Ok-our roommate decided to hook up his back up hard drive because his primary one was full, but instead of running them seperately, he linked them. When he tried to take the 2nd one off again, it gave him a choice and he broke the array and now he can't even boot his computer. I know there has got to be a way to recover the stuff on the hard drive, but how? (there's some stuff on there that is irreplaceable)

ya got me! ,i still wax my modem to make it go faster

Okay, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "he linked them". Did he set them up as a RAID array, or what?

If he did what I think he did, and he hasn't changed anything since he disconnected the drives then you should be able to just reconnect them. If something's changed since the drive was disconnected (specifically any of the data on either drives) then you are hosed, but good.

Simple fix.

1. Obtain plastic sheet.
2. Put sheet over hard drive.
3. Take sheet off of hard drive.
4. Put sheet over hard drive.

Hard drive now recovered.

(:

There is not enough information on the first post to be able to provide assistance. "Hooked Up" is a non specific term. The idea of RAID(REDUNDANT ARRAY OF INEXPENSIVE DISKS) did also come to mind but most folks outside of running some kind of large file server do not use this method for hard disk storage. Sounds to me that that maybe there was some sort of partition on that hard drive that housed the OS (Operating System) and the removal of the hard disk of course caused this undesired effect. This, of course is merely speculation at this point until more precise data can be given on the problem i.e was this a server, what type of OS was the system running,. Anymore background info on the PC would help speed things along a bit for you. Oh well back to grind of troubleshooting for Morons and their Highspeed Cable connections. Msg me if you need me.

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has offered help and advice. Sorry I didn't provide better info, but the extent of my knowledge in this type of thing is "if you don't know what you're doing-don't mess with it." But yes, he had it set up as a RAID array and at this point we've decided that the best hope is to get a program to rebuild the allocation table....so if anybody has one.......

Well, to be serious:

I suppose it depends on the type of raid array that your friend made. To put it in laymen's terms, if it copied shit to both drives at the same time when downloading yer girl on girl pr0n, then it may be savable, regardless of whether anything's been added to either drive.

If it combined both into one mega-sooper-bad-ass drive, like those queer fucks in captain planet, but better, then like Neph said, you're out of luck as far as data recovery.

In either case, you can restore both drives with a good low level format, but you can kiss all of your prized girl on girl porn goodbye. It'll remove everything, and restore things to factory format, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Well, I think I can help, you have two ways of doing this:

1) Find a USB enclosure. Remove the hard drive from the computer. Set the jumpers (the little black pieces of the back of the hard drive) to Master... there should be a diagram on top of the hard drive telling you where to put it. Then slap that bad boy in the enclosure and attach it to a funcional computer, it should appear as a normal hard drive.... and back up to your hearts content.

2) Take out the hard drive, and find a functional computer and attach it internally. (Sorry I can't explain this step in detail, but too many things to do that it involves)

Now if your hard drive is making funny "click-click" noises or isn't spinning up at all... your fucked.... unless you wanna pay $400+ dollars for someone with specialized equipment to take apart the hard drive and recover it manually.

Hope this helps.

Bigun wrote:Well, I think I can help, you have two ways of doing this:

1) Find a USB enclosure. Remove the hard drive from the computer. Set the jumpers (the little black pieces of the back of the hard drive) to Master... there should be a diagram on top of the hard drive telling you where to put it. Then slap that bad boy in the enclosure and attach it to a funcional computer, it should appear as a normal hard drive.... and back up to your hearts content.

2) Take out the hard drive, and find a functional computer and attach it internally. (Sorry I can't explain this step in detail, but too many things to do that it involves)

Now if your hard drive is making funny "click-click" noises or isn't spinning up at all... your fucked.... unless you wanna pay $400+ dollars for someone with specialized equipment to take apart the hard drive and recover it manually.

Hope this helps.

That won't work if it's a fucked up RAID array.

Point taken....

Could he just reconnect the drive and rebuild the array? Which RAID level was it?

Well, with a tech question phrased like that one was, I'm not sure if this should be in gothgeek or the dumpster....

I'll be generous and move it to gothgeek.

And as for an answer - if you don't know what you're doing, and you want to have any chance of recovering your data, be sure you have all drives that were hooked up to the system when it was working, and then turn it off and stop touching it.

Then hire/befriend/sleep with somebody who does know what they're doing. Seriously, from what you said, the data recovery is beyond you. You need expert help, and you're not likely to find it for free.

If it's a Macintosh, talk to me or Neph. Otherwise, there are several windoze geeks here who can help you.

Just wanted to say thanks again to everyone who offered advice and help...especially Gregori and Josh

I really appreciate the thanks but my knowledge failed me when I needed it the most. Sorry. Wish I could have been more help.

Shut up Josh................



*runs away to find stapler*