Restoring Intel Rapid Storage technology RAID 0 set of disks using mdadm

[isleshocky77]

My MSI GS30 Shadow laptop which had an onboard CPU died. The machine was setup with two 128GB M.2 SSDs in RAID-0 using Intel Rapid Storage technology.

I'm not attempting to recover the data of the RAID array using mdadm on linux.

The following blog is extremely close to what I'm doing (they had 4 disks with level 5 and I have 2 disks with level 0). 
https://blog.bramp.net/post/2021/09/12/recovering-a-raid-5-intel-storage-matrix-on-linux-without-the-hardware/

They noted that when all said done, the array said it had 1 of the 4 disks failed which was enough for them to get their data off; however, I'm getting 1 of the 2 disks failing which with RAID-0 is not enough to access the data.

I think I've discovered that the disk for them as well as the disk for myself which are not entering the array is the disk with the boot record on it.

When I do `tail -c 1024` on the two disks I see the expected superblocks for Intel RAID as well as the correct serial numbers of my disks.

sostrow@ducks:/media/DISK10TBA/islanders-recovery$ tail -c 1024 islanders-disk-1.img | hd
00000000  49 6e 74 65 6c 20 52 61  69 64 20 49 53 4d 20 43  |Intel Raid ISM C|
00000010  66 67 20 53 69 67 2e 20  31 2e 30 2e 30 30 00 00  |fg Sig. 1.0.00..|
00000020  f1 76 d0 b8 e0 01 00 00  97 77 09 6f 2d 02 00 00  |.v.......w.o-...|
00000030  f8 11 00 00 00 00 00 80  02 01 02 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000040  97 77 09 6f 17 02 00 00  00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00  |.w.o............|
00000050  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
000000d0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  35 30 30 32 36 42 37 32  |........50026B72|
000000e0  34 43 30 39 39 30 33 37  b0 c2 e7 0e 00 00 00 00  |4C099037........|
000000f0  3a 05 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |:...............|
00000100  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  35 30 30 32 36 42 37 32  |........50026B72|
00000110  34 43 30 39 39 31 34 33  b0 c2 e7 0e 04 00 00 00  |4C099143........|
00000120  3a 05 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |:...............|
00000130  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  56 6f 6c 75 6d 65 31 00  |........Volume1.|
00000140  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 60 cf 1d 00 00 00 00  |.........`......|
00000150  0c 80 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000160  01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000170  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
00000190  00 00 00 ff 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
000001a0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 08 b1 e7 0e  |................|
000001b0  80 3d 77 00 20 00 00 00  02 01 01 01 00 00 00 00  |.=w. ...........|
000001c0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
000001d0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00  |................|
000001e0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
00000400

sostrow@ducks:/media/DISK10TBA/islanders-recovery$ tail -c 1024 islanders-disk-2.img | hd
00000000  49 6e 74 65 6c 20 52 61  69 64 20 49 53 4d 20 43  |Intel Raid ISM C|
00000010  66 67 20 53 69 67 2e 20  31 2e 30 2e 30 30 00 00  |fg Sig. 1.0.00..|
00000020  f1 76 d0 b8 e0 01 00 00  97 77 09 6f 2d 02 00 00  |.v.......w.o-...|
00000030  f8 11 00 00 00 00 00 80  02 01 02 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000040  97 77 09 6f 17 02 00 00  00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00  |.w.o............|
00000050  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
000000d0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  35 30 30 32 36 42 37 32  |........50026B72|
000000e0  34 43 30 39 39 30 33 37  b0 c2 e7 0e 00 00 00 00  |4C099037........|
000000f0  3a 05 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |:...............|
00000100  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  35 30 30 32 36 42 37 32  |........50026B72|
00000110  34 43 30 39 39 31 34 33  b0 c2 e7 0e 04 00 00 00  |4C099143........|
00000120  3a 05 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |:...............|
00000130  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  56 6f 6c 75 6d 65 31 00  |........Volume1.|
00000140  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 60 cf 1d 00 00 00 00  |.........`......|
00000150  0c 80 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000160  01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000170  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
00000190  00 00 00 ff 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
000001a0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 08 b1 e7 0e  |................|
000001b0  80 3d 77 00 20 00 00 00  02 01 01 01 00 00 00 00  |.=w. ...........|
000001c0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
000001d0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00  |................|
000001e0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
00000400

However, when I do `head -c 1024` on the two disks I see something different for them.

sostrow@ducks:/media/DISK10TBA/islanders-recovery$ head -c 1024 islanders-disk-without-mbr.img | hd
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
00000400  

So I tried mounting the images by having both skip over the first 1024; but this still didn't work. According to everything I've read about Intel Rapid Storage it should work with the boot partiton there.

And according to the following Intel White Paper is should work using mdadm (mdraid) in linux.

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white-papers/rst-linux-paper.pdf

I've documented my full trial and tribulations from start to fail here
https://gist.github.com/isleshocky77/4b7d48b712dd0638d75d5757f36bdec3

Any help would be greatly appreciated.