Vaio HDD help needed please!

Hey all,

I recently posted on here about how my Vaio AR770 had its video card crap out on me. I've purchased a hard drive dock so that I can get the data from the vaio and put it on my new primary computer, my secondary laptop (MacBook Pro).

The problem is, I discovered when I opened my Vaio that there were two HDDs. Good thing I bought the Duet, right! No problem. I pop the drives in (into our HP desktop, Win 7), fire up the dock, and Windows tells me "You need to format the drive (H:\) before you can use it." Why is it saying this?

I thought maybe one of the HDDs was a restore HDD or something, but they're both reading as 111.79 GB. One is RAW, the other is showing up as unallocated. This is very confusing to me since I had a single 320 GB HDD showing up in the Vaio!

Any thoughts? I really don't want to have to format the drives (yet). The MacBook Pro wants to initialize the drives as well, so that's not an option (yet) either.

Any help is much appreciated.

P.S. Inserting them in separately doesn't help.

 

Here's the problem... your AR had 2 HDDs... because they were in RAID0... which means... you're going to need to connect it to some other computer and HOPE that they RAID drivers get recognized. This is because your computer wrote stuff on both drives at exactly the same time (thus for faster performance, but a little more dangerous if 1 drive fails because u lose all the information)

 

The chances are the file format headers (so, the NTFS or FAT32 headers) are damaged. Your data is most likely intact so no worries there. But since the headers are damaged, which also act like 'doors' of sorts, you can't access your data.

I had the same issue with an external 2.5 HDD and had to use special forensic software to retrieve the data. Lost around 10GB from a total of 240GB and some only were retrieved as bits and pieces. Well, after all that I decided to format the drive to NTFS to reuse it and during that process the HDD burned out during the recovery process. I've been told was due to a platter failure. Just tried it again recently and it seems to work. But I ain't gonna take more chances... Hence why my aversion towards platter-based storage these days.

Anyways, unfortunately I don't remember the name of the recovery software I used. I obtained from a friend who happened to be a computer-tech, installed, used, and uninstalled. So Google is your friend there. There are some freeware, but recovery software tend to usually be payware.

Your data is going to be there, so don't worry about that. Just don't format your drives when windows tells you do; you'll DEFINITELY lose your data doing that.

You also might have heard of data-recovery services. They are expensive for one reason; time. It took 14 hours for the software to scan my 250GB drive for bits and to reassemble them right. Even then, it wasn't perfect but hey. It was close.

EDIT.
Not too sure if the older AR came with RAID0 setups considering their ages (release since ages ago), but if that's the case... Hmm... Might be a difficult to retrieve the data. I doubt it's RAID as the user states that one drive is seen as RAW and the other UNALLOCATED. But should come up with RAW if that was the case, in the very least.

 

Some of them did... that's why I've always liked Sony... this thing came out in 2006 with a 1080p screen and HDDs in RAID0... except it's a little more dangerous to run things in RAID0 (hence the importance of backups)

link:
Sony VAIO AR Notebook Overview (pics, specs)

 

I was thinking this too...I was so mad that I didn't notice I had two hard drives in my computer until the thing was kaput. I would have RAID 1'd it instead.

The thing was, when I ordered my AR, the option to have >1 HDD had disappeared from the site, leading me to believe there was only one drive in my unit. OH, THE WASTED YEARS!

This also explains why I had such an incredibly hard time triple-booting my system when trying to intall Ubuntu. No wonder GParted never saw my partitions correctly!

 

Well RAID0 is a Intel thing... so I guess you can *try* to hook it up to a desktop if you have one and see if it'll run them? I'm not to sure about recovering from RAID0, but at least your situation is better in that one drive didnt fail (in which case, there'd be no chance to retrieve the information).

 

Wow. I only found out about RAID when the VGN-Z got introed in 2008. Must have cost a pretty penny back in the days then (that linked page shows that well...).

@insprations365
You might have to source another AR for the recovery process. And hope that AR has a RAID controller (I'm assuming only some had them considering their prices back then). As said above, provided a drive didn't fail your data should be intact.

EDIT - That desktop idea is a good one. Just need a decent motherboard and the correct connectors.

 

I would assume you'd just have to connect the two drives and in BIOS rig them up in RAID0? Then boot from your main HDD then just copy the files over right? I've really no experience in this

 

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

I've tried the Live CD...Linux still doesn't like my HDDs, no surprise there.

I have both of them plugged into my dock right now and into the HP desktop via USB. What's this about trying to do what from them?

I think I want to boot from the HDDs...is this possible?

 

It would be one unique setup getting existing (laptop) RAID0-ed 2.5'' HDDs connected to a desktop machine.

First off, a conversion cable / adapter to connect your lappie drives to a desktop's mobo ports (the AR uses SATA or IDE???). Second, provided your motherboard has a RAID controller and you have a post-boot RAID manager app (Intel's RAID manager is one), if the RAID0 is intact you 'SHOULD' be able to boot straight in. Though I would suggest you do so under safe-mode; the OS will complain with different hardware and it's likely it'll ask you to activate Windows again (major hardware changes). You should be able to set up RAID0 in the BIOS settings, if at all possible with the desktop you have. Not too sure about branded machines like HP, but custom-rigs; very possible.

Though that's a theory. I've seen a mate connect up a 2.5'' drive (with an existing OS) to a desktop with the right connectors and booted off that, though it wasn't too stable. But never an existing RAID setup (from a laptop at that). Couple that with the fact that the post-boot RAID manager may not be able to see the existing RAID0 setting due to the different hardware the AR drives would be connected to.

 

Based on your input, you have AR770 CTO with RAID0 of 2x120GB SATA.
It is Intel Software RAID, so you can find any Intel Chipset at least ICH6 or higher which also supports RAID, then you can plug your drives in and enable RAID in BIOS and you can back up your data to another stand alone drive.

 

Wow, I think you've got it. Could you be more specific as to which steps to take to accomplish this?

Yes, the drives are SATA.

 

OK,

First, you have to find a laptop or desktop with has Intel Chipset which supports RAID. You may be hard to find a laptop with RAID, but desktop with Intel RAID would be easier. I believe almost Intel 965 is RAID enabled.

Then, plug your drives in and enable RAID in the BIOS. Get ready another stand alone drive for backup.

When you boot the machine, your RAIDed drives will be detected automatically. Now, you can boot off your RAIDed drive or from stand alone and back up your data.

 

I know it's been a while since I posted here, but I've only just now have been able to find a suitable possible laptop that may serve my purposes. If I use a Vaio VGN-FW390, would that enable me to boot from my RAIDed drive? I'm pretty sure that allows RAID 0 configurations, but I could not find anything confirming it.