Raid 5 (4 disk) trying to recover / rebuild

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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saf1
Posts: 1
Joined: 07 Jul 2012, 19:54

Raid 5 (4 disk) trying to recover / rebuild

#1 Post by saf1 »

I'm trying to rebuild a raid 5 array that was broke after a bios update. I've looked around a bit and I'd wager about 90% or more recommend test disk so I figured I'd try it. I'm not 100% sure the order of steps even after reading severl posts here that have a similar problem. Here is my system and situation.

C drive - 1.8 TB - Windows 7 64 bit
D drive - 4 TB Raid 5 (4 x 1.3 TB Seagate drives) (NTFS)
Asus P8Z68-V Pro Motherboard, Intel Rapid Raid Technology / motherboard

I updated the bios and during the reboot missed hitting 'del' to reset SATA controllers from default (ACHI) back to RAID. I "think" it was already too late because during the booting sequence I noticed the intel raid / disk configuration said 2 drives are not members of the raid and two are. I hit reset and set the SATA back to raid but that didn't really do anything it would appear.

I found several references which talks about testdisk and the possibility of rebuilding so you can move off the data and rebuild. However, I'm not sure of the steps. Some topics talk about disconnecting and order of drives but that doesn't apply for me. I've not disconnected anything actually and I've not recreated the raid array. I did, however, remove / delete the two disks that it remade into a raid and found myself here.

If there are some step by step instructions for dummies I'll gladly start there but the example confused me a bit :( I figure it is safer to go slow so I don't damage anything else. It really is just one large drive, D, which is about half full of digital photos, music, and a few computer backups. Just not sure where to start.

It sounds like I needed to recreate the raid array. I believe I used the default settings so hoping that will be ok. I do this after a reboot, ctrl-i, and rebuild the array using the 4 drives. Then go into windows and download testdisk which I'll run as admin.

After that I'm lost - really sorry and thanks for any pointers.
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