How to recover files from a failing raid array??

Buchanan0204 · 13 Aug 2011 at 15:13

I have two WD Green 2TBx2 in a raid0 configuration, running from a startek controller card.

The array started to play up and crash. I can't open many of the files. All large .MKV's

It fails WD lifeguard test and claims to have too many bad sectors.

Now I'm not sure which drive it is specifically, not that it matters as there joined at the hip. So how do I go about recovering these files from the hard drives?

What's the best option.

droyden · 13 Aug 2011 at 19:18

RAID0 = no redunancy, so you are going to be pretty screwed..
You could try to copy them off under linux which is less picky when it comes to read errors but still

whitecrook · 13 Aug 2011 at 19:20

Just restore from backup

BigBoy · 13 Aug 2011 at 19:41

whitecrook said:
Just restore from backup

PMSL!!

ChrisD. · 13 Aug 2011 at 19:52

4TB in RAID 0 and no backup?

Sorry to say, you deserve to lose your data.

Buchanan0204 · 13 Aug 2011 at 22:00

droyden said:
RAID0 = no redunancy, so you are going to be pretty screwed..
You could try to copy them off under linux which is less picky when it comes to read errors but still

That's exactly what I was going to do. Only thing I could think of... it's half worked before for me and it doesn't crash the way explorer does under Windows.

Buchanan0204 · 13 Aug 2011 at 22:03

MilanoChris said:
4TB in RAID 0 and no backup?

Sorry to say, you deserve to lose your data.

I couldn't afford to pay for another 4TB unfortunately to back the data up. I had half of it backed up onto as many drives as I could.

Unfortunately I'll just need to be more careful in future and avoid having so much data. 4TB isn't exactly easy to backup unless you have another 4TB worth of disk space... which is over £100.

All "productive" comments are greatly appreciated.

Puppetmaster · 13 Aug 2011 at 22:21

is it partitioned at all or do you have access to 4tb to "borrow" for awhile?

Buchanan0204 · 14 Aug 2011 at 00:19

Puppetmaster said:
is it partitioned at all or do you have access to 4tb to "borrow" for awhile?

I could get my hands on enough hard disk space to back it up for a while. It's not partitioned at all. Just one large 3.7TB drive.

Puppetmaster · 14 Aug 2011 at 02:12

Buchanan0204 said:
I could get my hands on enough hard disk space to back it up for a while. It's not partitioned at all. Just one large 3.7TB drive.

You could maybe try and clone your array over to another. I find at work you have drives that are hard to get data off but cloning to another drive can prove more successful. Ofcourse there is the risk with cloning that it makes the drive worse but well, a decent last attempt i would think.

droyden · 14 Aug 2011 at 12:46

I'd also make sure there is enough cooling in the case, a hot hard drive is an unhappy hard drive

anti5580 · 14 Aug 2011 at 13:22

I'm pretty sure you could have gone for RAID5 which would have gave you some redundancy without the need to buy another 4Tb HDD's.

Ch3m1c4L · 16 Aug 2011 at 14:40

anti5580 said:
I'm pretty sure you could have gone for RAID5 which would have gave you some redundancy without the need to buy another 4Tb HDD's.

hes still have to have bought another drive to make it 3 drives.
Could have not stuck them in RAID, or just done it as a spanned drive, so would only lose one drive at a time but still see only a single drive.

If its just bad sectors you could try to simply recover those sectors with a decent tool, windows one is pretty good, Ive had it fix sooo many PC's for me while I was in my old work, its pretty much my first point of call with any hdd problems.

I assume that its a small part in the middle of the file that has gone kaput, and as such windows trys to read that part of the disc and fails, can you try to copy the data individually off, and narrow it down to maybe one of two files?

There are a lot of data recovery tools out there, I cant recommend one for a failing drive, as I tend to only use ones for files that have been accidently deleted.