ST31000340AS - Need to recover drive that was part of array

[ckoeber]

Hello,

I have a ST31000340AS (Seagate Barracuda 1TB - SD1A Firmware) hard drive that is part of a RAID 5 (10 drive) array connected to a LSI/3ware 9650se-12ml RAID controller. In a short period of time both this drive in question and another drive has been giving me problems but the drive in question was still being recognized by the SATA RAID controller so I replaced the more troublesome drive. However, while rebuilding the array this drive fails.

Now, if I unplug the hard drive, replug the hard drive back in, and then restart the system the drive is recognized again and the RAID array can be used BUT when I attempt a recovery of data on the array the drive fails again.

My question is; what are my options?

I would rather not go to a backup of the RAID array as the backup would be about four days old now and the RAID array in question has data that is constantly being updated.

Is it possible to get the drive to a state so that it would at least skip over the bad sectors in question? I have the replacement already so I only need to get the data off of this drive.

I realize that the longer I wait the worse this situation can be so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Regards,
Chris K.

[harddrivespecialist]

You are guessing on your problem, it might be another drive that give you a problem.
Before you make your problem very expensive you should seek pro help.
Send it to one of the guys from this forum, such as drc or jono-ats. They are a bit south of you.
I am sure they will be able to help you in ample manner.

[lcoughey]

Ouch! A 10TB array is not going to be cheap to recover...especially if things get messed up. Definitely call a pro before you triple the price or render the entire project unrecoverable.

[drc]

I would start with imaging the drive in question on its own, and perhaps the others as well. If at any point you are unsure of what to do or feel uncomfortable with something, please stop and take it to a professional. Large arrays like this are all too easy to corrupt beyond recoverability by someone tinkering around, especially since you already have one drive down.

[ckoeber]

You are guessing on your problem, it might be another drive that give you a problem.
Before you make your problem very expensive you should seek pro help.
Send it to one of the guys from this forum, such as drc or jono-ats. They are a bit south of you.
I am sure they will be able to help you in ample manner.

Thanks for the information. You are correct in that I don't know exactly what is causing the drive to fail but I am fairly certain of the PHYSICAL drive that is causing the issue.

In either case, I will check with a professional on that.

And prepare to sacrifice an arm and a leg.

[ckoeber]

I would start with imaging the drive in question on its own, and perhaps the others as well. If at any point you are unsure of what to do or feel uncomfortable with something, please stop and take it to a professional. Large arrays like this are all too easy to corrupt beyond recoverability by someone tinkering around, especially since you already have one drive down.

I will try that. In the meantime, may anyone provide a rough estimate on what the cost may be?

It sounds like a lot but I don't want to just guess.

Thanks.

[harddrivespecialist]

Thanks for the information. You are correct in that I don't know exactly what is causing the drive to fail but I am fairly certain of the PHYSICAL drive that is causing the issue.

When you replaced that drive with new one system could not backup, which is caused by some other errors/problems/drives. Sometimes problem appear obvious, but in reality there could be some other issues that was not obvious at all.