Sector by sector copy of Z11 RAID SSDs?

Does anyone know if there is a way to do a sector by sector copy of the RAID SSDs in a Z11? I have a 2 way 128GB SSD. I'd like to copy it off to an external drive. I've tried various live cds like Gparted, testdisk and Clonezilla. They don't work. Either they don't recognize the RAID and see it as 2 separate drives or they see it as one device but won't copy it.

My Z won't boot anymore, it get's stuck on classpnp.sys. My partition is encrypted with diskcryptor though. I want to see if I can salvage the data by copying it off onto an external drive and mount it there.

 

If you can boot into Linux, perhaps using the dd command can work for you?

Edit: Nvm, it will be useless if your Linux sees two SSDs instead of one, so you get raid-ed data instead of the real thing.

 

1. I'm wondering if the classpnp.sys file is corrupted, maybe copying over it helps? Does it start in safe mode? Can Linux write NTFS format files now, you can boot off Ubuntu then write over.
2. For dd, as long as the RAID driver works (is that dmraid?), there should be a device that corresponds to the logical drive, from which dd can be run?
3. Does diskcryptor encrypt the entire partition, or just certain directories? If it's the entire partition, whatever reads that must first be able to decrypt, right?

 

Use ghost.

 

It's an encryption plus RAID issue I think. The entire partition is encrypted. I tried using the emergency disk. It allows me to mount the disk but windows says it's corrupted. If I try to boot though, it's clearly not. Thus I'm hoping that I can do a sector by sector copy of the RAID partition to a non RAID partition and then use the emergency disk.

 

(Not sure how much sense this makes but anyway...)

You need some other OS with DiskCryptor to read the drive. If it's difficult getting the RAID volume off, how about using the external drive to host the other OS, and boot off that external drive attached to the Z? I don't remember if it's possible to install Windows this way, or to have DiskCryptor on Linux.

If this is possible, then running in the external OS, you can unlock the partition and read the files...

Edit: Here are some notes on creating a Win 7 LiveCD & Repair DVD, does it help: http://diskcryptor.net/wiki/LiveCD/en. I think the LiveCD can allow for the access of data on the encrypted partition.

 

I've tried every single one of those with various windows 7 disks and even the Sony XP downgrade.

Bartpe is too old. It won't even work with the XP disk.

All the other methods allow me to mount the parition using decrypt but then windows says it's corrupt. Yet I can still boot off of it, but only to get stuck at classpnp.sys.

You did give me a good idea though. I'm going to try reinstall everything to an external usb drive. If I can boot off of that, then I can try mounting the internal ssd in decrypt.

Oh, the other weirdness is that generic W7 recovery console says the parition is the right size. The sony recovery disk says the partition is 0 bytes

 

Do any of the live cds run on the Z11? I just tried the Seagate aka Acronis one and the kernel dies on the Z11.

 

Have a look here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/512180-how-make-full-backup-your-vaio-z.html

 

Which Live CD? I can't try since I don't have any RAID0 drive... A problem with DiskCryptor's LiveCD is that it may not have the RAID driver in there.

It's too bad we can't do a repair-install of the Windows OS, unlike Linux...

 

Use ghost! you can google hiren's boot cd but keep in mind it's not lawful to use it unless you own a license for the applications you use on it (ie ghost). You can run it right out of the pe environment and it works with the raid no problem.

 

I ended up using Seagate diskwizard. Works awesome and it's free.

My disk has been recovered. Nothing could do it and I was about to reformat when I tried data rescue on the Sony recovery disk. Worked like a charm.

 

I'm glad you solved the problem!