Raid 5 Problem

[Wulfgar]

I'm running an Asus m2npv-vm board running raid 5
I'm using 4 250 gb drives.
The system worked fine for about 6 months, i had a drive or 2 go bad but the rebuild went fine.
I found the system with a no boot device error. I rebooted the computer to find that the raid 5 had split into 2 different arrays each showing as 700gb (the original 4 drive raid was 700gb). I cant have 2 700 gb arrays with 4 250 gb drives.

So, i am not sure how to get my data back. I have looked into getDataBacks raid reconstructor program, but when booted with barts pe builder the drives dont show up in the program.

How can I get my data back?
-if i delete the arrays in the bios and recreate them does that write data to the drives or does it just tell the bios how to read them. I'm hesitant to do this incase there is a way to get my data back. But if it doesnt write anything to the drives then it wont hurt to do this.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[darkstar782]

In the course of 6 months you have had a couple of drives die?

That points to a SERIOUS issue either with (a) the controller, or (b) the cooling of the drives.

The reason you see two 700GB drives is that the partition is still 700GB in size, and the MFT and partition data will still show it as 700GB, it just has half missing from each "array".

It sounds like something has corrupted the RAID data on the disks, and the controller doesnt realise theya re the same array... This could either be a fault in the nForce 430 controller or again, the drives overheating and this causing corruption.

Be very careful with data recovery programs, if they alter the file structure at all then all is lost...

To be honest I think you need the help of a professional RAID data recovery company, but that wouldn't be cheap.

RAID 5 on a software controller like the nForce 430 MCP which does not have XOR caculation capeability is not the best idea, even CPU overclocking can cause data corruption as the CPU has been working out all the parity info...

 

[Wulfgar]

I thought about the drives overheating and i bought fans for each of the hard drives. They each had 2 fans constantly blowing on the circuit board side of the hard drives.

I have a 450 watt thermal take power supply, and its hooked up to a 1500v UPS. I was stumped as to why I had such bad luck except that it is just a bad raid controller integrated in the mobo.

I have bought a buffalo terastation to replace this machine but, would really like to get my data back.

Thanks for the reply!