# Degraded then Failed RAID 5 - Need repair and recovery help!



## 1stgRAIDer (Jul 16, 2008)

I posted this in another tech forum but I am hoping for a quick response so I can begin the recovery process as soon as possible. 

Before I begin, here is a quick list of my hardware:
Intel DG33TL mobo w/onboard ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R SATA RAID controller. There are six SATA ports total available for RAID on the board (one is marked for eSATA). All six ports are being used. 2 ports are single drives 250gb and 320gb, 3 ports are 500gb drives in a RAID 5 configuration, last port is connected to external 1tb eSATA drive. All drives are Western Digital including the external. The 3 RAID drives are Western Digital RAID edition hard drives. Intel Matrix Storage Manager v8.2.0.1001 is installed and the OS is Vista Ultimate 32bit.

Ok...here is the horrible thing that happened to my internal RAID5 setup. I lost two of the 3 drives in my RAID 5 array recently. I lost the second before I replaced the first one that failed. I figured after one went that I had some time before another would go. Well...the second drive went during the night a few nights ago and to my wonder in the morning I had no storage on my PC....just my OS drive and drive that I use as a file graveyard and testing area. I rebooted and the Intel controller information during bootup stated that the array was in a degraded state and that one of the RAID drives had an error.

So now that the second is gone, I am pretty upset since the array stored a lot of irreplaceable data. The array consisted of 3 WD RAID Edition 500gb SATA2 hard drives. After the first drive errorred itself out of the array, the array still ran with the two drives as storage ever since (I am not sure if this is still considered RAID 5 mode when while it is running without the full amount of drives supposed to be in the array since the size of the array remained at 1tb and there were only two drives. It almost seems as though it is just a spanned disk this way. Can somebody clarify this for recovery purposes?) I recently got a 1 TB eSata drive ready to backup the array but its too late now as the failure happened before I could do so.

What is strange is that I removed the first drive from the array after its failure and left it connected as a single drive to the pc (non RAID). I tested it using DFT and it passed the advanced tests....freaking weird!!! This drive is still being used as normal storage and there are no further issues with it. The other night the second drive did the same thing....same error. I have no idea why they are getting errors. It seems to me like it might be a controller issue since the first failed drive tested good outside of the array. I have not tested the second drive yet. I did recently reload my OS before this second RAID issue. I updated the Intel inf driver and sound driver for the motherboard.

I proceeded to try repairing the array. I re-added the first failed drive back to the array using the Intel Utility during boot up with CTRL+I. Once added I booted back into windows and ran the Intel Storage Utility which now sees all three drives. The utility added the third drive as a 'spare' which was the only option. Now in the utility, two drives are listed normally under 'RAID hard drives' and the third is listed as 'missing'. There are no actions available to any of the three drives. The only action available is to the array as a whole and is to 'Enable volume write back cache'.

A couple Google searches say that there is ways to rebuild or recover the array using software. Has anybody had success doing this? If so please tell me what method or software you used for this. I am looking for any input on how to recover this data. It is much more important for me to recover the data than to repair the array. I am assuming that the recovery would be easier if the array can be rebuilt.

Thanks for any input and help on this subject that you can offer.


----------



## wiseleo (Jul 9, 2008)

Ah, welcome to my world!

R-studio or similar tool is what you want. And if your disks are OK physically, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. You will need at least twice as much free storage space as there is currently on the array.

I have a hunch that it may be your power supply that's killing the drives.

You are working with live drives. That's suicidal to your data. Image them, throw them into Raid Reconstructor - http://runtime.org/raid.htm or UFS explorer http://www.ufsexplorer.com or R-studio - http://www.r-studio.com - whichever one makes sense 

You will find this useful: http://www.data-recovery-software.net/downloads/Recovery_Manual.pdf


----------



## 1stgRAIDer (Jul 16, 2008)

Man, thank you for the great information. 

Ok, before I start, is it possible to recover data from just two of the three hard drives from the RAID array since I have already formatted and used the first one that dropped out?

Thats interesting about the power supply being the possible culprit. I am running a DVD-RW, 5 hard drives and an nVidia 8600GT video card on a Q6700 CPU with 2gb of ram. The power supply is 500watts. I use the PC for business mostly. No gaming or really intensive tasks. Do you think that the power supply is dropping the drives out of the array? It appears that they are still good by testing in DFT...they are just no longer part of the array.

I will check out R-studio and use drive images to work with in Raid Reconstructor as you suggested. I have tried Raid Reconstructor without success but maybe since I wasnt using images and using the array directly. 

How should I go about imaging the drives? Should I image the drive with a program like Ghost or Imgburn? What is the best way to image the drives and the steps to take so as not to make them any worse off? Can I image the drives from windows and with them in thier RAID array? Should I remove the drives from the array and reconnect them seperately?

Sorry for all the questions, It sounds like you have gone through this before and are a good resource.

Oh, and I just ordered a Cavalry 3tb eSATA external RAID device that I will use to transfer the data to and for future backups of the array in the PC.

Thanks!


----------



## wiseleo (Jul 9, 2008)

My signature has instructions on how to get good images. If possible, do it on a system that is known good. Working on suspect systems produces questionable results.

I do this for a living, so rest assured those steps are about as good as it gets unless you spend thousands of dollars on the really fun stuff. Yes, it's possible to rebuild a RAID5 using 2 out of 3 disks. You must use software images for reconstruction because this can get tricky.

It's more about the quality of power. The 8600GT + 5 HDDs? Sounds like a power-hungry box. I am going to assume your drives are not in a staggered start configuration because they are not SCSI, where that's common. At startup, those drives spike to about 150W total.

Try a better PSU. That 500W might not be 500W... Either Anandtech or Tom's did a test on this. Your controller card may also be at fault.


----------



## 1stgRAIDer (Jul 16, 2008)

Wiseleo, I have received my external device (a Cavalry 3tb, 4x 750gb SATA RAID device running on a Silicon Image SATA PCI-E controller) and I am ready to start the recovery process. I read and printed your tutorial from your signature and before I go further, I have a couple questions. 

I should start by mentioning I am using my main PC (with the failed array) as the recovery machine since I am limited to it. I believe that there should not be any worry since my main bootable hard drive is NOT included in the RAID 5 array (also located in the PC) and is fully functional. 

Before starting SysRescueCD, I logged the state of the drives in the Intel Manager at bootup (CTRL + I). The 3 500gb drives are the RAID 5 array that is failed:
Strip size 64kb Status FAILED
Port# DISK STATUS
0 250gb  Non RAID Disk
1 500gb Member Disk (0)
2 500gb Non RAID Disk
5 500gb Member Disk (0)

I then booted to the SysRescueCD and was faced with a lot of information at the main first screen where a command was to be entered. After several seconds of indecision, the next section automatically loaded and at the next command prompt I entered 'testdisk' as you noted in your guide. This brought up another place to enter a command and here I stand as I do not know how to proceed and I do not want to damage the media on the disks if there is any chance of recovery. 

In testdisk it says this:
Select a media then press enter:
Disk /dev/sda 250gb
Disk /dev/sdb 500gb
Disk /dev/sdc 500gb
Disk /dev/sdd 500gb
Disk /dev/sde 750gb
Disk /dev/sdf 750gb
Disk /dev/sdg 750gb
Disk /dev/sdh 750gb
[proceed] [quit]

The 750gb drives listed above are located externally in the new Cavalry eSATA device and are setup in a RAID 5 configuration with just over 2tb available. 

I also have access to a 1tb eSATA drive that I can use if needed. It is mostly full but not critical data so I can dump it if I need to. 

Now the questions....
1) do I want to image all three of the original RAID 5 500gb drives to the external Cavalry 3tb array? 
2) is this even possible since the drives are listed individually in SysRescueCD and not the array? Which drive do I use for the destination drive in the image command? 
3)You wrote in your guide: "note the drive names....Quit testdisk.....run this command: ntfs3g/dev/sdb1/mnt/windows" Your final command is: ddrescue-n/dev/sda/mnt/windows/image.dd/mnt/windows/image.log."
How do I quit testdisk and at which prompts do I run these commands? Do I run this command for each of the RAID 5 drives? 
4)Is there anything I am missing that I may need or will help with this process (beside lots of alcohol  ?
5) Lastly, does it make a difference if the drives are still member disks in the array while I attempt to image them? If yes, how do I go about this?

Thanks for all of you expertise in this area. You are the only person that I have come across that is knowledgeable in manually recovering RAID data so far! I am looking forward to your comments.


----------



## wiseleo (Jul 9, 2008)

OK, let's figure this out... 

It looks like Linux doesn't see your Cavalry device as a single unit, but rather as a JBOD (just a bunch of disks) device. I suspect you setup a software RAID under Windows and you expected Linux to see it. It actually is good that Linux can't see it. RAID5 is renowned for pretty terrible write performance and in this case it won't do you any good.

I am going to simply try a few other things instead. If you thought single drive recovery was fun, you are in for a treat.

We will image each of the 500GB disks to a corresponding 750GB unit. Should be able to do it in parallel.

However, before we do any of this. What happens if you remove that power-hungry 8600GT card and replace the power supply with a better unit? Your array may simply come online if it gets enough quality power. Power supplies love to kill drives.

The procedure is relatively simple. Boot to Windows and attach the Cavalry device. Remove the RAID5 on the Cavalry under windows. Format each 750GB drive a basic simple volume with its own huge 750GB NTFS partition. Quick format is OK. 

Boot from the CD.

mkdir /mnt/disk1 /mnt/disk2 /mnt/disk3 /mnt/disk4
ntfs-3g /dev/sde1 /mnt/disk1
ntfs-3g /dev/sdf1 /mnt/disk2
ntfs-3g /dev/sdg1 /mnt/disk3
ntfs-3g /dev/sdh1 /mnt/disk4

That should mount your external array in 4 NTFS mount points. The 4th disk is not really necessary, but I didn't want to mess with rearranging disk order as 8 disks is already confusing enough ;-)

Run df -k to be certain that everything is mounted correctly.

Under linux, you have ability to run commands in parallel and on multiple virtual terminals.

I want to make sure my other disks are not mounted

umount /dev/sda
umount /dev/sdb
umount /dev/sdc
umount /dev/sde

So...
ddrescue -n /dev/sdb /mnt/disk1/disk1.dd /mnt/disk1/disk1.log
Hit enter to start it.
Now hit Alt-F2, which will bring you to a new screen
ddrescue -n /dev/sdc /mnt/disk2/disk2.dd /mnt/disk2/disk2.log
Hit enter to start it.
Now hit Alt-F3, which will bring you to a new screen
ddrescue -n /dev/sdd /mnt/disk3/disk3.dd /mnt/disk3/disk3.log

Those log files are vital.

I am skipping testdisk commands in-between because I know what I am doing and I am making the big assumption that you won't reconfigure the drives from what you posted.

If all goes well, the imaging process is now underway and should complete with no errors. The rate is about 40GB/hr, in my experience with slower controllers.

You can monitor the progress by using Alt-F1, Alt-F2, Alt-F3 key combinations.

Once this is completed, you can use Windows-based software to attempt to reconstruct the array. I am still experimenting with it, so I don't have a definite recommendation at this time as to which RAID reconstruction software is best.

Theoretically, it should be possible to reconstruct arrays entirely under Linux with lvm and similar tools, but I have not had the chance to work with them yet.


----------



## 1stgRAIDer (Jul 16, 2008)

wiseleo said:


> What happens if you remove that power-hungry 8600GT card and replace the power supply with a better unit? Your array may simply come online if it gets enough quality power.


Good question. I have removed all drives except for the raid array in the past and it did not come online. I believe the drives originally did start staggered and I know that they shutdown staggered in Vista. All of the drives show in the Intel Utility at boot and in the Linux environment. Doesnt this show that they are powered up? With all devices connected I am showing .150kw (150watts?) on the LCD on my battery backup device. I really dont think I there is not enough power from the PSU but maybe on this particular power rail. Its definitely worth the try.

Before I try this, in my last post, I showed that in the Intel Manager at bootup (CTRL + I), disk 2 is shown as 'Non RAID Disk' as follows:
Port# DISK STATUS
0 250gb Non RAID Disk
1 500gb Member Disk (0)
2 500gb Non RAID Disk
5 500gb Member Disk (0)

How do I re-add the disk to the array without damaging the array? It did not do this automatically and I do not see an option to add the single drive to the array from within the manager. 



wiseleo said:


> The procedure is relatively simple. Boot to Windows and attach the Cavalry device. Remove the RAID5 on the Cavalry under windows. Format each 750GB drive a basic simple volume with its own huge 750GB NTFS partition. Quick format is OK.


Ok, I deleted the RAID volume in the SATARaid5Manager software that came with the Silicon Image card to manage the Cavalry unit. I then selected 'Make Pass-Through' in the same software. Now it shows all 4 750gb drives as full capacity with 698.63gb available. They did not show in My Computer at this point.
Here I went into the Windows Disk Management Utility to format the drives. I found there were 4 drives shown but they are not listed as I though they should be. 

In Disk Management:
Disk 3 698.64gb Unallocated
Disk 4 2095.78gb Raw Healthy (Primary Partition)
Disk 5 698.64gb Unallocated
Disk 6 698.64gb Unallocated

It looks like it still thinks the drives are in RAID so I selected Disk 4 and deleted the volume. It is still 'working' after almost 30 minutes and the status has not changed. The Disk Management utility is currently not responding while 'deleting' the volume.


----------



## 1stgRAIDer (Jul 16, 2008)

--a quick update--

The Disk Management Utility ended its task from what I understand but it brought back the Computer Management area. I attempted to enter the Disk Management utility again but it does not load it. Strange. I will likely reboot but I am hoping to hear your input first.


----------



## wiseleo (Jul 9, 2008)

Gotta disable RAID.

A reboot should clear all this up.


----------



## 1stgRAIDer (Jul 16, 2008)

Ok, it did not take the first time when deleting the Cavalry array in Windows Disk Management. I rebooted and the deleted it again, then rebooted again. During boot I entered the Raid controller management for the Cavalry to confirm it shows no RAID.

Back in Windows Disk Management it now shows correctly all 4 750gb drives inside the Cavalry but the one that was listed as the array last time is showing a slightly different size. The difference seems insignificant but I wanted to mention it. 
Disk 1 698.63
Disk 2 698.51 **
Disk 3 698.63
Disk 4 698.63

Aside from the question I asked in my previous post(below), I think I am ready to start the image creation:

"Originally Posted by wiseleo 
What happens if you remove that power-hungry 8600GT card and replace the power supply with a better unit? Your array may simply come online if it gets enough quality power. 

Good question. I have removed all drives except for the raid array in the past and it did not come online. I believe the drives originally did start staggered and I know that they shutdown staggered in Vista. All of the drives show in the Intel Utility at boot and in the Linux environment. Doesnt this show that they are powered up? With all devices connected I am showing .150kw (150watts?) on the LCD on my battery backup device. I really dont think I there is not enough power from the PSU but maybe on this particular power rail. Its definitely worth the try.

Before I try this, in my last post, I showed that in the Intel Manager at bootup (CTRL + I), disk 2 is shown as 'Non RAID Disk' as follows:
Port# DISK STATUS
0 250gb Non RAID Disk
1 500gb Member Disk (0)
2 500gb Non RAID Disk
5 500gb Member Disk (0)

How do I re-add the disk to the array without damaging the array? It did not do this automatically and I do not see an option to add the single drive to the array from within the manager. "


----------



## wiseleo (Jul 9, 2008)

The partition differences should be insignificant for the purposes of this discussion, but I'd probably RMA that drive. Don't like surprises.

You'll reconstruct the RAID in software. I don't think I'd trust that Intel controller.

You think too much. I'd have replaced the PSU long ago. Swapping parts is cheaper than diagnostics time.


----------



## 1stgRAIDer (Jul 16, 2008)

wiseleo said:


> The partition differences should be insignificant for the purposes of this discussion, but I'd probably RMA that drive. Don't like surprises.
> 
> You'll reconstruct the RAID in software. I don't think I'd trust that Intel controller.
> 
> You think too much. I'd have replaced the PSU long ago. Swapping parts is cheaper than diagnostics time.


Well...the drive in question was not stable in rescuecd to work with (mounted but was not recognised as a proper ntfs partition) so I adjusted your direction and used disks 1,3, and 4. Luckily there were 4 drives to work with. 

The process completed tonight and I now have a diskX.dd file on each hard drive. I am going to attempt to rebuild the array using software now. I will likely start with raid reconstructor unless you have any other recommendations. 

I dont recognize the image format 'xxx.dd'. Will most recovery software recognize it or does it need to be converted into a manageable image format?


----------



## wiseleo (Jul 9, 2008)

.dd is just a raw disk image.

Good luck with the software reconstruction. I don't have a firm opinion on which software to use.


----------



## 1stgRAIDer (Jul 16, 2008)

Thanks for all your help up to this point, Wiseleo. 

I will post back when I have updates using the recovery software.


----------



## cb_oz (Sep 1, 2008)

Thanks Wiseleo, your advice above to 1stgRAIDer was invaluable for my RAID5 restoration effort.
In particular ddrescue overcame limitations in nearly every other imaging application out there (I'm a new fan).
I personally used Raid Reconstructer and GetDataBack for NTFS once I had the images, whole process took 2 days but was worth it!

Thanks again!


----------



## rjmarshall (Dec 22, 2008)

*Another thorny RAID 5 problem...*

Hi Wiseleo and everyone-

I have an Adaptec 6 port SATA RAID card with 6 WD 500GB SATA drives. My boot drive is separate and is still fine. A while ago, I set up a 5 drive array with the 6th drive as a hot spare. Yesterday I checked the server and saw the following message:

RAID Storage Manager Agent : Periodic scan found one or more degraded logical drives: controller 1. Repair as soon as possible to avoid data loss.

At that point, I determined which drive was offline, and wiggled the cable corresponding to that drive on the controller card. Thus begins my tale of woe...

As you probably would have told me, had I asked before doing this, this caused my array to fail. After reviewing this thread and the R-Drive Manual and looking at whatever else I could find on the web, I deleted the logical array and established each of the 6 drives as a simple volume in the RAID Storage Manager to be able to see them in R-Drive. I then ran RAID Reconstructor on a number of permutations of 5 drive arrays, but always have come up with not significant results. I also tried using R-Studio, but could not get the volume to appear. I am really bummed about this and decided to check with you before I cause any more problems.... Any ideas or guidance would be HUGELY appreciated.

Your humble correspondent, 

Rick M.


----------



## Sertelegger (Dec 30, 2008)

*Adding another RAID5 horror story to the mix!*

Hi everybody,

I have another RAID5 horror story to add to the mix. First of all I want to say thanks to wiseleo and everybody else for the useful information, however I might need some extra help with this one:

I have an older MSI motherboard with SIL 3114 SATA controller on it, which I used to run a RAID5 using 3x 500GB WD drives. So far so good. Then just before Christmas my PSU died, so I got a new one, which I installed and everything was fine again.

When the computer came up with the new PSU, I noticed that one of the drives was showing up as "Invalid RAID drive" in the SIL BIOS manager. So I thought no biggie, deleted and re-added the drive, thinking that this is exactly what RAID5 is for and that I shouldn't have a problem reconstructing the third drive.

This is where the pain begins: I used the SIL Windows GUI to rebuild the RAID group, and when I did that, the whole system just hung itself up. As it turns out the drive that was shown as bad really was bad and only occasionally comes up fine, but most of the time just disappears from the system. Well the Silicon Image controller did not like that and just crashed the system.

After the necessary reboot !!BOOM!! my whole RAID5 is gone! In the SIL BIOS manager now all three drives show up as invalid RAID disks. I still thought this should be easy to recover from, I deleted the RAID group and redefined it. However, when asked for the drive order I wasn't sure anymore what my original order was, especially since the description of the drives is exactly the same and I am not 100% sure that I re-cabled everything exactly the same way after replacing the PSU (which required me to remove the motherboard).

To come to the end: Windows only recognized the new RAID configuration as a new drive and wanted me to initialize and format it etc. which I did not do of course. I tried out different drive order combinations in the SIL BIOS manager hoping that it would show up in Windows again, but to no avail.

So I have two out of three drives of the RAID5 system, but I don't know what order they should be in. Sounds like something I should be able to recover from, right?

Well, I tried RAID Reconstructor, but just like rjmarshall it cannot come up with any significant results, even though I know the drive parameters except the order.

I also tried iRecover, which supposedly handles that exact case of determining the drive order and being able to reconstruct a RAID5 from two drives only, but just like with GetDataBackFromNTFS the results are garbage: I can see most of the directory and file names, but when I copy something over it only produces garbage. With JPG images it is easiest to see that something got messed up with the striping, because the photo will be put together with lots of stripes from different photos. So apparently the auto-detection wasn't so good after all.

I don't have the disk space lying around right now to try the same on disk images, and frankly I am not sure using disk images instead of the actual disks would show any difference.

Is all hope lost? I am trying to recover thousands of photos I had taken thinking they would be safer on a RAID... :upset:

*UPDATE:* I ran Raid Reconstructor again, but this time increased the probe size to some ridiculous amount (things sleep deprivation and frustration do to you), and to my very surprise this time it came up with a driver order recommendation, and the block size also matched what I already knew it was. So I'm running GetDataBackForNTFS on the Virtual image now to see what it comes up with and if it will be able to sort the stripes out correctly this time. I am even tempted to let the 6 hours run through instead of aborting to get a sneak peek at the results. I will update this post or post an update as I find out more. I am hopeful again! ray:


----------



## Sertelegger (Dec 30, 2008)

*Re: Adding another RAID5 horror story to the mix!*

I did it!

Well, RAID Reconstructor + GetDataBackForNTFS did 

Looks like increasing the probe size for RAID Reconstructor did the trick, since it got the drive order right, and GetDataBackForNTFS was able to recover 100% of my data from the 2 drives that were still working fine.

So I guess all things considered even though I lost the information about the RAID5 for a while and thought I had lost everything in the end RAID5 saved my butt, because I wouldn't have been able to recover everything with one failed drive if it had been a RAID0 or just a bunch of drives.

@rjmarshall: Try to increase the probe size (just add a couple of zeros, but processing time will take MUCH longer then!) to see if RAID Reconstructor finds a significant result then. Good luck!


----------



## Andy Cap (Feb 10, 2011)

Sorry for resurrecting this old thread, but this is the closest thing I have seen to helping me.

My situation is close to what was stated above, except that my drives didn't fail.

Here is the outline:

Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Intel i7 chip
Intel x58 express chipset
MSI Eclipse MoBo
Matrix Raid solution
Intel RST Raid tool in the O.S.


5 - 750GB drives in RAID 5 set
1 - 750GB stand alone drive contains the O.S.

History of issue:
It appears that Norton AV was scanning the drives, and the power went out at my house.

When the power came back on, my machine started having boot issues. Note the O.S. resides on a stand alone drive.

Windows event said the was a bad block on the C: drive. This is the stand alone drive.

I ran check disk on it, and it appeared to be ok.

I tried start up repair to no avail, it would crash.

Note that sometimes the O.S. would actually boot, adn at those times, the RAID was fine. Sadly, the O.S. was unstable and would blue screen shortly after.

Another important note is that the way I could get the O.S. to boot would be to go into bios and the boot options and tell the bios to boot from another device. For some reason this would boot the O.S.

I finally got to the option to run from last known good configuration.

Now the O.S. is stable.


HOWEVER, now my raid shows 2 drives missing and it is failed.

When I look into the Intel RST tool, it sees the 2 drives that are missing, but sees them as external to the RAID.

In the RAID, the two drives that are missing do show the proper serial number but the port is listed as "unknown". This leads me to believe that the bios got corrupted and port assignment got messed up.

The Raid set was partitoned into two partitions. Windows still has these two partitons, but the are not accessable.

I called both Intel and MSI, but they keep telling me to delete the RAID and start over. That isn't really the option here. I have my wedding photos and other family photos on this set and could not replace them. Never mind the 600GB of music I had to rip from the 100's of CDs I own. The music can be replaced, but it would be a huge pain. The pictures are irreplacable. Yes, I learned my lesson. From now on I will back up in triplicate.

Anyways,

Does anyone have any ideas on how to get these drives back into the RAID without losing the data? I am confident the drives are fine, it just appears the table with the RAID info must have gotten corrupted some how.


Thank you in advance for any ideas. As I wrote, this data is way too prescious for me to give up on. I would be forever grateful for a solution. 

I will look into the tools mentioned above. It will cost me quite a bit to set up another place to image the RAID to because it is over 2 TB, but I am willing to spend the $ and time to do this if it will work.


----------



## Sertelegger (Dec 30, 2008)

Hey Andy,

I feel your pain, nothing is worse than relying on a solution thinking you are doing everything you can to protect your data, and then it still comes back and kicks you in the nuts...

It sounds like your assessment is spot on, some corruption occurred to either the BIOS or the OS (or both) and unfortunately in my experience none of the RAID chipsets or configuration tools have any flexibility to let drives "back in" that dropped off the RAID set for some unknown reason.

This was exactly the reason why I moved away from on-board RAID chips and bought a HighPoint RAID card instead. The software support for the RAID card was much much better and allowed attaching/detaching drives, swapping drive orders and all kinds of stuff. Of course none of this information is helpful to you right now.

My advice is, try the tools I mentioned, RAID Reconstructor + GetDataBackForNTFS by Runtime Software. They have free trial versions on their website so you can try it out first and then decide if you want to spend the money to buy additional storage and the software to go through the lengthy recovery process. At this point it is unlikely that you will be able to get the drives back into the RAID configuration in your BIOS, and obviously MSI knows that if they say you have to delete the RAID. (At which point did they start believing it is okay to recommend deleting all your data if it was important enough to set up a RAID for it in the first place?)

By the way, I used the HighPoint card I mentioned above only for a year or so, but then started having issues again where a drive would drop off the RAID once in a while and cause the HighPoint beeping alarm to go off, and after a reboot the drive would be back for a while until it happened again. I ran drive checks and everything seemed fine, so I wasn't sure what hardware was failing where but didn't want to take my chances and wait until it was too late again. So I took the next step up on the data protection ladder (since I went from single drives to OS-level RAID to BIOS-level RAID to external RAID-card) and bought a Netgear ReadyNAS Pro, filled it up with drives and moved all my data over there. Have been using it for over a year now with heavy read/write access every day and not a single issue, but the cost for the NAS alone is certainly not a viable solution for everybody...

Good luck getting your data recovered, if the drives are fine your chances should be pretty good!!


----------



## Andy Cap (Feb 10, 2011)

Hey Sert. Thanks for the good words.

Fortunately, I work for an iSCSI SAN company, and should be able to use one of our test SANs to try to recover. I have 5 - 750GB drives, so according to what I read, I will need twice that space to recover. That would mean 7.5TB If I didn't work here, I don't think I would even have a prayer.
As for MSI and Intel - the support folks were nice enough, but pretty useless. The fact is, neither understood that the drives are fine, and that something happened to either the bios or the O.S. I imagineit is possible the drives have some kind of header file that could have gotten messaed up, but I don't think that is the case.

Regardless of whether I could restore the RAID or not - once I get this data back, no more on board RAID for me. It's a crime that they even sell this stuff. Let's face it, onboard RAID is made for the home user. Whcih means the person that is likely to use this stuff at home is looking to save their most prescious data in the RAID. My data would have been safer in a stand alone drive, or even a USB drive. Sad.

Anyways, I'll keep updating this thread as I progress.

Fingers crossed.


----------



## Andy Cap (Feb 10, 2011)

Sert - one other question. When you got the data back, did the files have their properties, or did you have to work that out?


----------



## raptor_pa (Dec 5, 2008)

Raid Reconstructor and GetDataBack would be a good start. R-studio is also very good at rebuilding RAID arrays. DO not try anything more till you are ready to do the recovery.
A word about RAID5. Raid 5 is not protection from catastrophic failure and is not a replacement for backups. RAID is designed for high availability - if one drive fails your data is still available for use until you can replace the failed drive - not to truly protect your data. In a business environment it may be critical that a system function till the next maintenance window, that is what RAID is designed to do, allow the system to limp along till it can be fixed.


----------



## Andy Cap (Feb 10, 2011)

Raptor - 

Thanks for the words. It is funny, I always tell my customers to back up their data, even though our SAN arrays have a lot of redundancy built in. I really should have followed my own advice. 

As for doing anything - the machine is off until I get all the tools in place, and truly understand the process. In fact, I am going to "dry run" these tools on a machine I have that is just for testing.

As stated, if I can get the data without "rebuilding the RAID", then I am done. Once I get the data, I will format the disks and put them on a real RAID card. No more fake RAID.


----------



## raptor_pa (Dec 5, 2008)

Both the tools will build a virtual raid. You are probably three legs up on the typical home raid user with your background. Probably 75% of the RAIDS we get in for recovery do not have a failed drive. Usually if it is from a home user, it is one of the cheapy Maxtor/Lacie?WD 2 disk raid0 network attached boxes, what a pain but those are few and far between from home users. usually from a small business, and never backed up. The number of larger busineses with RAID5 boxes and no backups are almost alarming tho.


----------



## Andy Cap (Feb 10, 2011)

Raptor -

Yeah alarming is an understatement. I have dealt with huge enterprises that didn't back up their data. International banks that didn't back up their email archives. Really? 

One would think I would have backed my stuff up. What was I thinking - lol.


----------



## cb_oz (Sep 1, 2008)

Andy - To be extra safe, especially when you have the spare storage, image each of your RAID disks individually (I recommend ddrescue) and then use any of the recommended tools loading the disk images (I used RAID Reconstructor for example).
That way you're not risking your original disks while trialling different software.
It's what I did and saved my we4dding photo's too :grin:


----------



## Andy Cap (Feb 10, 2011)

CB - That's exactly what I was looking to do. There's no way I want to gamble on this deal.

For example, the very idea of deleting the RAID in the BIOS and thinking that won't delete data from the drives makes sense, but is way scary.

So, I am putting a plan together here, and will post it. I plan to work on this tomorrow night. That is when I can bring my machine in to work, and have no issues monopolozing one of our test SANs.


----------



## Andy Cap (Feb 10, 2011)

OK - Odd question. Maybe not odd - difficult.

I am looking to use DDRecovery to copy the drives to iSCSI volumes so I can try to recover. The problem I see is the DDRecover is a boot CD. So, I am wondering if iSCSI will work. To connect to iSCSI, I will need an iSCSI initiator. 

Do Any of you know if this will work? I haven't purchased this product yet.


----------



## Andy Cap (Feb 10, 2011)

OK - I tried Raid Recovery - This tool kept returning that it did not have clear enough results. So, I went to option two which was to delete the RAID volume from the BIOS, and then recreate with the drives in the same order, and the striping the same.

When I got into windows, the RST program said it was initializing the RAID.

Here is the million $ question. Does this mean it is destroying my data, or is it just rewriting the RAID info on the drives? I stopped it at 1% just in case.


----------



## Andy Cap (Feb 10, 2011)

Bump* Anyone?


----------



## visseroth (Oct 25, 2010)

initializing the raid... Yes, data is being destroyed. It should say that it is rebuilding the array.

Wish I could help more but maybe someone else that has had more experience with recovering a lost array will chime in. Most of the time I keep images or backups of files laying around, even if the owner/boss doesn't know it so that when there is a catastrophic failure I look like the hero!
LOL

Which is one reason I'm building a 8TB NAS box for my own personal use at work. No one will use it except for me.

But that is something for you to think about later once you have made your recovery.


----------



## Andy Cap (Feb 10, 2011)

So, by initializing the raid, it is overwriting all of teh files I have saved? Or is it just initializing the raid header and such?


----------



## visseroth (Oct 25, 2010)

as far as I know, initializing the raid destroys the partition tables and sets up the drives to be configured for a NEW array, not the old one but don't quote my on that as my knowledge in raid array recoveries are EXTREMELY limited.


----------



## Andy Cap (Feb 10, 2011)

Good News!

I have recovered the data.

Here is the story.

I had figured that the Initializing RAID message was bad and stopped it when it was only at 1%. 

I disabled the RST service so it wouldn't start.

I then booted the machine with RAID enabled in the BIOS.

Then I went to Disk Management. I can see the RAID volume there, but it says unallocated.

I fired up Test Disk, analyzed the partitons, and it saw them fine. I could then browse and copy my data out.

After I finally get all of the data off, I will let the initialization complete, adn report back what I see or don't see.

So, the key is, before deleting and recreating your RAID, disable the RST service.


----------



## visseroth (Oct 25, 2010)

Well good to hear! Glad you caught your initialization in time!!!


----------



## Andy Cap (Feb 10, 2011)

Yeah thanks. I have gotten most of it off. It is a slow process because I am writing to NAS. Although my network is 1BG/s, Windows 7 blows for moving files. 

Once I am done, I intend to start teh RST service back up, and see what it does. I may even stop it at intervals to see if it intializs a whole disk at a time.

Thanks again for all that offered advice. Sites like this help me keep faith that people still like to help their fellow human.

I will surely stick around, and offer whatever assistance I can. Plus, I am learning a lot from the folks here. I guess this is like taking an online class. Can I get credits for it?


----------



## raptor_pa (Dec 5, 2008)

Sure you can, they're just not transferrable to anywhere  or significant to anyone really LOL...


----------

