2x500GB RAID 0 Issue

[SenPi]

Alright so heres the story. Im not sure if there will be a solution, but you guys know more than I.

So I had bought a 1TB external hard drive (Comstar 1000GB External HD).. so the other day the circuit board that controls the power etc started on fire (yay for crappy products ). Inside there are 2 500GB WD hard drives (pretty decent). From my understanding, they were setup with RAID 0 so the computer reads it as one drive. Now that I can not read my data from the enclosure since its fried, I took out the drives and stuck them both on my system.

Basically I'm wondering if there is someway that I can set up a software RAID 0 for these 2 drives so that I can get access to my data. Ive tried dmraid but it cant seem to find anything.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

[starla]

Software controlled drives store the RAID information on the drives themselves, whereas hardware controlled raid will have the configuration on the hardware (the part that blew out). This means if you try to make these a software RAID, you're gonna have to reformat them first, which will make recovering off of them even more difficult. Software RAIDs are nice though, because technically you can pretty much plug them into any computer and the RAID configuration comes with it, so you can access them even if your boot drive fails. You might have some luck at getting another identical unit and trying to replace the drives, this will work so long as the partition table was not damaged when the board blew out. You also might be able to find software that will be able to recover the data, but usually with RAID recovery it might get a bit more difficult since it might ask you to provide parameters on the RAID stripe size, offset and other information.

If you still can't get it after these solutions, let me know and I can call a data recovery friend for you and try to get you hooked up with a remote recovery (not sure how much he would charge for it.)

[SenPi]

Well. ive been using this program named R-Studio that created a virtual raid stripe. But yea, Ive been trying with different parameters (block size, rows,etc). I havent been able to successfully get my data back yet. Crappy thing is, is that every scan takes about 2.5 hours, and there are alot of combinations for the options . When some are done, I can see the structure of the drive, but when I "recover" the files themselves, none of the ones I have done so far work.

If you can, let me know what your friend would charge or whatnot. I might end up needing those services.

On another note, I have a friend with the exact same drives/enclosure as me, but I have a feeling he wont want to break warantee. I havent been able to get a hold of him, but if he doesnt want me to open his up, then I might need them services.

Edit: Also, here are some pictures for reference.

Controller:

Fried Board:

[The Pezman]

The good news is that 1 TB drives are not so large anymore. I intend on getting one as soon I get my Macbook Pro.

[Dhsu]

Good news perhaps, but I don't think that helps his situation.

[SenPi]

The good news is that 1 TB drives are not so large anymore. I intend on getting one as soon I get my Macbook Pro.

Now.. are you talking physical size, or disk space or price? Cause that one you linked to was like $260.. I got mine for $150 (boxing day sale).

Also, the linked one is probably just 1 Drive (if you are talking about physical size)

Also, I think the biggest ive seen is a 2 TB external (if you are talking about disk space).

So either way... im not sure what you mean.

[SenPi]

so.. I found some crazy program that got all my data back for me :S lol. Thanks for the help

[Dhsu]

Congrats. Mind telling us the name for future reference?