RAID 5 Whoopsie...

Amraam

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...and by whoopsie I mean total **** up on my part.

I have an 8TB RAID 5 array comprising of 3 4TB SAS disks, controlled by an HP P410 controller. I've stupidly never set a back up. Ever. I came home to find the D drive missing on my server and a dreaded repeating clicking sound on one of the drives. Shut down, loaded up the P410 utility, and yup, disk 2 MISSING. Other two are fine, yet the array is in a failed state. I replaced the failed disk, let the whirring/activity stop, then boot back into the utility. Disk is showing but the array is still failed with a warning about data being lost. I brought the array back online and let the rebuild process complete. It failed. I can see the D drive on the OS but all the files and folders are corrupt. Gutted.

So, now I have the task of trying to salvage anything I can. They're SAS drives, so I can't simply plug them into another PC. Shall I buy another cheap RAID SAS controller and plug the disks in separately and back them up before trying some form of software RAID data recovery?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, but please lay off the "you should have backed up". I know that, and hindsight is a bitch. I'll not be cheap/lazy next time.
 

Steveocee

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As much as I really want to help you here. Moving between controllers especially HP is asking for more trouble. If you replaced the failed disk (you are sure it was the right disk you pulled right) and it failed to rebuild the array then usually that is the time to flatten it and restore from a backup.

I do hope you can bring it up but ultimately prepare yourself for the worst.
 

Amraam

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Steveocee said:
As much as I really want to help you here. Moving between controllers especially HP is asking for more trouble. If you replaced the failed disk (you are sure it was the right disk you pulled right) and it failed to rebuild the array then usually that is the time to flatten it and restore from a backup.

I do hope you can bring it up but ultimately prepare yourself for the worst.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm pretty much bringing myself around to the idea that it's all gone, especially given the fact the majority of the files were several GBs. It's main purpose was my PLEX and file server, and it housed all my GoPro and OBSStudio footage. It's more the WIP premiere videos and holiday/airshow RAW photos that I care about the most, but thankfully most of the photos I marked as keep had been edited and exported onto Google Photos already.
 

MassiveJim

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Can you take the HP controller out of the PC it is in (assume NAS) and plug that and the drives in to another PC ?
Always wise to have drives labelled so you know which one you are pulling. (I say this I don't think I did this in my home NAS)
My business server is a Dell Poweredge so its pretty easy to tell which drive you need to pull, don't know why I didn't get a Dell server to use as a NAS at home tbh.

Mine was around £400 off ebay, just had to put drives in it.
 

Amraam

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b00merang69 said:
File Scavenger

http://www.quetek.com/

Not used the raid version (it may be combined now) but I paid for that years back and it saved me from a failed WD My Book.

Since then they added a 2nd piece of software : Disk Recoup
Click to expand...

So even if the logical drive had failed, but Server 2012 can see the 8TB array albeit with corrupt files, this might work to recover the corrupt files? From OS level? I was thinking I'd have to pull the drives, put them into a SAS controller as separate disks, bit by bit back them up, and use a RAID reconstructor app to salvage files
 

Amraam

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MassiveJim said:
Can you take the HP controller out of the PC it is in (assume NAS) and plug that and the drives in to another PC ?
Always wise to have drives labelled so you know which one you are pulling. (I say this I don't think I did this in my home NAS)
My business server is a Dell Poweredge so its pretty easy to tell which drive you need to pull, don't know why I didn't get a Dell server to use as a NAS at home tbh.

Mine was around £400 off ebay, just had to put drives in it.
Click to expand...

It's currently in an HP microserver. I haven't entirely ruled out the P410 controller at fault, however I find it unlikely given the noise the disk was making as it failed and the same disk was marked as MISSING in the controller screen. The only reason I used SAS drives is because they were given to me at work as they were unneeded. Couldn't argue with £600 of free enterprise disks, but I would have been in a lot less mess had they been regular SATA :/
 

b00merang69

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Amraam said:
So even if the logical drive had failed, but Server 2012 can see the 8TB array albeit with corrupt files, this might work to recover the corrupt files? From OS level? I was thinking I'd have to pull the drives, put them into a SAS controller as separate disks, bit by bit back them up, and use a RAID reconstructor app to salvage files
Click to expand...


Not sure but the Free version will show you the files but AFAIR will not recover them or possibly lets you recover one at a time (its been that long).

And I think the normal version and raid version are one in the same now.
 

Amraam

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b00merang69 said:
Not sure but the Free version will show you the files but AFAIR will not recover them or possibly lets you recover one at a time (its been that long).

And I think the normal version and raid version are one in the same now.
Click to expand...

Just had a look and the RAID seems to be a pro service, rather than a consumer product. I'll keep checking.
 

b00merang69

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Amraam said:
Just had a look and the RAID seems to be a pro service, rather than a consumer product. I'll keep checking.
Click to expand...

I think its now combined as I said above as there were 2 versions at time I paid for it the second being the more expensive Raid version.

"Features
Features in Version 5.3
  • Supports nested spanned volume, RAID and virtual drives (VMDK/VHD/VHDX) in many combinations.
  • Supports Btrfs.
  • Groups trivial volumes under one subtree. Trivial volumes contain no or little user data. They may clutter up the results.
  • Shows deleted data in a separate subtree.
  • Supports VMFS long scan.
  • Saves the recovered data from multiple volumes in one operation.
  • Fixes bugs in Version 5.2."

http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm


https://www.quetek.com/RAID_settings.htm?fr=faq
 

skyripper

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I successfully used software from runtime.org to rebuild a fubar raidset of 3 disks. Was about 10 years ago but the principles of Raid have not changed since then.
 

Amraam

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skyripper said:
I successfully used software from runtime.org to rebuild a fubar raidset of 3 disks. Was about 10 years ago but the principles of Raid have not changed since then.
Click to expand...

But was this done with three independent disks, or just from the OS on the logical drive?
 
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