I had a perfectly working system (Win 7 Pro, 1 250G SSD, 1 x 1TB HD, 1 x 1.5TB HD, 1 3TB. I had the 1TB and 1.5 TB drives configured in 2TB Raid 0 with the extra 500G on the 1.5TB drive partitioned as a seperate drive. Things were working great. All the information from the Raid was copied on the 3TB drive. I decided to get another 3TB drive and stripe it to the existing 3TB drive to increase the speed of my games and for storage. I have a seperate NAS box that I was going to use for backups/storage. I had intended to remove the 1TB drive and install it in this NAS. Yes...I know I should have backed up to the NAS first before attempting anything. Hind site is always 20/20. So after I installed the new 3TB drive I used Acronis Drive Manager to stripe the two drives. Things went as planned. Rebooted no problem. Unfortunately, when I rebooted again, both Raids disappeared. Upon opening Disk Manager it showed all four drives as dynamic/invalid. I don't care about the 3TB drives as all the information on them was from the smaller Raid array. My ultimate goal is to either restore the smaller array or, at the very least, recover the data off that array. I have read about using Ubuntu LiveCD to recover files from a Raid-0 but the instructions were considering that the drives were the same size and single partitions in each. Is there a way to use Ubuntu with additional command line instructions to save the data? Would simply re-creating the same Raid-0 with these drives, thereby overwriting the metadata, work? Any other ideas? Please refrain from informing me how bad Raid-0 is without backups. I am and have been slamming my head against the wall over this as I should have known better. I was impatient and cockey and am paying the price for my epic stupidity. Any suggestions are appreciated. TIA

If you take the time to do some research on the internet about RAID configurations, you will discover that RAID 0 is a disaster waiting to happen. There is no recovery from a RAID 0 failure. And this has absolutely nothing to do with the OS your are using. RAID 0 is a hardware configuration, not a Windows 7 problem. If you want to know more about an Unbuntu utility that claims to recover data on a RAID 0 failure, you need to go to the website and ask Unbuntu. Re-creating the RAID 0 will render the volume as new with no access to any existing data.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

This Raid was created with Windows 7 and is not a hardware configuration. I do realize the risks with RAID 0 as well. Like I said in my post, I was arrogant and impatient and assumed my system wouldn't have a problem with this. I did disconnect the CD/DVD drive when I started my install. I'm wondering if the change in drive numbers is the reason why the drives are showing as invalid. Just a thought. I can't help but feel there is an easy fix to this. If there is no recovery from a RAID 0 failure than why do all the HD Data Recovery companies advertise successful data recoveries form these types of arrays? False advertising?

I guess if you have a large quantity of money to throw away, then you probaly can find a company to recover the data. I know recovery from just a single drive is quite expensive, so I wouldn't want to even think about the cost to recover data from a RAID 0.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

There are some recovery utilities you can try. I've used them with thumb drives but never with HDD's or SSD's. A good starting place to look for utilities is Cnet because they veryify all downloads to make sure you're not getting some spyware/ stalker application. I agree with previous respondent that RAID is a hardware configuration. Just because Windows7 provides for a means to configure it does not change that. You can go through Windows7 to change your monitor resolution but when your monitor does not work, it's a hardware problem. Ubuntu questions should be directed to their tech support. Good luck. I've lost drives myself and I now use RAID but I use RAID1 under "quality before quantity".

There are some recovery utilities you can try. I've used them with thumb drives but never with HDD's or SSD's. A good starting place to look for utilities is Cnet because they veryify all downloads to make sure you're not getting some spyware/ stalker application. I agree with previous respondent that RAID is a hardware configuration. Just because Windows7 provides for a means to configure it does not change that. You can go through Windows7 to change your monitor resolution but when your monitor does not work, it's a hardware problem. Ubuntu questions should be directed to their tech support. Good luck. I've lost drives myself and I now use RAID but I use RAID1 under "quality before quantity".

Well I did it. I was able to recover about 90% of everything on my Raid 0. Best part was it only cost me $80. I tried multiple options and programs except the above mentioned Ubuntu method. I'm not very well versed with that OS so I didn't want to go that route until I had exhausted all the others. I found the program ReclaiMe which worked amazingly well. There is a freeware program that this company offers that is able to analyze the Raid and determines the parameters. Then you can either run their recovery software ReclaiMe to recover the data, create an XML file for other recovery software to use, create an image file of your Raid, or write the array to another disk. I tried the last two options and wasn't able to get them to work. The program created the IMG file and completed the disk creation however I wasn't able to mount either on my system for some reason. I finally used the ReclaiMe recovery software and was able to pull virtually everything and anything I wanted off the damaged Raid 0 without a single corrupted file. I was most pleased! Obviously, I learned a valuble lesson in that one doesn't take down a system for repairs/maintenance/upgrades without ensuring one has a seperate and complete backup on a totally different system. Also, never get cocky or impatient. No matter how good or how long things have been running, Murphy is just around the corner. :) All's well that ends well. P.S. - No...I am not an employee or representative of ReclaiMe. Just praising a program that was able to help me solve my dilema.