Maxtor OneTouch III RAID0 How to Recover?!?!

I have a Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III it was striped RAID 0

2x500gb

It has Crashed. The data on there will destroy my business.

My Computer will not recognize it at all now. All of the sudden. I
have tried plugging it into 3 other computers all running XP and in
non of the machines will it "recognize" or "detect" anything has been
plugged in. No "duh-ding". Blinking white light on the front of the
Maxtor. I tried using the firewire connection and the usb connection.

I have taken it apart as much as I can. I'm scared that I'm going to
blow away the data. I do have a machine here that is configured for
Serial ATA. Are there Do's and Don't's with something like this?

Are there some basic first steps in recovering this data??

<Addammer@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1191331379.776438.219170@w3g2000hsg.googlegro ups.com...
>I have a Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III it was striped RAID 0
>
> 2x500gb
>
> It has Crashed. The data on there will destroy my business.
>
> My Computer will not recognize it at all now. All of the sudden. I
> have tried plugging it into 3 other computers all running XP and in
> non of the machines will it "recognize" or "detect" anything has been
> plugged in. No "duh-ding". Blinking white light on the front of the
> Maxtor. I tried using the firewire connection and the usb connection.
>
> I have taken it apart as much as I can. I'm scared that I'm going to
> blow away the data. I do have a machine here that is configured for
> Serial ATA. Are there Do's and Don't's with something like this?
>
> Are there some basic first steps in recovering this data??

I wonder if the controller or main board has gone? Not sure how to test
this, but I would leave it turned off and out of sight/mind until someone
more knowledgable on these things comes along! (Paging Kony...)

Addammer wrote:
> I have a Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III it was striped RAID 0
>
> 2x500gb
>
> It has Crashed. The data on there will destroy my business.
>
> My Computer will not recognize it at all now. All of the sudden. I
> have tried plugging it into 3 other computers all running XP and in
> non of the machines will it "recognize" or "detect" anything has been
> plugged in. No "duh-ding". Blinking white light on the front of the
> Maxtor. I tried using the firewire connection and the usb connection.
>
> I have taken it apart as much as I can. I'm scared that I'm going to


What exactly do you mean by 'taken it apart' ? Did you see the disk
platters ?

<Addammer@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1191331379.776438.219170@w3g2000hsg.googlegro ups.com...
>I have a Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III it was striped RAID 0
>
> 2x500gb
>
> It has Crashed. The data on there will destroy my business.

Oh and I don't think this is exactly what you meant? I presume you mean that
*losing* the data would be bad for your business.

If the data on the drives is going to destroy your business, then take out
the hard drives and take a large hammer to them until you have nothing but
dust.

Addammer@gmail.com wrote in news:1191331379.776438.219170
@w3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com:

> I have a Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III it was striped RAID 0
>
> 2x500gb

So you have *two* 500 GB Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III hard drives? (the 'a'
in the first sentence is confusing).

> It has Crashed. The data on there will destroy my business.

You have your important business data on a 1 TB (2x500 GB) RAID 0 striped
volume? Silly question but do you know the difference between RAID 0 and
RAID 1?

> My Computer will not recognize it at all now. All of the sudden. I
> have tried plugging it into 3 other computers all running XP and in
> non of the machines will it "recognize" or "detect" anything has been
> plugged in. No "duh-ding". Blinking white light on the front of the
> Maxtor. I tried using the firewire connection and the usb connection.
>
> I have taken it apart as much as I can. I'm scared that I'm going to
> blow away the data. I do have a machine here that is configured for
> Serial ATA. Are there Do's and Don't's with something like this?
>
> Are there some basic first steps in recovering this data??

OK - let's assume that this really is a RAID 0 volume. This doesn't help
you but for the sake of others RAID 0 is the worst place someone can put
*any* important data (which is why I asked if you know the difference
between RAID 0 and RAID 1).

It might be best to take the computer and drives to a *good* computer
repair shop and let them verify that the drive has crashed. Just make
sure they understand that they should do no more harm to your data.

If the hard drive itself has not been opened and has indeed 'crashed'
then your best option is to send both drives to a professional data
recovery house and let them attempt to recover your data. If the RAID
controller is hardware based and is not widely available, they may need
that too. If the RAID controller is software based RAID then they may
need the computer as well. This option can be expensive and they may or
may not be able to retrieve your data. It may be very expensive due to
the complication of the RAID volume. You will have to get a 'ballpark'
quote and determine for yourself if the cost is worth the *possible*
retrieval of your data. I am not an expert in the data recovery field.
Maybe someone else can add to/correct my statements.

You are wise to be concerned about 'blowing away the data'. You can do
more damage than good by trying to recover the data yourself unless you
really know what you are doing.

--
Alan "Pecos" Norton

On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 06:22:59 -0700 Addammer@gmail.com wrote:

| I have a Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III it was striped RAID 0
|
| 2x500gb
|
| It has Crashed. The data on there will destroy my business.
|
| My Computer will not recognize it at all now. All of the sudden. I
| have tried plugging it into 3 other computers all running XP and in
| non of the machines will it "recognize" or "detect" anything has been
| plugged in. No "duh-ding". Blinking white light on the front of the
| Maxtor. I tried using the firewire connection and the usb connection.
|
| I have taken it apart as much as I can. I'm scared that I'm going to
| blow away the data. I do have a machine here that is configured for
| Serial ATA. Are there Do's and Don't's with something like this?
|
| Are there some basic first steps in recovering this data??

Buy another unit just like the first one and make sure it works, just to
rule out any other faults.

Disassemble both units. Move the drives from the old unit to the new unit
making sure you have them in the same relative position. If it was just a
case of dead controller in the old one, AND if the formatting is the same
for the old and new, then you should now get the data via the new unit.

Otherwise, it may be the physical drive itself that is dead and as someone
else suggested, you'll need to send it to a data recovery business that
makes lots of money on people that don't make proper backups of their data.

--
|---------------------------------------/----------------------------------|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (ka9wgn.ham.org) / Do not send to the address below |
| first name lower case at ipal.net / spamtrap-2007-10-02-1431@ipal.net |
|------------------------------------/-------------------------------------|

On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 06:22:59 -0700, Addammer@gmail.com
wrote:

>I have a Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III it was striped RAID 0
>
>2x500gb
>
>It has Crashed. The data on there will destroy my business.


What do you mean by "destroy my business"?

If the data is valuable, and needed NOW, contact a data
recovery center. Be sure to mention (and probably you need
to send to them) this OneTouch Turbo III, and that it was a
RAID0.

Why did you use a RAID0? That is of little to no benefit
over what I assume is a USB or FIrewire link. With those
connections, the connection is the bottleneck, not the
logical (RAID) configuration or lack thereof.

>
>My Computer will not recognize it at all now. All of the sudden. I
>have tried plugging it into 3 other computers all running XP and in
>non of the machines will it "recognize" or "detect" anything has been
>plugged in. No "duh-ding". Blinking white light on the front of the
>Maxtor. I tried using the firewire connection and the usb connection.
>
>I have taken it apart as much as I can. I'm scared that I'm going to
>blow away the data.

Don't open the drives themselves. Do you see anything wrong
in the unit? Are you able to troubleshoot electronics
including doing so safely with high voltage AC? I ask
because there is a chance the power supply has failed, and
if that is the case then diagnosing it and replacing or
repairing it is one possible solution.



>I do have a machine here that is configured for
>Serial ATA. Are there Do's and Don't's with something like this?
>
>Are there some basic first steps in recovering this data??

Don't try to use the drives on another system, outside of
the enclosure, unless you have a system that has the same
RAID controller in it that is in the Maxtor enclosure. That
seems very unlikely. You need the same raid controller and
it's compatible BIOS in order to get the data because you
used RAID0. If you had instead left them as single drives
(two spans) or a RAID1, you could have taken the two drives
out and if only one had failed you could still get the
remaining (or all data if it was RAID1) data off the other
drive.

Either contact a data recovery center or there is a chance
that if the enclosure or it's PSU failed instead of a drive,
that you can do as Phil suggested and buy another of the
same product. Another alternative if this product is under
warranty still would be to have Maxtor send an advanced
replacement... but once you open it you may have voided the
warranty, read the warranty statement to determine this.

In message <Xns99BD644F1D2APecos@216.196.97.142> Pecos
<anortRemOveThIs&2on2@phreego.net> wrote:

>Addammer@gmail.com wrote in news:1191331379.776438.219170
>@w3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com:
>
>> I have a Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III it was striped RAID 0
>>
>> 2x500gb
>
>So you have *two* 500 GB Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III hard drives? (the 'a'
>in the first sentence is confusing).

The Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III is an enclosure that holds two physical
drives and supports RAID-0 and/or RAID-1 natively.

--
You can get more with a kind word and a 2x4 than just a kind word.

DevilsPGD <spam_narf_spam@crazyhat.net> wrote in
news:nfd6g35nbfqp5ifk22pvtihljagbto60oj@4ax.com:

> In message <Xns99BD644F1D2APecos@216.196.97.142> Pecos
> <anortRemOveThIs&2on2@phreego.net> wrote:
>
>>Addammer@gmail.com wrote in news:1191331379.776438.219170
>>@w3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com:
>>
>>> I have a Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III it was striped RAID 0
>>>
>>> 2x500gb
>>
>>So you have *two* 500 GB Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III hard drives? (the
>>'a' in the first sentence is confusing).
>
> The Maxtor OneTouch Turbo III is an enclosure that holds two physical
> drives and supports RAID-0 and/or RAID-1 natively.
>

That explains a lot. Thanks for the clarification.

I did my homework after the fact:

http://tinyurl.com/2ljzy4

You are right. The One Touch comes with RAID 0 and RAID 1 native with
two 500 GB hard drives. The article at Hardware Central mentions that
it is either a choice between RAID 0 or RAID 1 and the default is RAID
0. There is no option at initial start up to choose one or the other.
Users can start using the array without realizing that data is being
written to a striped RAID 0 volume, which is possibly what happened to
the Original Poster. Then if they want to change to RAID 1, they have
to backup the data and reconfigure the array. That seems a poor choice
in my opinion especially since the speed advantage mentioned in the
article with Firewire was only 10%. Perhaps Maxtor thought it was
easier to market it as a 1 TB storage solution rather than a 500 GB
solution.

Since the RAID controller is native to the One Touch the OP can simply
ship the whole unit to a data recovery shop if the drive has indeed
died.

My apologies to the OP for the ignorance of my questions. Here is a
link to a review by someone who looked into the cost of data retrieval
if needed:

http://tinyurl.com/2d7nqq

--
Alan "Pecos" Norton

In message <Xns99BE71559F32Pecos@216.196.97.142> Pecos
<anortRemOveThIs&2on2@phreego.net> wrote:

>You are right. The One Touch comes with RAID 0 and RAID 1 native with
>two 500 GB hard drives. The article at Hardware Central mentions that
>it is either a choice between RAID 0 or RAID 1 and the default is RAID
>0. There is no option at initial start up to choose one or the other.
>Users can start using the array without realizing that data is being
>written to a striped RAID 0 volume, which is possibly what happened to
>the Original Poster. Then if they want to change to RAID 1, they have
>to backup the data and reconfigure the array. That seems a poor choice
>in my opinion especially since the speed advantage mentioned in the
>article with Firewire was only 10%. Perhaps Maxtor thought it was
>easier to market it as a 1 TB storage solution rather than a 500 GB
>solution.

Going with RAID-0 wasn't about speed at all, it was exclusively about
offering one of the cheapest 1TB "drives" on the market.

--
You can get more with a kind word and a 2x4 than just a kind word.