On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Art DeKneef <[email protected]> wrote: > I can put the drives into another > system but if I remember correctly software RAID writes to the hard drive > and the Windows software doesn’t recognize them.
Windows tends to want to write some kind of "signature" to disks, but that's only if they don't have one already. In a legal/forensic situation, you don't want to risk that or anything else; that doesn't apply here. In a data recovery situation it can in theory be bad, but the chances of anything bad actually happening are relatively low. That said, since the guy has no backup at all, you may want to make a block-level disk image of each hard drive before you try anything with Windows. That way, if something weird happens, you've got a way back. If the disks are physically damaged, even powering them on can make things worse, although that is again relatively rare. If you're really worried, mail the disks off to a data recovery house (I like CBL -- free quotes! http://www.cbldatarecovery.com/) and pay several thousand dollars. This is prolly overkill, but it also has the least likelihood of data loss. The owner gambled and lost; that tends to be expensive. If it's the usual sort of SOHO -- i.e., no money -- attach the disks as secondary drives in a working Windows box and see what happens. If it really is Windows software RAID, they should come up as new drives. If it's actually a motherboard-based RAID controller, well.... you have to find a compatible RAID implementation. If it's an Intel chipset, that might not be too bad. If it's some random Taiwanese product of which they only ever made 50 of them and this guy has one of them, well... see above about thousands of dollars. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
