Can I revert from the creation of a RAID 1 volume (no boot disk involved), and restore the original data and metadata on the 2 HDDs?

[Palladium]

I have a box with Gigabyte MB, and EZRaid/IRS RAID technology on it. I have 1 OS and 3 data disks installed (lets call them D1 D2 D3). Inadvertently (just hit the space bar twice and that was enough...), I created a RAID 1 volume with D2 and D3, which happily wiped D2 and D3 of all the data in them. It did that very quickly so I am pretty sure it mostly (hopfully only) overwrote the disk metadata.

I undid the operation, which included reverting to AHCI (this was done in the background I believe), which left me with 2 "empty" disks. Incidentally, I could not access the boot disk either until I reverted to AHCI.

Now I want to try and recover the volumes on the 2 disks, is there a "standard" way to do that? What part of the disks are written by the IRS sofware when it creates the RAID 1 volume? Does it overwrite the partition label only or also part of the data? Unfortunately I don't quite remember if the 2 data disks were formatted using MBR or GPT labels. Any pointers would be appreciated.

[David_V_Intel]

Hello Palladium, Thank you for posting on the Intel ® communities. I would like to understand more of what your goal is. I can see that you created the RAID 1 by accident which caused the data to be wiped off. If this is the case, by removing the RAID 1 you should be able to use the drives separately again. Here is more information on how to remove a RAID 1: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006188/technologies.html If they do not have a label, you can label them in Disk Management from Windows*. If this is not what your goal is then please let me know so I can assist you further. Regards, David V Intel Customer Support Technician Under Contract to Intel Corporation

[Palladium]

Hi David,

Thanks for the answer. I believe the page you linked is for this scenario:

1. System with 2 disks in JBOD configuration (say D1 and D2), and each contain a filesystem (FS1 and FS2) with data
2. a RAID-1 volume is created (say D3) and formatted (FS3). At this stage the new filesystem is empty
3. the user writes data on FS3
4. The user follows the procedure you linked and goes back to 2 independent disks
5. In each disk FS3 is still present and files can be accessed.

Instead, *my* scenario is this:

1. System with 2 data disks (no boot disks) in JBOD configuration (say D1 and D2), and each contain a filesystem (FS1 and FS2) with important data
2. a user (that's me unfortunately...) creates by mistake a RAID-1 volume (say D3) but does NOT format it. At this stage the volume (D3) is empty, with no filesystem
3. the user wants to revert the operation in order to have access to data stored in FS1 and FS2 again
4. The user breaks the RAID-1 volume and tries to mount the volumes. However, no filesystem and not even partitions are detected by Windows, in any of the 2 disks. And this is where I am at :(

Hope this explains it better?

Regards,

Palladium

[David_V_Intel]

Hello Palladium, Thank you for your response. In order to have better insight of the problem, I would like to know the steps you have followed to create and break the RAID 1. This is because using Intel ® Rapid Storage Technology it requires you to change the SATA mode of the drives within the BIOS and then confirm that you want to create a RAID 1 with the drives, so please, provide me with the steps followed. I would also like to request an System Support Utility report for more system information. this report can be generated from our tool, you can refer to the link below so you can download it:  https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25293/Intel-System-Support-Utility-for-Windows- Make sure to attach the created report to this thread. Also, please provide me with as system report, refer to the link below for information on how to create a system report: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006351/technologies.html Regards, David V Intel Customer Support Technician Under Contract to Intel Corporation

[David_V_Intel]

Hello Palladium, Were you able to check my post? Let me know if you need more assistance. Regards, David V Intel Customer Support Technician Under Contract to Intel Corporation

[David_V_Intel]

Hello Palladium, Please contact us if you have any additional questions. Regards, David V Intel Customer Support Technician Under Contract to Intel Corporation