At the start of December a 2TB drive in my Windows 2008R2 server's 6x2TB RAID5 array failed. The monitoring software crashed so I only found out at the start of January. I ordered a new drive and replaced the faulty one.
Here's where I messed up, in MegaRAID, instead of pressing "Rebuild" using the new drive, I first pressed "Mark Online", which I believe fooled the controller into thinking the original drive was working again, and so set about utilising the 2TB of data on the drive (or lack thereof). Quickly I realised my mistake, and so set the drive back to offline, and then started the rebuild. The rebuild was worryingly quick (around 12 hours), but appeared to complete without issue.
Once complete, I opened the array in Windows, only to discover that a series of folders had become inaccessible, and some disappeared altogether. I ran a RAID consistency check and this fixed the inaccessible folders, but one particular folder remains missing, along with its 4TB of contents. The thing is, the drive in Windows still only has the amount free that it had before the rebuild (400GB), so the data is definitely still on the array, I just can't see it.
Over the last week I've ran GetDataBack, and sure enough it has found the folder (and its 4TB of contents), meaning it's still there on the array. The problem however, is two fold:
1. I can't seem to get Windows to see the files, even though they are on the hard drive, it seems like its lost the "link"?
2. If I give up on Windows seeing them, and instead recover them to another drive with a vision to move them back to the array, there will still only be a small amount of free space on the array (400GB), as Windows still won't recognise that the data is "gone"
Any thoughts? Perhaps there's a simple function like checkdisk or some program I can run to enable Windows to re-recognise either the data still on the drive, or the freed up space?
Thanks in advance!
UPDATE: I have now resolved my issue
! A simple checkdisk made all missing folders return, and took all of 30 seconds. Wish I'd done this sooner. Thank you to those that tried to help, if anybody finds this in future, do a checkdisk !
Here's where I messed up, in MegaRAID, instead of pressing "Rebuild" using the new drive, I first pressed "Mark Online", which I believe fooled the controller into thinking the original drive was working again, and so set about utilising the 2TB of data on the drive (or lack thereof). Quickly I realised my mistake, and so set the drive back to offline, and then started the rebuild. The rebuild was worryingly quick (around 12 hours), but appeared to complete without issue.
Once complete, I opened the array in Windows, only to discover that a series of folders had become inaccessible, and some disappeared altogether. I ran a RAID consistency check and this fixed the inaccessible folders, but one particular folder remains missing, along with its 4TB of contents. The thing is, the drive in Windows still only has the amount free that it had before the rebuild (400GB), so the data is definitely still on the array, I just can't see it.
Over the last week I've ran GetDataBack, and sure enough it has found the folder (and its 4TB of contents), meaning it's still there on the array. The problem however, is two fold:
1. I can't seem to get Windows to see the files, even though they are on the hard drive, it seems like its lost the "link"?
2. If I give up on Windows seeing them, and instead recover them to another drive with a vision to move them back to the array, there will still only be a small amount of free space on the array (400GB), as Windows still won't recognise that the data is "gone"
Any thoughts? Perhaps there's a simple function like checkdisk or some program I can run to enable Windows to re-recognise either the data still on the drive, or the freed up space?
Thanks in advance!
UPDATE: I have now resolved my issue
! A simple checkdisk made all missing folders return, and took all of 30 seconds. Wish I'd done this sooner. Thank you to those that tried to help, if anybody finds this in future, do a checkdisk !
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