Win7 to 10 upgrade lost RAID10 config!

Craig10 · 31 Mar 2016

Hey Guys,

Just wondering if anyone is able to offer some advice on recovering my RAID10 configuration after upgrading to Win10 stuffed it. I think I inadverntantly made it worse as well by being a bit impatient and accepting a couple of prompts I shouldn't have.

Basically I have upgraded from Win7 Ultimate to Win10 via the free in place upgrade, all seemed to go smoothly except for losing my RAID10 config. The OS is actually installed on a separate SSD while the raid covers four 2TB drives with a lot of data I'd like to get back! After opening disk management just to get a look at what was going on (later to see all drives listed as RAW), it did while waiting for the drive info to load, present me with the option of setting two of the raid disks in question to I believe MBR or GPT which I clicked ok to both with the default MBR selected.

I have since restored it back to Win7 in the hope this would reverse the changes but it hasn't and now when I open the RAID control during bootup, the first two disks are no longer members of the raid. I figure I may be able to boot into something like fdisk and remove the MBR from both disks, hopefully restoring the raid? If so I will be making a complete backup before doing that again!

Thanks,

Craig

DeaconFrost · 31 Mar 2016

This is why RAID on a desktop is always more trouble than it is worth. For future reference, you should always have important data backed up before doing any major system changes (actually should always be backed up anyway). There's an old saying that I've heard mentioned for almost 20 years now...RAID is not a backup.

The reason I say that is because recovery is often very difficult, if not impossible, on an array. You may end up needing some RAID recovery software. It's been a while since I've looked in to this, but it used to be quite expensive (to do an actual rebuild).

ReclaiMe File Recovery Software

Craig10 · 31 Mar 2016

Hi DF,

Thanks for that. Yes, I realise I should have backed up first. After a smooth upgrade of my wife's PC with a few partitions I unfortunately didn't think to much of clicking the go button on mine while doing jobs around the house.

I did initially look into that ReclaiMe software on the PC in question after reverting to Win7 and various apps started doing odd things and mostly not responding to my controls while doing their own thing...felt very suss and I have since avoided the official site for that software. It was reported as the only free and trusted raid recovery software on DIY Approaches to RAID 10 Recovery, do you know if this is in fact correct?

Currently trying to find a copy of fdisk somewhere to put on a bootable USB and remove the MBRs but do you think I can find it...

Craig10 · 19 Apr 2016

Hey Guys,

Currently enjoying my fresh install of Win10 but still have my raid disks sitting by in the hope I can still recover any data of them.

That free ReclaiMe software (ReclaiMe File Recovery Software) claims it can use 2 disks in a raid 0 to recover from but as I said in my previous reply, after initially installing it I had a number of odd things happen so without some recommendations and endorsements from others that know for sure it is clean software (not virus or trojan laden) I am extremely reluctant to try it again. Is anyone able to offer up experience of using this software without issues or at least confirm it is legit software and not malware?

Thanks,

Craig