Data Recovery using R Studio for Mac - LaCie 2BigQuadra

[nathanp]

Hi! First time poster, recent purchaser of R-Studio/Mac - and voracious searcher for the solution to my problem...going to lay it out in as much detail as possible in hopes that you all can help me...R Studio is the first glimmer of hope I have gotten on the subject of my dysfunctional Raid drive.

A couple of years ago I purchased a LaCie 2BigQuadra - A little Raid setup that I'm sure you're familiar with...2 2TB HDD's in a cute little aluminum enclosure, with a convenient push button way of setting up the Raid array.

Due to some unfortunate circumstances, I was forced to put a lot of my stuff in storage for a while, and when I got this drive out, one of the disks had been removed from the enclosure. I can't remember exactly 'why' it was out of the enclosure, but I think that it was due to the fact that I have another LaCie 2Big that looks just like it, only it's a Thunderbolt drive, and maybe I was going to try and swap drives...I really don't know, as I wasn't in the proper frame of mind.

Short of it is that I recently got the enclosure and the missing hard drive in the same location, and combined the two, only to turn it on and have it not mount, and I got a message saying that the drive could not be read by this computer.

The Raid setting on the enclosure says that it's Raid 1 (safe), but in trying to recover files from the drives, which should then be no problem...even if one disk had failed (but both disks work perfectly)...however, while I can see all of the files that are on the drives, when I recover them, there are lines across image files that look like missing data (that's what I think it looks like anyway)...stripes of missing data...which makes me think that perhaps, in my stupor, I had originally set the drive up in Raid 0 (the default for this particular drive), and then did something boneheaded like switched to Raid 1 without the drives in the enclosure or something...somehow it got switched to Raid 1(?) I'm guessing here...

The bottom line is that I have some incredibly important files on this drive, and I can't seem to get the data lined up so that the disks can be read. When I did a scan, the results came back showing that an image of Adobe Master Collection CS6 is seen twice...that image, I know, was burned to the hard drive when it was functioning, but then I have a huge unrecognized partition...I know this doesn't all make sense...but I wanted to see if there was anything that you guys could tell me to do to get this to come out right...I don't really understand setting up the virtual Raids, but that's what I am playing with now...

Here is a screenshot of my scan results:



Any advice would be much appreciated. Sorry if this is posted in the wrong place...and, please, ask any questions...I don't have a clear recollection of when the drive was last used, but my mind is working pretty well these days

Thanks in advance for your time

[nathanp]

to see the full image, open in another window...i didn't specify dimensions for the png, so on my screen it cuts off the right side...sorry

[Alt]

And the main question is: did LaCie rebuild the RAID from RAID0 to RAID1? If yes, your data's gone. If not, chances to recover your data exists. And I need a screenshot of the entire Drives panel after scan.

[nathanp]

The answer to that question is no, the Raid was not rebuilt from 0 to 1...if anything, I may have changed the Raid setting on the box, without the drives in it (yep, I may just be dumb enough to have saved my ass on that one)...but, I did not change any Raid settings with the drives in the enclosure.

Interestingly, images under a certain size seem to come through with no real problems...but, I'm attaching an example of what the larger images look like...

here is the device view from the scan that I just completed...

[nathanp]

again, because of the PNG files, you may have to open the images in another browser window, or download them, to see them properly...sorry about that...

[nathanp]

by the way, i can see all of the data, the folder structure and everything...even the files say that they're the right size, based on duplicates that i have elsewhere of some of them...but, when i attempt to recover them, i get error messages saying that the file type is unknown or the file has been truncated...any help would be appreciated...i really am at a loss, but don't want to lose the files, if at all possible..

[Alt]

From what I see, I cannot understand, do you scan the Lacie connected through USB, or you created a virtual RAID from the disks from LaCie?

[nathanp]

i scanned the lacie, which is connected to USB 3, because the firewire 800 ports don't seem to be working...and i created a virtual raid just messing around with r-studio...i've been reading the FAQ's and all of the information on your site, and right now I have r-studio attempting to auto detect the Raid Parameters...have about 5 hours left, and am about 6 hours into it...once it's done, I will post the results of that here, along with cleaner shots of what I've done (scans, etc) so far...I probably should have done this stuff before ever wasting your time. I guess that i was hoping for a simple 'do x, y and z' solution, but i don't think that's what is going to happen here...if nothing else, just scanning the disks is a time consuming process...but, that's kind of good, because i use that time doing reading and research on data recovery...something that i think i'll know a good bit about by the end of this process.

i'll post tonight or tomorrow with details.. i was trying to recover files that seemed to be the exact right size, but r-studio was saying that there were bad sectors, so i may have to make an image of the drive, which means i'll have to get another drive, because i don't have 1TB free on any other drive atm...

thanks for the reply...sorry again to waste time without doing the work myself firsts...

[nathanp]

And, there ya go...no Raid offsets found. Now I am mind boggled as to what exactly I did when I took one of the drives out of the enclosure....I know that I did it because I wanted to put a drive from my Thunderbolt 2Big in there at a time when I didn't have a computer with a Thunderbolt port on it...but, I really can't remember exactly what I was doing or thinking at the time (I was going through a major life crisis at the time).

So, with no Raid offsets found, does that mean that the disks simply were not in a Raid array? Or, maybe they were in a Raid 1, or something? I don't know. And, because I can see the folders and files through programs like R-Studio, and the files even have the same sizes as duplicates that I have no issues with, is there any way to save them? Pretty much any file over a certain size brings up an error when I attempt to open it. R-Studio says that there are bad sectors on the drive, even though both disks spin up quietly and seem absolutely fine...does this mean that one of the disks is actually in bad shape?

I guess that I'm confused. The files are irreplaceable, but not life or death type stuff...primarily was concerned with images, some documents and maybe some movies...would it be worthwhile to take it to a data recovery shop? Or, are they just going to use R-Studio to make an image of the disk and wish me good day for a few hundred bucks?

Any insight would be super helpful. Sorry about the png images scaling up so much and the mess I made of this topic...looking forward to any feedback and possible resolution to my situation. Thanks!

[Alt]

Let's stuck to some basics for a while. What you had to do to recover the files was to take the disks out of the LaCie case, connect them to a computer directly and see what they have. Then created a virtual mirror or RAID0 if necessary. Did you do that?
Because what I see on the screenshot is that you tried to work (scan, for example) with the LaCie as a whole device, which wouldn't do anything.