HDD GURU FORUMS

As the topics read, Im wondering if its pretty much the same procedure to rescue RAID drives as it is with normal drives? My friend wants me to recsue his RAID drive and i told him ill try to fix it, so far ive been able to recover all harddrives ive gotten from friends without no problem even clicking drives.
Im using softwares, combining a set of tools that operates both under linux and windows.

Do i need some special equiptment to do this?
Could anyone highlight me that has experience of recovering RAID with softwares only.

Thx!

You can reconstruct raid under linux. I dont remember exactly how but there is post on here somewhere about a nas drive and reconstruction under linux.

You need to image the drives first and know how the raid has been created - it may require some tinkering.

How do you mean by fixed clicking drives? you lost me a bit there.

Well I have a software called Raid Reconstructur for Windows. My friend gave me it so I guess I could use that.
But I mean whats the biggest differences, will it take more time to recover those data?
Will I need some extra RAID controller or watever?

Harddrives that has been giving away clicking sounds, with intervalls of every 2-3th second.

It seems that this application that I thought was whack... appearently seem to be one of the better tools around. It makes a copy of the RAID and you can then do datarecovery with it just as a normal Harddrive.

Is it possible to recover RAID system to 1 single harddrive as a source? I have a 1TB harddrive I intend to use as storage for the recovery.

I don't want to be the one to burst your bubble, but I'll try to do it before the other guys come down really hard on you. Thus far, you have been lucky with the drives you have been working on and I'd like to commend you for getting them recovered. However, you do want to be careful and be sure to mirror the drives (especially RAIDs) first and only work with the copies for the software recoveries.

As for tools to mirror the drives, with some bad sectors, I recommend GNU ddrescue if you are looking for free, StarTech's Hard Drive Duplicator (http://ca.startech.com/product/UNIDUPDO ... cator-Dock) if you are only able to spend a few hundred dollars and DeepSpar's Disk Imager if you can afford to buy the best tool on the market.

In regard to the RAID situation at hand, if the data on the RAID has any value at all, I strongly urge you to get it assessed by a professional before you find yourself in over your head. This is not the time to play.

Good luck,
Luke

First of all im trying to become a proffesional, as I said so far so good. I have a good understanding of how harddrives works and the tools im using. The harddrives im working with has no crucial information on them. I backup everything, thats the first thing I do. I use ddrescue for this operation as I find it to be the best solution as far as software goes with very few to none competitors (HD Duplicator and Media Tools only).

Ive never dealt with RAID before, and im using a Gigabyte motherboard that has support for : SATA RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 0+1. Is this enough to save RAID drives?
The most used RAID is RAID 0, 1 and 5. I cannot do 5 but I dont think thats what he is using anyways so..

Is there any possible problems I might face? Or could I solve this just as ive done with my previous harddrives with no major differences?

I would like to say thankyou for the reply, and Im well aware the field I want to learn more about, but thanks for your concern mate, I mean it.
Im just got 2 more questions I would like to add,

Is there a better way to get to the files on a cloned harddrive then to run datarecovery program to bypass the filesystem, (since it takes 8 hours just to find all the files with getdataback), is there a way to just fix the filesystem instead and then access the files trough My computer in Windows?

Also, this physical duplicator for 250 dollars, is it much better then DDRescue, in what ways, if so in form of speed or what?

thx in advance

If you want to be a professional maybe its time to put in those hard earned hours/days/months/years/decades of research.

Ive read so much and tried so many harddrives, so far ive reached tremendous success with everything Ive touched. Sometimes its nice to have someone helping you with some information just like im helping people fixing their drives for free.

Can my friend just send me 1 of his harddrives if he uses RAID 1 so I dont need to setup the RAID1 configuration?
Will DDRescue work?
He lives far away from here so I dont want him sending something for nothing!

I found out that I need to setup a local RAID, also i need same raid manufacturer as they are using, same classification I mean. So theres noway I can do this, so im gonna not accept this RAID job from my friend. I dont understand how deepspar can do raid cloning...

Clone each of the disks separately. Then reconstruct raid array using the copies.

If your friend is using RAID1 and one HDD is dead, he should be able to rebuild array by replacing the faulty drive.

Ok so how come data recovery firms offer RAID recovery if its so easy to do? *sorry ab stupid question im just tryin to learn as ive not talked to him yet, its very late over here*

There are many types of raid setup, not all of them offer redundancy. Besides errors can happen on many levels of the involved logic/components.

When running raid arrays which tolerate one faulty drive, it is not uncommon that broken drives are not discovered until the second one is toasted. In other words: when the array stops. Though this mostly applies to servers which run for months or years without being rebooted. And often without backup as they were running RAID5...

For RAID1 I have seen people clearing the healthy drive while trying to replace/initialize the faulty one. Some raid controllers offer more robust procedures for this than others.

And as you probably guessed by now: if you are not familiar with even the basic concepts of raid configurations, you should not attempt any DR work for recovering important data. Although working on cloned copies will make it safer.

I will not deal with RAID, I will send it to data recovery companies, but I will do anything but RAID and NAS for my clients.
Im very quick to readup on things, when I study, I study hard.. and usually it takes me a few days to learn same thing it takes other months. But even so, I feel that i will be pretty limited due to configuration and time that I have to put into this, so I'll just leave RAID/NAS to the recovery companies... at least for now.
Thx for the explanation

First of all - you need to understand what RAID is. RAID is not one thing! Its a concept of many other complex solutions for various applications
Establish what you are dealing with.
What RAID?
What Filesystem?
How to rebuild it.

DR companies deal with raids that are made up of for example 16arrays with propriety file systems. You dont see them asking us how to recover that. Thats why its so expensive.
If i were to employ an IT techie and he did not know what raid is he would be fired the next day.. So keep on reading mr goldfingers that can fix it all.

I know what RAID is, I do not have the time to dive into that area however at this moment. Second thing, you learn as you progress.. trail and error. I dont consider myself as a proffesional data recovery specialist, but im somewhere in between, good enough to get the job done, and good enough not to messup the harddrives any further but retrieve data as needed.

- Greed is good