cyclometric

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May 17, 2008
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Hi,

I have (or used to, until about 15 minutes ago...) 3 500GB WD drives in a RAID05 array on the onboard AMD RAID controller. I booted using an Ubuntu CD, thinking that (as the website said...) it wouldn't write anything to any of my disks. When I rebooted, I noticed that the controller found not the usual single array, in good health, but 3 distinct drives!

I am booted back into Vista now, and haven't opened the drives at all, and am hoping that there is some way I can reconstruct the array without losing any of the data on the drives. There is about 800GB worth of data I am praying is still there.

Any suggestions? I did a quick look on the net before posting here, and it looks like there are some solutions available, but *free* and *reliable* are my primary concerns.

From a desperate guy wishing he'd never wanted to check out Ubuntu,

Thank you,
 
Solution
I think i can help you out, and probably you can get all your data back.

Just don't touch the disks. Don't write to it. Best is to leave them disconnected for the time being. In no circumstance "initialize" the drives in the Disk Management screen; this would lead to dataloss because it overwrites data on the disks. Remember: with them being seperate disks again windows doesn't know this disk is part of some RAID-array; it think its totally blank and will let you format it if you choose to. DO NOT. :)

Second, you cannot have RAID05. Either you have RAID5 or you have RAID0, because for RAID0+5 or RAID 5+0 you would need more disks.

To recover your files i can use BSD operating system to use software RAID to reconstruct the RAID array...

sub mesa

Distinguished
I think i can help you out, and probably you can get all your data back.

Just don't touch the disks. Don't write to it. Best is to leave them disconnected for the time being. In no circumstance "initialize" the drives in the Disk Management screen; this would lead to dataloss because it overwrites data on the disks. Remember: with them being seperate disks again windows doesn't know this disk is part of some RAID-array; it think its totally blank and will let you format it if you choose to. DO NOT. :)

Second, you cannot have RAID05. Either you have RAID5 or you have RAID0, because for RAID0+5 or RAID 5+0 you would need more disks.

To recover your files i can use BSD operating system to use software RAID to reconstruct the RAID array, and acces the NTFS partition. This will require some time though, and also requires me that i access via SSH to your pc. Basically, it requires you to trust that i'm not doing anything malicious. I leave it to you should you desire my help. The procedure is - if all goes well - without risk because no single byte will be written to the disks themselves. If it works, you can copy all data via the network, so you need another pc on the network + enough storage space.

And don't use RAID as an alternative to having a backup; RAIDs themselves can fail like in your case; redundancy won't help you against that. You really need a backup.
 
Solution

cyclometric

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May 17, 2008
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Thanks for writing. I haven't touched the disks, so that's good. And yeah, I have just plain RAID5, I didn't realize the 05 was different. It seems incredible that the Ubuntu DVD could do such a thing, without any warning, and that it is so difficult to recreate the array.

I read somewhere that unplugging the drives, rebooting, then powering down & plugging the drives in again might miraculously restore the array... do you think that's possible?

The other option I was considering was to recreate the array in RaidXPert, choosing the "No Initialisation" option; any merit in that road?

Otherwise, I'd be interested in hearing more about your solution, although I don't have another PC to put on my network, so I am not sure how I could copy the data.

Thanks very much,
 

cyclometric

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May 17, 2008
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Well, I tried the option of unplugging, rebooting, plugging back in and rebooting, and.... it WORKED!!! My raid drive is here in Vista, all the data seems fine, and I am breathing so much easier. I am now considering getting the data off of RAID5, switching the 3 drives to RAID0 for the extra space, and then backing up data like a good little soldier!

Thanks anyway, much appreciated!