Page 1 of 3 123 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 25

Thread: Raid Recovery...when Raid 0 fails

  1. #1
    Senior Member Blunted One's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    183

    Angry Raid Recovery...when Raid 0 fails

    Good day to the ladies and gents of Anti-Online.

    I have had to learn the hard way about the drawbacks of raid 0. Today I come into work and see a blue screen on my monitor. I shut off my computer and turn it back on after letting it sit for a minute. As it starts up I notice a message that the second hard drive in this array now lists itself as a non-raid disk. The status of the raid array is 'failed' and it says it is not bootable, because only one harddrive lists itself as a member disk of the array and raid 0 cannot function without both the drives.

    This has got me pretty angry at myself since I never did a full back-up and after talking to those oh so smart people at Dell they want me to wipe it all and start over again to fix this issue and recreate the array. Apparently they don't seem to understand that I have important info on their I would rather not loose. I have been searching all over to find a solution that won't cost me an arm and a leg. When running diagnostics on the hard drives I got one bit of good news. The drives both pass the diagnostic tests, niether one is broken and the real problem seems that the array has become disjoined.

    My question to you is how can I fix this? Is it possible to get the two hard drives back together again? Is all lost and my only solution to go to the nearest data recovery store and shell out thousands of bucks to get back my hard drive content? Does anyone have a good solution or at least some things I can attempt to do before I kick the proverbial bucket on this hard drive thing? As always your help is greatly appreciated.
    It's not a war on drugs it's a war against personal freedoms!

  2. #2
    Just Another Geek
    Join Date
    Jul 2002
    Location
    Rotterdam, Netherlands
    Posts
    3,401
    This seems to happen every now and then.. I've had it happen on several brands..
    If you're lucky you just need to recreate the raid array.. And everything might work again.

    If there's really a drive failing.. Well, good luck

    Apparently they don't seem to understand that I have important info on their I would rather not loose.
    They do.
    This has got me pretty angry at myself since I never did a full back-up
    So.. Apparently it's really important but you've never made a backup

    You should be angry at yourself, not at the people from Dell.
    Oliver's Law:
    Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

  3. #3
    Senior Member Blunted One's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    183
    I am angry at myself. However the computer is less than 6 months old. I guess I should have done it from day 1. But that is niether here nor there. Anyone have another solution that might help me bring these hard drives back together?
    It's not a war on drugs it's a war against personal freedoms!

  4. #4
    Just Another Geek
    Join Date
    Jul 2002
    Location
    Rotterdam, Netherlands
    Posts
    3,401
    As I said, try recreating the array. It happend a couple of times to me too. Different brands, different hardware, same problem. The array config seems to disappear, probably due to some glitch when checking one of the drives. After retesting, all drives seem ok. Recreated the array and rebooted. Worked 9 out of 10 times.

    NB Harddrives tend to die at the worst possible moment. It may take a week, it may take 10 years. It'll happen sooner or later
    Oliver's Law:
    Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

  5. #5
    Senior Member Blunted One's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    183
    I have tried using the built in controller to recreate the array. It tells me their is not enough space to do it. Are there any other tools I can use that would work. The only options I can do is to reset or delete (both if I assume correctly will erase all my data). Not sure why recreating the array wouldn't work, but it just keeps tell me that it has insufficient space. Thanks for the ideas though. Keep em comin'.
    It's not a war on drugs it's a war against personal freedoms!

  6. #6
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    United Kingdom: Bridlington
    Posts
    17,188
    You might try this tool:

    http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm

    It costs, but it doesn't mess with the data, just reads it and reconstructs it someplace else. You really shouldn't install software and attempt to recover data onto a drive that has gone south anyway IMO..................to much risk of further overwriting and corruption?


  7. #7
    Senior Member Blunted One's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    183
    Thanks for the idea. I had looked into this, but hadn't bought it. The computer that has the messed up array will not get any farther than the screen where it recognizes that one of the drives is no longer part of the array. So all I get is a message that says array failed and then it can't boot so it stops at that screen and asks if I want to try and boot again. I currently am using a spare computer, but all the software I install on this tries to help repair this computer. I wish there was a boot disk that would diag. and run a repair on the raided drives and link them together again. It seems like this software from Run Time is a way to go, but has anyone used it before?
    It's not a war on drugs it's a war against personal freedoms!

  8. #8
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    United Kingdom: Bridlington
    Posts
    17,188
    I haven't used it personally but I have had pretty good reports about it, and I believe that you can run it from a boot disk (CD).

  9. #9
    Just Another Geek
    Join Date
    Jul 2002
    Location
    Rotterdam, Netherlands
    Posts
    3,401
    Originally posted here by Blunted One
    The only options I can do is to reset or delete (both if I assume correctly will erase all my data). Not sure why recreating the array wouldn't work, but it just keeps tell me that it has insufficient space. Thanks for the ideas though. Keep em comin'.
    IIRC it doesn't really delete any "physical" data, just the array config. The reason it has insufficient space is because on the other drive there's still part of an array. Remove all arrays and recreate them.
    Oliver's Law:
    Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

  10. #10
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    United Kingdom: Bridlington
    Posts
    17,188
    Hmmm,

    I agree that these things do "happen" from time to time, and normally I would do exactly what SirDice suggests. However we would both have full backups to rely upon?

    That is why I suggested what I would consider to be a somewhat safer (albeit more expensive) solution. Particularly as I do not know what caused the problem in the first instance.

    The problem with most conventional tools is that because the array is broken, they will not be able to match all the parts of your files which will be distributed across both drives.

    I must admit that I have never been in this position, as RAID0 is even more vulnerable than a single drive, and I would consider backups to be absolutely essential.

    I guess at the very least I would look for some sort of passive disk cloning tool, so that I would have a second chance if things went wrong?''

    I guess it all depends on just how important those data are, and how much of a risk taker you are?

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •