RAID Crash - Huge Problem

[JoeD]

After encoding mpeg 4 material for about 4 days straight, my RAID array crashed. It is composed of two 120 GB Western Digitals. After this happened I noticed that the fans that I thought were cooling the HDs stopped working.

Anyway, I'm mainly wondering about trying to restore the data myself because otherwise it will cost between 750 and 3000 dollars depending on how bad the damage is. I have used a utility to read the raw data on the drive and it finds some data, albeit very slowly. I was thinking of trying to find a raw-data copy program and copying the data sector by sector to two new 120s, but I am not sure if the RAID card would recognize them as a RAID array. Does anyone know if this is a fesible idea? I am trying to get some feedback on this idea since I do not want to waste a huge amount of time trying it. So any feedback is much appreciated.

[nikhsub1]

A raid 0 array? If so, I think you are in trouble...

[OSUmaxx]

If you are in RAID 0, it might be virtually unrecoverable. If its RAID1, then you might be fine. Let us know...

[JigPu]

Supposedly this (http://www.unformat-unerase.com/#2) can reconstruct a virtual RAID if it's gone and then perform data recovery on it. It can also create an image file of your drive like you want.

JigPu

[JoeD]

I forgot to mention that it is a hardware RAID 0 array. Do you guys know of any programs that can attempt to copy RAW data from each drive onto other drives and then rebuild the array if necessary?

[{PMS}fishy]

I think you are out of luck on this one.

[jlin453]

Yeah, this happened to my raid setup to. I really regret not putting a fan in front of it :(. Oh well, giving up on the raid idea and will be saving up for the 76gb raptor :)

[shadowdr]

Somrtimes it is possible to rebuild the array,allthough unlikely.I have read of instances of people doing it before.It also may not have been the inoperable fan at fault.If you have a 3-ware controller card see here (http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=913&p_created=1047068027) ,it also pertains to non 3-ware controllers.
It may depend on if the card will see the array or if the disks are actually damaged.If it is the drive or drives,it might be possible to ghost the entire drive to another on ide(both of them) and connect the good drives back on the card.It of corse would depend on if the card would still see them.
I have never used this (http://www.pcinspector.de/download.htm#smart_recovery) software but the first two are freeware.
You should also do an extensive search on Rebuilding raid array for references of successful instances.
Just curios,how did it crash? does the card still recognize the array? how does it error on bootup?