RAID set, one died, orphaned the other

[GuyInDogSuit]

RAID0, motherboard died, now Windows can't make sense of this RAID

My roommate had a RAID0 setup with two spanned drives, in a way that any changes that occurred to one happened to the other. A shadow copy, if you will, I believe is the term. However, his motherboard died, and once he'd replaced it, he found that Windows cannot make sense of the drives. We've tried various software, but none seem to work. How can he get this working again?

 

[Golden]

It sounds like it was a RAID1 setup, not RAID0.

With the new motherboard, he needs to go to the BIOS and ensure he changes the controller from AHCI setting to RAID setting, then reboot. The drives should then become visible.

 

[GuyInDogSuit]

Y'know, that is most likely the reason why. It's the simplest solution, yet the last thing we'd think of. He's currently running "a scan" with some program or another, but when it's done, we'll take a look. He said he doesn't remember setting that in his old motherboard's BIOS, but definitely not with this new one.

By the way, love your avatar. R'amen.

EDIT: Nope, doing that setting in the BIOS borked everything. Windows wouldn't boot. It set ALL the SATA ports to RAID, 1-4 and 5 and 6 were the only options. Even if I changed 5 and 6 (his Windows drive and DVD-RW) to IDE, wouldn't boot, as expected. Couldn't set them to AHCI for some reason. He clarified one thing though, that the drives weren't a BIOS-created RAID array, but a dynamic disk array he made through Windows. Still strange that it would show up as "unallocated," though. One good thing is that I found an application that gave us some hope. It's rather unclear on how to use it, but we seemed to be able to restore the files and are in the process of copying them to his other dynamic array. Gonna take hours though, so we'll let you know how it goes.

 

[Golden]

He clarified one thing though, that the drives weren't a BIOS-created RAID array, but a dynamic disk array he made through Windows.

OK, that explains why the BIOS option didn't work (i assumed it was a hardware RAID) - its a software RAID then.

If it was a RAID0, then there is no hope of recovery at all. RAID1, possibly, but I've always used hardware RAID. Let us know how you get on.

 

[GuyInDogSuit]

We managed to recover almost all of the files. I think it's still copying them as of yet.