Spike FAIL #362
Posted by SpikeAug 30
Me and hard disks, we just disagree.
Not gonna go into details of how I screwed up because it’s too embarrassing but some of you will read this and be able to figure it out. Anyway, I have a C drive that’s two physical drives on RAID1. “C1″ directory, index, partition all wiped. Computer thought “C2″ failed. But mounting C2 via a SATA USB box on my laptop, I can still get at My Documents, Shared Data, Application Settings, iTunes folder, etc. All have been copied off to another drive.
But another disk, “E”, also directory, index, partition all wiped. 500 gigs of data still there, not overwritten. Trying out various recovery tools now – Recuva, Find & Mount, TestDisk – could use recommendations for others? Too bad there is no Windows equivalent of DiskWarrior for the Mac – that would have recovered the 500 gigs in about 5 minutes. Recuva says it needs 8 hours (and no guarantee that it’s gonna work). And if it does work, do I have enough spare disks lying around to hold that 500 gig? Not sure.
Right now I can’t even think of everything that was sitting on the E drive. I think most of it falls under “nice to have” rather than essential and maybe 50-75% of it is stuff I can get again but it will take time. (Luckily my photos are on F and my real MP3 library is on S,T,U – all RAID and all still okay.)
And of course I’m still gonna need to reinstall Windows and all apps.
I think when I reinstall, I’ll no longer use RAID for the C drive. Disk I/O was a noticeable slowdown with that set-up and since it’s not as idiot-proof (or Spike-proof) as I’d hoped, I’ll try something different. I’ll use disk imaging software like Macrium Reflect and back-up a disk image to a separate physical device weekly.
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