Recovering information from spanned HDDs

[Jollybones]

Hello Computer Hopers,

I'm a bit stuck with a hard drive recovery. I have two functioning 120GB Seagate Barracudas from an old desktop that no longer works. The drives were dynamically spanned as one 240GB drive. I am trying to retrieve the data on them through a SATA-USB kit using my laptop; however as they were spanned they both need to be connected to be recognised as one volume and I can only connect one at a time. I was wondering if there is any way/software I could use to create images of the individual HDDs and then mount them as a single volume, thanks in advance!

PS as this is relating to the HDDs themselves I put this in hardware, however I am aware it could equally be a software related question

[Calum]

How were the drives initally spanned?  Was it done through Windows (software based), or through a RAID controller (hardware based)?

[Jollybones]

Software based, if this needs to be moved then apologies for the misunderstanding - and thanks 

[Calum]

What do you see when you connect the drives individually?  Is the volume just not recognised at all?
Spanned volumes are a real pain when something goes wrong and you run the risk of losing it all by tampering with even one of the drives.
I would recommend firstly taking an image backup of each drive, using a program such as Macrium Reflect.  I'm not sure if you'll then be able to re-span them and access it as normal. but at least you'll have a copy you can safely tinker with, without fear of losing all the data.
If the volumes aren't recognised, or are seen as RAW partitions, you'll need to use a data recovery program to get your files back.

[patio]

I would hook them up properly to a desktop PC then make the image of the drives...

[Jollybones]

Thanks for the input, when attached individually Windows claims I need to format the drives before I can use them. I have made individual images just in case! Patio - I think I'm going to have to go this route, I won't have access to a desktop for a couple of days so I was hoping to do it on the fly.

In the mean time, I'm going to try partitioning another old 500 GB HDD I have into seperate partitions and writing the RAW images to those.

Ta

[patio]

Main problem with that approach is they will not be spanned as it is after the fact and the original software app won't re-create the image...but feel free to give it a shot...

[Geek-9pm]

What is the possibility of doing repair to the old PC?