RAID 5 Reconstruction Challenge

[Protech]

hello everyone,
I’m working on what’s turning into a pretty interesting RAID 5 case and could really use some expert eyes.

System: Dell PowerEdge R740XD, Windows Server 2019, hardware RAID 5 with 6 SAS drives (NTFS volume).

So far I’ve imaged five out of the six drives using R-Studio. The image sizes match, but the first and last drives have read issues — not completely dead, just partially unreadable. The remaining four look solid.

I’ve tested multiple recovery tools:

ReclaiMe RAID Recovery (detected parameters but one partition is missing)

R-Studio (virtual RAID mount – shows structure but some files don’t open)

Hetman RAID Recovery (finds files but many are corrupted)

File system is NTFS, single volume. One partition that should contain critical data doesn’t appear in any tool, which makes me suspect wrong parity alignment or incomplete data on one of the edge drives.

I’ve been checking block size and parity rotation (64 KB and 128 KB tested, Left/Right async). I have a feeling this array can be rebuilt correctly if the right order and parity rotation are found.
If anyone with solid RAID 5 experience wants to take a closer look at this case, I’m open to collaborating on it.
I can share layout info, screenshots, or partial metadata dumps from the images.

Looking forward to seeing if someone can crack this one could be a fun challenge for the experts. And I’ll make sure it’s properly appreciated.

[WebClaw]

At a very basic level you won't have enough drive to complete image assembly.

Make a 1:1 image of the disk 1 and disk 6; DELL uses PERC (LSI) - likely a 3008 chip controller, so look at end sectors on each disk to determine layout, order, etc.

Alternatively, you can read the metadata using MegaRAID in Windows for a single drive - examine the foreign config.

[WebClaw]

ADD: UFS will tell you the layout + config too.