Please help fix RAID array

[kevinjhaag]

Since Port0 says Non-RAID Disk, thats your boot drive with the OS on it. And ports1-3 was the RAID Array. Pull all of the drives that say they are part of Array (Member Disk). They correspond to the SN of the drives. And try booting off just the drive that says its a Non-RAID Disk.

 

[16k_zx81]

Trying R-Studio first.

Setting up data recovery RAID is a breeze, but its spitting out an error (1,000s' f them):

Unexpected MFT record xxxxx at xxxxxxxxxxxxx. If you are scanning RAID and this message will reappear constantly check RAID for constance"

sic.

.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What happens if you pull the first drive..the one labeled "None RAID disk"...slave it to a bench rig and try to browse it?

You could hope that's the case....and take another hard drive, install it as a stand alone drive, install the OS, install the RAID controller drivers..boot up the OS..and if those latter 3 drives are a RAID 5 volume..you should be able to browse them.

It's certainly a possibility that the first drive was a stand alone and the next 3 were a single RAID 5 volume....but "usually" even when a RAID controllers settings are wiped...they put a RIS file on the drives for ID'ing the drives...so if the settings are wiped, next bootup they should read those tags on the drives and put the pieces of humpty dumpty back together. At least GOOD RAID controllers have that feature...on most Dell and HP servers I can take drives that were setup in RAID on server...either replace that RAID controller or move them to another server with an equal or newer/higher model RAID controller..it will see the tags, and arrange the RAID like it was and I'll be back up and running again.

If this controller had those features...(questionable to probably doubtful..lol)...it would ID those last 3 drives as a single RAID 5 volume...which it doesn't.

I don't recall default settings on those RAID controllers being "all drives single RAID 0 volume" either like it's showing. That right there makes me pause and think again.

Bummer of a situation though...I put some extra Kahlua in my coffee this mornin' for ya!

 

[phaZed]

Hey 16k, thats normal on the errors when scanning RAID, it should spit out some goodies when you get all of the drives scanned

 

[hondablaster]

Is there any way to find the size of the original partition that hosted the OS?

I would think that some kind of deduction can take place from that number.

This is an interesting thread. I will keep watch.

Raid 0+1 would be 464GB (I believe)

Raid 5 would be (232*4)-232

Raid 5 with one none raid would be (464) and one 232 one raid that should be easily readable etc....

Raid 0 232*4

Gave it my best shot.

 

[16k_zx81]

Hey 16k, thats normal on the errors when scanning RAID, it should spit out some goodies when you get all of the drives scanned

Unfortunately it only found the data from the readable drive. The rest of the data from the 3-member disks was not evident.

 

[16k_zx81]

A couple of people had suggested to have a look at all of the disks individually to see which were readable.

There are 5 disks in the machine.

Two are readable

Three are identified as RAID and not readable.

One of the readable disks comes up as a backup of the machine from 2011

The other readable disk has files and folders like a storage disk (no WINDOWS, no PROGRAM FILES)

SO I guess this means the guts of the installation on the machine was in the three 'member' disks.

I had a chat with the owner and he is not worried about the data in the member disks.

So I guess this means I re-constitute the RAID array and install fresh.

Please help with sanity check:

Build 3 or 4-disk RAID0 with an automated file sync to the spare drive?

Please help me understand: Am I correct in assuming this was originally a 3-disk array? (would that make sense)?

I am assuming the main priority is speed, and the other principle concern here is safety of customer's data so this crap doesnt happen again. What would you do?

Thanks

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What does the owner do with the machine...what used for?

I've seen systems with a single drive for %system% and a RAID 1 or something for the data. It's nothing I would do though. I've done RAID 0 for myself....years ago when IDE/ATA-100 drives were around, and those Promise Fast Trak RAID controller cards. Was just a gaming system...so didn't care if a drive croaked.

Without knowing what the guy uses the computer for...hard to suggest how to setup the RAID. RAID 1/ RAID 1 ? Have some safety in both volumes...and split the pagefile across 2 spindles for a performance boost.

Or was this a video editing workstation with a big RAID 0 for the scratch pad directory for Pinnacle or something?

 

[phaZed]

I personally run a RAID 1+0 (Striping and mirroring) on 4 - 500GB drives. This provides the redundancy, speed, capacity, and ability to rebuild a drive without skipping a beat. I have an SSD as my OS and important/most used program drive.