[SWLUG] Failed Raid 1

[Hugh Saunders]

My Parents have windows[1] installed on a RAID 1 (mirror)  volume.
The raid controller is built into the motherboard and presents the two
disks as a single volume to the operating system.

One disk failed, so they started backing up to a usb-1 external drive
(slow process). The other disk failed during this backup. BSOD, then
nonbootable system. I am unsure if the system is FAT/NTFS.

So, my parents are ordering two new sata disks and I will be going up
there(Surrey) to do data recovery.

Tools that I'm aware of:
-knoppix -DVD&CD editions
-testdisk & photorec[2]
-dd
-fsck.msdos

Plan:
1. Disconnect old drives from raid controller, boot knoppix
1.1. dd old drive 1 -> new drive 1
1.2. dd old drive 2 -> new drive 2.

2. Attach new drives to raid controller in same configuration as before failure.
2.1 Boot knoppix, try and mount raid volume
2.2 Run testdisk on raid voulme
2.3 Run photorec on raid volume -This is messy, tend to loose file
system hierachy and file names.

3. Disconnect new drives from raid controller, connect to other SATA
sockets on motherboard
3.1 Try mount, testdisk, photorec as before.

Questions:
1. Is a disk that is half of a Raid 1 volume, the same as a standalone disk?
 - Ie does it have the same mbr, partition table, file system etc, or
does it have RAID specific markings?
2. Should I attempt recovery using individual disks or through the
mirrored raid volume?
3. Any other tools, techniques or tips that might help?

Thanks :-)

[1] This post is about using linux tools for datarecovery, so
hopefully falls within the range of appropriate topics even though the
first line matches /^.*[Ww]ind[0o]w([s$]|ze).*$/
[2] http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

-- 
Hugh Saunders