RAID 5 Issue

[daRecoM]

Dear All Guru,

Problem Description
hardware RAID 5 configuration with 3 SATA hard drives, the issue started from a physical damage of the first hard drive ('clicking' noise) and the so called external IT support unplugged all hard drives and swap the problem media with a brand new one. Now when they plugged in all hard drives back on the machine they did not (or rather they did not know they are supposed to) followed the sequence of the drives (1+2+3 became 2+3+1) and booted up the machine. Apparently they've got all sort of RAID error messages and didn't even get to boot into Windows. Now all data are trapped in a corrupted RAID storage.

We have plugged the hard drives into another machine and tried both RAID Reconstructor & R-Stidio to reconstructor the corrupted RAID and the following are the result.

RAID Reconstructor

OpenDrive.PNG (16.55 KiB) Viewed 4570 times

ResultNotSignificant.PNG (20.36 KiB) Viewed 4569 times

R-Studio

We managed to clone the RAID into a single image file and scan from there. The result/outcome is rather useless. We have got bunch of broken files with us and many more are missing.

Question

1. As long there are still 2 hard drives in the RAID 5 still functioning properly, we should be able to re-construct the RAID and retrieve the data?

2. Is the RAID interface a must for us to perform this recovery work? if so, why?

3. We are not quite sure if the external IT support had reinitialized the RAID configuration, if so, does it mean the chances of data still recoverable are low?

Both RAID reconstructor and R-Studio complained the parameter is missing/ unclear, what should we do to correct this issue?

Any advise will be very much apprecaited

[dobrevjetser]

Hi,

In my opinion raid reconstructor is useless in most cases, especially when one drive is missing, it wont be able to find stripe size etc...
You are right that 2 out of three drives should be sufficient to retrieve the data, at least when they are not messed up.
Best tool for this is winhex in my opinion.

First of all you have to determine the correct parameters: stripe size, offset, forward or backward, dynamic or not.
Winhex is very good at helping determine that, but you'll need to do the thinking.

Good luck,

Dobre

[daRecoM]

Hi,

In my opinion raid reconstructor is useless in most cases, especially when one drive is missing, it wont be able to find stripe size etc...
You are right that 2 out of three drives should be sufficient to retrieve the data, at least when they are not messed up.
Best tool for this is winhex in my opinion.

First of all you have to determine the correct parameters: stripe size, offset, forward or backward, dynamic or not.
Winhex is very good at helping determine that, but you'll need to do the thinking.

Good luck,

Dobre

Hi dobrevjetser,

hey thanks for your advice, Dobre.

True enough I've found the same answer from this forum that the Winhex seems to be the tool to solve this issue.

After some googling, I found the complaint of "The result is not significant" means required information like stripe size, offset etc are not available/ sufficient why would it be missing/ insufficient while the other 2 drives are still functioning properly?

umm anyway, will try the suggestion tonight

Thanks Dobre and any more suggestion are most welcoming

[scratchy]

RAID reconstructor does not cater for all RAID 5 types and this could be your problem. Winhex covers most (as does R-Studio).

Winhex and a good understanding of the file sytem you are trying to recover will get the job done.

<itch>

[hddguy]

What is RAID controller, or motherboard model? you say Windows did not load, so FS is NTFS? RAID Reconstructor supports NTFS and should at least display an OS value such as OS1. OS2 etc. Maybe your RAID uses a header? Did so called IT Expert reinitialise raid while in incorrect order? Was RAId reinitialised in incorrect order with a replacement disk?

there are too many factors here that can potentially cause a serious loss of data. If data is of any value you need to consult a professional