I know there are a few topics here already regarding this issue, but I could not find a suitable answer. Here is the situation:
My ex-boss is a lucky owner of a cute Sony Vaio notebook with a 256 Gb SSD (according to specs). In reality, it has 2x128 Gb SSD's in a striped RAID0 array, which he discovered the hard way, after calling in an IT guy to fix some annoying but harmless error at boot time. The guy poked around the BIOS and decided to "Reset disks" (before reading the rest of the phrase "to NON-RAID") in Intel Storage Manager. Now they are stuck with a "No operating system found" message and two Non-RAID disks. This is where I came in.
After some googling around I learned that the way to go is to download TestDisk or Parted Magic, which I did (as part of Ultimate Boot CD). I ran some checks, but both tools (and some ERD disks the IT guy brought) only see two unallocated disks, with no partitions. In some threads users also suggest rebuilding the array ("do not Create, but Rebuild"), but I only see the options to create RAID volume, delete RAID volume, Reset disks to non-RAID and Advanced settings (disabled).
My question is: Is it still possible to recover the data (the latest backups are some 2-3 months old)? Will it make life easier for TestDisk and the likes if I create a RAID0 volume, then run the recovery software? Or is the only viable option to take the disk to a service specializing in data recovery? By looking at the disks with a disk viewer I can still see the data, including some Excel files and some Google Earth overlay structures, at a very quick glance. Will look in more detail once the dumps are copied (which should take some 6 more hours). Any other utility to try perhaps?