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winsane

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HARD DISK CRASH AAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!

The current system admin of our network has jetted off to Hawaii for a honeymoon and a hard drive crashed on our app server.  It is totally down and we need to get data off of it as all 80 users profiles are stored on it.  I have been told that there is a way to restore the MBR without formatting the drive but it is a RAID array if that matters. It seems like I should be able to pull a good mbr from the other drive in the array but I don't know that much about disaster recovery.
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ScanR

What kind of RAID configuration is set on that server?
Need more infor:

- What windows OS (2003 server, Linux, etc.)?
- Do you have Management CD from Dell?
If it is a RAID array, and one drive crashed, you should still be working!

Maybe your data is on a RAID and your system has a separate boot drive which crashed?

If your RAID crashed, you have a more difficult and catastrophic failure.

I hate to say this, but I'd be bugging my guy on his honeymoon!

John
Hi,

To share some experience with Dell's raid. At several occasion, I have seen a raid controler loose its configuration after a crash disk. There is an option to rebuild the raid without erasing the data. I do not remember exactly how to do that so I will not even try.

I guess that your choices are call the guy during his honeymoon and/or call Dell support (with your credit card handy if you do not have maintenance).
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lnkevin
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It is a RAID 5 on a Dell PE2650. I have the OpenManage utility disk. Windows 2000 SP2, btw....
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With a raid 5, you should be able to rebuild without any problem as long you have a spare drive. Best for you would be to call Dell tech soppert and have someone to come and do this operation. For enterprise support,, they can be there within 4 hours i believe. I do not suggest that you do it by yourself unless you have knowledge of the array configuration.

If you have access to the server, pull out the bad disk, replace with a new one and reboot. the rebuild should be automatic and can take 8 hours depending on the size of your physical drive.