata ntfs). The s.m.a.r.t report from dell, hidden under the F12 button somewhere, revealed that about 30 blocks was unreadable. Everything before and after was read successfully.
So, is there a way for me to determine if Knoppix is able to read the Raid 0 array? If it can, I guess I can use dd_rescue to write to my new 500gb disk.
Any help is really appreciated!
Btw, would it make sense to disconnect the two 250gb disks, put my new 500gb drive on top of the boot list in Bios, install WinXp again and then use Windows software to do the recovery?
Re: How to determine if Knoppix can read my Raid 0
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ravis
Btw, would it make sense to disconnect the two 250gb disks, put my new 500gb drive on top of the boot list in Bios, install WinXp again and then use Windows software to do the recovery?
Yes, that would make sense. I'm honestly amazed by how many people come to this forum and indicate that they had no idea that a Windows based RAID disk suystem would be hard to recover files from with Linux. How do people get in this position? Did a small shop sell you a system already configured as a RAID system, then wash their hands of you when you tried to get suppor? Did you just choose to to build up a RAID system yourself for the extra speed, and completely ignore the need for good backups, and if so how did you even find out enough to configure your system as RAID zero without realizing that if either disk fails you loose everything on both disks (instantly doubling your chance of failure) and at the same time making it near imposable to recover the data with a non-Windows system?
You system is almost certainly software based RAID and relies on special disk drivers that are written to work with Windows. While there are Linux Raid systems that support RAID 0, Raid 1, RAID 5 and other RAID configurations, there is no reason to expect that they lay down the data exactly as a Windows system would, and if they do not then the array will at best not be recognized and at worst destroyed when you try.
Reinstalling Windows on the new drive (non-raid configuration), then installing the RAID drivers and trying to access the older drives as a RAID array would seem to be your best bet. Be warned, sometimes Windows mucks up a partition so bad that it can't access the files any longer, and sometimes it mucks up a partition so bad that Knoppix can access the partition either. Given that Windows will muck up a normal partition, I certainly expect that it can muck up a RAID array just as badly. If you do manage to read the data, I suggest considering recovering the desired files to the new disk, then seriously thinking about if you want to keep the 2 older disks as a RAID array or use them as 2 additional independent disks.
