Help with RAID5 Recovery after BIOS Settings Changed

After about twenty years, I felt ZAR can no longer be updated to match the modern requirements, and I decided to retire it.

ZAR is replaced by Klennet Recovery, my new general-purpose DIY data recovery software.

If you are looking specifically for recovery of image files (like JPEG, CR2, and NEF), take a look at Klennet Carver, a separate video and photo recovery software.

Bios setting was changed made Intel bios clear the raid settings. Made new raid with what I think to be the same 128 cluster size. Booted in to windows where intel RST started initiation stopped this at 1-2%. Have not be able to recover anything but very small files like notpad from the drive.

What caused the data loss: I was in the process of installing a new SSD and cloning it over to the new drive. The migration software was not compatible with the intel chip set being set to raid. I changed it to either ahci or ide I don't remember. I completed the migration. How ever after setting the Sata ports back to RAID I found that the intel bois said that all 4 Seagate drives were now non-member.

I did some searching and I found this guide online: http://www.overclock.net/t/478557/ho...ber-disk-error

HOWEVER! This guide did not mention that this only works if the OS in on the RAID system and if it is not like in my case my OS in on the SSD after you reboot into windows the intel RST will start blanking the drives. I stopped this before it got too far. Likely it got to 1% or as high as 2 of the initiation.

So this is where I am. I have tried the test disk software, I am not sure if I was using it correctly I tried a few times. It didnt work.

I tried using data recovery software from ZAR (paid). I was not 100% sure of my cluster size so I setup the raid in 32, 64, and 128 and ran the data recovery (an 8 hour scan each). The interesting thing is different folders are rovered with each different cluster size. As in when I run the recovery after setting it to 64 vs 128 different filenames and folders will be recovered.

So, you stopped it at what, 1%.

The total usable capacity of the unit is around 9000 GB (3x 3TB usable). 1% of that would be 90GB. The MFT on NTFS volume starts around 3GB into the volume. I don't think you getting something from it, because if it was blanking the drive indeed, all the metadata is gone.

Now what's left to do is

1. Break the array so individual disks are accessible.
2. Run ZAR in RAID Recovery mode, to detect RAID parameters.
3. Try filesystem recovery on what's detected.

The basic outline is here - RAID recovery tutorial.