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[Leathal]

How do I create a RAID without formatting the drives?

For some reason the Volume crashed and wiped out my entire RAID 5. I have a lot of data on these drives I can't afford to lose. I am going have to buy a QNAP next I think as I can't afford to have hardware fail like this prematurely.

This is crazy, if I don't get the data back my business will be bankrupt thanks to Dlink!

[JavaLawyer]

You may want to read the following sticky post: DNS-345 - Data Recovery (Windows PCs). Addressing your first question, the mere act of creating a RAID array will destroy all existing data on the HDDs.

From your post it sounds like you don't have a backup of your data.  RAID provides redundancy, but is not a backup. RAID arrays are subject to failure for a myriad of reasons, ranging from viruses, corruption, malicious attacks, and accidental deletion. As a matter of course, everyone should maintain a separate physical copy of critical data, with RAID serving as a secondary layer of security to provide redundancy. DNS-345 - Data Backup vs. Redundancy

[ivan]

To run a business without off site backup, or any backup for that matter, is foolishness (we have 3 off site backup units that are updated every 6 hours).

The first thing to do in trying to recover your data is to remove the, labelled with slot number, disks then assemble the necessary tools as outlined by JavaLawyer.  You can use either a USB/SATA adapter or an SATA hot swap caddy.  We use the latter on a computer that is booted from an OS on DVD and recovered data is sent to our server storage bank.

In your case I would suggest that you use the USB/SATA adapter and boot your computer from a live Linux CD as it will be easier than trying to get an installable FS setup and working.  The other thing, if you formatted the RAID array as Ext4 then I don't think NAS Data Recovery will see it (the version we have only sees Ext2 and Ext3.

[Leathal]

You may want to read the following sticky post: DNS-345 - Data Recovery (Windows PCs). Addressing your first question, the mere act of creating a RAID array will destroy all existing data on the HDDs.

Sorry I just want to point out that re-creating the same RAID configuration hard drives which are in the same 0,1,2,3 config shouldn't blow away the array. At least it doesn't happen on Dell, HP or IBM servers that I know for a fact, set you setup the RAID on a server you have the option to format the RAID or not. This comes in handy just in case something goes wrong and the backup of your RAID config is hosed. They have built redundancy in the redundancy.