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| Thread ID: 69761 | 2006-06-11 08:35:00 | 600GB RAID 5 Array dies - dubious circumstances - please help restore! | Growly (6) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 462282 | 2006-06-11 08:35:00 | My dear beloved friends... Before I break out in tears, I thought I may share my anguishes with all of you. Who knows, maybe someone knows exactly what I need to fix my little predicament... Background: I bought a Promise FastTrak S150 SX4-M SATA RAID controller a couple of years ago, and with it 4 Seagate 200GB SATA drives (brand new). This is not a cheap card - at $400 I expected something more than the average integrated controller, and you'll understand my anger after spending $1400 on what I expected would serve me well :( Infact, I had been enjoying those little advantages and revelling in them until about 3 hours ago. I had created a RAID 5 array that spanned all four disks, totalling 600GB in size. It was full - of everything - of more days and weeks of downloading and hours of work than there are molecules in my foot. Everything is going fine - the array is healthy, all drives are operational. Then, the server freezes - it stops responding. I restart it (forcefully), and after it reloads Windows I find that my array has vanished. A look at the array management software reveals that two of the Array drives - namely 1 & 2, are no longer part of the array. The array itself is still there, and it think that it's missing two drives - but those two drives also appear as perfectly healthy... the catch is that they're not assigned to any arrays anymore. I cannot, it seems, add the drives back into the array for one reason or another (the software won't let me). Whatever means by which the controller identified the drives has disappeared, and I'm left with my life-savings in data gone. No, I don't have backups, because that would imply that I had another 600GB lying around somewhere. I have one idea and one idea alone to help me out of this situation - delete the array (which wipes the data), reform an identical array, and use recovery software to scrounge back my countless megabytes of information. The only problem is then that I need to find more drives and alot of spare time. What I don't understand is how something like this happens. I have two healthy drives, newer than the ones in my Desktop, and they both magically detach themselves from my RAID 5 array AT ONCE? What the hell?! Please, if you have any experience with this matter or know of any way to help, I will gladly kiss your arse for guidance. I'm tired, I'm far behind on my other list of things to be done, and now I'm depressed. Please, I beg of you all! |
Growly (6) | ||
| 462283 | 2006-06-11 09:07:00 | i've had with raid 0 when a drive disappears from the raid. not sure if it was software caused or a loose power connector. anyway i just rebuilt the array and it picked up all the old data, back to how it was. i think there is an faq on fastracks site about it. | tweak'e (69) | ||
| 462284 | 2006-06-11 10:23:00 | i've had with raid 0 when a drive disappears from the raid. not sure if it was software caused or a loose power connector. anyway i just rebuilt the array and it picked up all the old data, back to how it was. i think there is an faq on fastracks site about it.I thought that might work, and your inspiration was the last little push I needed to try :) /edit: I was originally put off by the big box that says "WARNING!!!!1one, deleting this array will delete all data on the drive!" I didn't know how true that was - i doubt it zero fills, but I wasn't sure whether it actually wrote to the drives at all. I should think not. Thanks :) |
Growly (6) | ||
| 462285 | 2006-06-11 10:28:00 | I'd backup the two drives that have dropped out of the set and investigate if they are faulty. Then I'd think about reinstalling the software/drivers to see if they were the cause and hopefully your array comes back up. Otherwise borrow an identical card from someone, as it is probably a chip on that has died. Then I'd invest in tape archives or at least throw together a cheap box with a couple of 300 gig drives and sync across a network. Your situation is why RAID is a good start but not a complete solution. |
gibler (49) | ||
| 462286 | 2006-06-11 10:50:00 | Maybe I've been a bit too hasty, but I did as tweak'e had done... I deleted the old array from the card's BIOS, making sure not to clear the MBR or the Reserved Sector in doing so. Why I rebooted, Server 2k3 did something that pleased me. It told me that yes, there exists a volume called "The Array of Doom" (aptly named, I know), and that yes, there re about a bajillion minor errors with it. I haven't loaded the OS to see the integrity of the drives first hand, but this looks promising: www.aryaparsi.com www.aryaparsi.com I didn't think drivers were to blame as the RAID levels are set in the card's on board BIOS, rendering any attempts to change this from the O/S fruitless... but in future I will take heed of the tape drive idea. I have a 2GB tape system, but perhaps the time has come for really manly redundancy. I don't think anyone else has this card either, because I was one of the only fools to buy it. To think if I had kept the drives running in JBOD, I'd have 200GB more space and alot more files right now. |
Growly (6) | ||
| 462287 | 2006-06-11 11:08:00 | Nope. I logged into Windows after that little spiel and I was presented with 600GBs of free space. Not a single file. Damn it all. |
Growly (6) | ||
| 462288 | 2006-06-11 11:16:00 | bugger. you didn't swap leads by any chance? |
tweak'e (69) | ||
| 462289 | 2006-06-12 07:01:00 | I would of tried adding more drives to rebuild your data, sure raid 5 has that ablilty. Depends on how much value the data is. You may have got warranty on the drives if faulty. 2 drives in 1 hit does however suggest controller/power issue. Guess there is no surety unless you keep backups. 600Gb is a lot of backup though...LOL |
SolMiester (139) | ||
| 462290 | 2006-06-12 07:57:00 | I'm beginning to suspect a power surge. We had one today (on account of the weather), and after another forced restart the Array had dropped a drive (again). Still, chkdsk can read the volume and tell me its name (explorer itself can't), but it promptly crashes with an "unspecified error". I don't know where to go from here. I have done a sector-by-sector scan, which found alot of files (not all of them), but all were corrupt. I don't know whether I can trust my RAID controller, or the drives, or the PSU in the computer (which is a crappy Hyena one, although it works fine... well has been), or anything at all.This makes the task of acceptance and moving on quite difficult... |
Growly (6) | ||
| 462291 | 2006-06-12 08:25:00 | Well, how about putting a UPS on then, clean controlled power with grafeful shutdown when AC fails | SolMiester (139) | ||
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