July 6, 2008 02:55pm pdt

1. lnkevin 308,533
2. andyalder 162,052
3. leew 71,459
4. KCTS 52,801
5. rindi 51,081
6. RobWill 44,254
7. meyersd 41,397
8. PUNKY 38,733
9. sifuedition 34,898
10. tigermatt 34,020
11. akirhol 28,635
12. SysExpert 28,513
13. ryansoto 26,805
14. Callandor 23,698
15. TechSoEasy 23,525

1. lnkevin 537,184
2. andyalder 403,060
3. leew 137,270
4. rindi 112,488
5. KCTS 108,735
6. SysExpert 88,566
7. PUNKY 70,283
8. meyersd 65,697
9. 65td 62,400
10. RobWill 59,454
11. JjcampNR 50,660
12. TechSoEasy 49,843
13. jamietoner 47,847
14. tigermatt 38,560
15. Callandor 37,538

01.16.2008 at 08:04PM PST, ID: 23089246

	[x] Attachment Details

[x]

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4.2

Rebuild RAID 5 Dell PowerEdge 2600 RAID Reconstructor

Zones: Computer Servers, Hard Drives & Storage, Computer Hard Drives

Tags: Dell, PowerEdge Server, 2600, Crashed RAID 5

I think I'm near the end of my rope but ... I'm no expert.

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2600. I've been asked to try and recover the data from a failed RAID 5. I've lost 2 of the 3 discs and have no idea how. That information wasn't given to me.

I've been trying to run RAID Recontstructor (runtime.org) along with GetDataBackNTFS but so far nothing. I cannot get more than "Result is not significant" and I'm just stumped.

Is it better to run GetDataBackNTFS and create images of each drive then feed those to RAID reconstructor? Wide open to any and all ideas.

Running RAID reconstructor should I change any of the default parameters that it sets or not?

Any help at all would be great.

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Question Stats

Zone: Computer Hardware

Question Asked By: rawinnlnx9

Solution Provided By: brent_caskey

Participating Experts: 4

Solution Grade: A

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01.16.2008 at 08:17PM PST, ID: 20678644

brent_caskey:

Did both drives fall offline at the same time?
When you go into the perc controller, do you see any media errors / other errors on the hard drives?

01.16.2008 at 08:19PM PST, ID: 20678648

brent_caskey:

What we can probably do is force one drive online and try to boot with 2 drives - before doing this, which drives are offline/online and let me know if you see any media errors / other errors in the PERC controller (Ctrl+M) at boot.

01.16.2008 at 08:21PM PST, ID: 20678655

rawinnlnx9:

I believe the drives fell off possibly months apart if not even longer. I've actually tried forcing offline/online the drives and even though no media errors were reported the RAID would never come up. Kept getting link errors. I've since broken the RAID and removed the RAID configuration to use RAID reconstructor as that's the only way to get at the drives separately.

01.16.2008 at 08:22PM PST, ID: 20678661

brent_caskey:

Did you try to force all drives online or have only 2 on at a time?

01.16.2008 at 08:25PM PST, ID: 20678676

Rank: Master

scrathcyboy:

If you have lost 2 of 3 disks, it's time to call it a day, have a dozen beers, and count your losses. No RAID will endure with more than 1-2 disks gone. If Raid reconstructor and later getdataback cannot get it, you are up the RIAD without a rope. Sorry, but it seems only an indian rope trick can pull it off, and it is not likely. I would recommend a clean install to a singel IDE drive for now, and recover what you can remember, it will not take more than 1 day. Then seriously evaluate if you really need a RAID. RAID 0 is terribly unreliable, it takes raid 1, 5 or 10 to get any relaibility.

I find buying a reliable IDE drive like an Hitachi, that is known to be reliable, is more dependable than a raid made up of bad hard disks like western digital, guaranteed to fail. With one good drive, and frequent back ups, that is as good as you are going to get with today's technology. Best of luck to you .....

01.16.2008 at 08:25PM PST, ID: 20678679

brent_caskey:

What I would do is as follows:
Take the drive that was online when the 2 went offline and make sure that it shows online in the PERC controller
Then, take the drive that you think is the best one (one that fell offline last) and force it online
Take the 3rd drive and unseat the drive.

If that doesnt work, power off the server and with the server's power off, remove the drive that you forced online and seat the other drive

force the drive that you just reseated online and try to boot.

BTW - at any point prior to troubleshooting, did you attempt a rebuild? If so, the data is gone.

01.16.2008 at 08:26PM PST, ID: 20678681

brent_caskey:

I have recovered this on this server 100 times IF I can get to the server before any troubleshooting has been done.

01.16.2008 at 08:28PM PST, ID: 20678686

brent_caskey:

If you cleared the configuration on the controller, setup the configuration again - as it was, with the drives in the same location and then force one of the bad drives offline DO NOT initialize the array at any point - if you do this, you will also lose all of you data.

01.16.2008 at 08:29PM PST, ID: 20678692

camacho_marco:

http://www.drivelabs.us/?gclid=COWevZu3_JACFRxZiAodFzk6jw

At this point is better to identify al your drives on how the config was before the disaster and send the Hard Drives to experts.

Cheers

01.16.2008 at 08:31PM PST, ID: 20678700

sifuedition:

It is best to consider the data gone but that does not mean I would give up. I am wondering if the raid 5 was the only array on the system. Everyone seems to be making that assumption and from your description I understand why, but I wanted to make sure. If not, there are a number of options. If this is the only array or it is the boot array, we are stuck with working in the controller BIOS and don't have as many tools to do this. Do we know which drive failed first? That is the biggest key. The other drives in the array may have continued to write data after the first drive went offline. Whichever disk was the SECOND to go offline, can be forced back online in the controller to attempt to recover. In the bios, you would go to Configure | View/Add Configurations. Be careful NOT to use New Configuration or Easy Configuration. From View/Add, you would go to the disk that failed second and press enter. You should have an option there to force the drive online. If you are not sure which failed first, take your best guess. If the system does not boot or anything seems "fishy" then bring the system back down. Force that drive offline. Force the other drive online and try that.

01.16.2008 at 08:33PM PST, ID: 20678707

rawinnlnx9:

Brent I've just cleared the configuration. I have not reset it. In clearing the configuration the drives fell off. I've been able to get a lot of the data but one file in particular is escaping me. I'm almost there but not quite.

01.16.2008 at 08:43PM PST, ID: 20678777

brent_caskey:

What program were you using to get the data?

01.16.2008 at 08:49PM PST, ID: 20678822

rawinnlnx9:

RAID Reconstructor to try and kluge the RAID back then GetDataBackNTFS. Know of anything better?

01.16.2008 at 08:55PM PST, ID: 20678861

brent_caskey:

Nope - i was just trying to give you a solution that wouldnt require a software program.

Let me know if you would like to try to rebuild the configuration on the PERC controller and attempt to get the drives back online.

Are these the OS drives or are these just data drives.

If these are other drives, and you have Dell Open Manage on your computer, we can check the logs to get the details on which drive fell offline first/last.

01.16.2008 at 09:01PM PST, ID: 20678900

rawinnlnx9:

You mean we can rebuild it? We *CAN* rebuild it *AND* still get the data/raid? Or do you mean just bring the server back up so it's useable? All the drives are under warranty so that's not a huge issue. But if you think we can rebuild it *AND* get the data I'm all ears...

01.16.2008 at 09:25PM PST, ID: 20678966

brent_caskey:

I think that we have a chance to bring the server online (with data from before the failure) - it wont work if the software programs moved/changed data on the drives.

We can give it a try though if you want to have a go at it.

01.16.2008 at 09:41PM PST, ID: 20679008

rawinnlnx9:

Umm... don't get my wrong if I suddenly scream obscenities in pure glee but H3LL YEAH!!! No data has been moved or touched at all. All operations have been read only. I also have 2 perfectly good 80 pin Ultra 320 SCSI drives that were sent me by Dell should we need them. So all total I have 6 drives. 4 originals in the foobar (3 raid, 1 spare) and 2 clean drives.

I am so interested in seeing how this goes. If points are a big deal to you I'll open a second question for you a trivial one you can answer and I'll give you 500 more just for the learning experience.

You got yourself a deal!!!

01.16.2008 at 10:21PM PST, ID: 20679123

brent_caskey:

Ok sorry for the delay...

What I need to know first, is how many drives did you have and what slots were they in

Also, in the PERC controller, do you happen to remember the A00-XX numbers that you saw?

01.16.2008 at 10:22PM PST, ID: 20679131

brent_caskey:

I am also assuming that these include the OS partitions as well - if we can boot into windows, I might try something slightly different to get more information

01.16.2008 at 10:42PM PST, ID: 20679190

rawinnlnx9:

Had four drives and they were set up like this:

[2][1][0]
[x][x][3]

3 and 0 were dead. 2 was 'online' and 1 was 'ready' very odd configuration if you ask me but I'm so new to this that... well anyway.

As far as the A00-XX I don't remember. I just remember seeing 2 columns with six rows for 2 arrays. Array zero had 0 as failed, 1 online, 2 ready 3 failed 4 blank, 5 blank and six was P if I remember right but none of that may be what you are asking.

If my gut feelings are right I think drive 3 was the last to go and that drive 2 and 3 were the acting RAID up until the day of death. I think [0] died many moons ago and [1] has always been in the 'Ready' state but never anything else. Why drive [1] wasn't configured as a hot spare I'll never know but I could strangle someone for quite happily.

I'm off to bed for now. I have one horrible mother of a back so I'm sure I'll be up around 2:00AM or 3:00AM in a bit of pain. I'll have to walk around a bit before it backs off (nice way to live at age 33, had the problem since I was 17). So I'll check back. You tell me what you want and I will make it so.

Thanks in advance!!!

- Rex

01.16.2008 at 11:41PM PST, ID: 20679425

sifuedition:

rawinnlnx9: The Axx-xx numbers will be important. The Axx is the array number and the -xx is the member number within the array. This builds a picture of how many arrays there are and which disks are members of each array. A typical setup would be something like:
0 Online A00-00
1 Online A00-01
2 Online A00-02
3 Hotsp

This might be something you see on a 3 disk raid 5 with a hotspare. If drive one failed and the hotspare kicked in, it would then look something like:

0 Online A00-00
1 Ready
2 Online A00-02
3 Online A00-01

If you can get this information, it may be a big help. As you can see, you may have had a failure in the past and a hotspare already used.

Brent: I don't mean to step on your toes and not trying to "steal" credit. Just trying to help.

01.17.2008 at 12:00AM PST, ID: 20679477