RAID issue - deleting RAID volume to restore non-RAID disks

[davius]

First time posting ,

Situation: I have two hard drives : main drive: Seagate 500GB w/ windows xp and second drive: WD 1TB blank.

Without backing up the main drive (ops...), i went ahead and enabled RAID 0 on both drives and created a RAID volume (128KB strip / Size: 1TB (931.5GB)).
NOTE: the RAID volume size is only showing the exact space of the 1TB, excluding the 500GB drive.
After realizing that I needed to create a backup image of my main drive to use RAID with an existing drive, I'm left with the "Operating System Not Found" message.

Question: If I Delete RAID Volume (which is based on the size from the blank 1TB drive), will both drives become available as non-RAID disks and keep the original data on the 500GB main drive and be able to run windows again?

I'm using software RAID through Intel Matrix Storage Manager option ROM v5.6.2

I understood that "Resetting the drives to Non-Raid" will cause all data on the disk to be lost, so this isn't the approach that I'll be taking til I find a solution to backup my data.
However, from reading the "Delete RAID Volume" option, it listed Deleting a volume will destroy the volume data on the drive(s) and cause any member disks to become available as non-RAID disks, so knowing that the RAID Volume is blank, then maybe trying this will be the answer.

When using the Microsoft Recovery Console in (RAID mode attached w/ both drives) logically there isn't any directories/files found. At the moment, I'm seeing if I can find any data in the MR Console with RAID disabled and accessing only the main drive.

Just wondering if Knoppix or Data recovery softwares can backup the data...

Thanks to anyone taking the time to read my post

 

[DelJo63]

sadly, there's no way to do what you want without an existing backup.

Look at it this way;
A disk has a container ~ the partition.
The partition as a structure ~ the filesystem (eg NTFS, FAT32, RAID).
We put our data into the structure.

When we create backups, we are getting only the data itself (unless you use an image program like Ghost or Acronis where you get all three).

Deleting the RAID will give back the two independent HDs, but also breaks the structure so that the data becomes in accessible.

 

[robin_bga]

I really can't think of any methods of recovery even with linux...
I was think of Power data recovery then select lost partition, but i with RAID, am not sure, may its worth a try...
Sorry man...

 

[davius]

Thanks for the replies, I'll keep working on the problem and see if I found any progress.