AR31S Damaged drive,need to retrieve data?

[laa1973]

Hello, i have a vaio AR31S, the drive has been damaged,i was getting to hardrive symbols in the bottom right hand corner (raid i think it said) saying one was damaged,(left one) tried to back up data but it crashed before i had a chance,any ways i can obtain the data from these drives? I do not want to go to the expense of replacing the drives,cheaper to buy new laptop!!

Thanks in advance

Lee

[Blencogo · Accepted solution]

Hi Lee,

Unfortunately, this is not simple as the two drives are part of a striped RAID 0 array.

The hardware RAID Controller in your AR31S lays down 'stripes' of data of 128KB onto each drive alternately so each drive holds half the data - so you cannot read data from a single drive as you could with a more conventional setup.

You will need to find another PC that uses the same RAID Controller and is running RAID 0 in the BIOS (I think the hardware RAID Controller is made by INTEL on your model) and connect the drives to its SATA port.  Hopefully, you will then be able to read any uncorrupted data.

To get this done professionally will cost a bit but you may wish to speak to a data recovery provider - this will depend on how important the data is.

Speed is the advantage of a RAID 0 array but, as you have found, there is a disadvantage in that you lose everything if one drive fails - and this is twice as likely with two drives.  I now always back up a mirror of my RAID Arrays to a single external drive using Acronis True Image to overcome this disadvantage.

[laa1973]

Thanks Blencogo, looks like a new board or new laptop!! Not been at all happy with this since i had it, never had a working blueray player from day 1!

Lee