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TROUBLE WITH RAID 10 ARRAY, DONT KNOW HOW TO PROCEED TO SAVE DATA
HI THERE
SYSTEM IS ABIT AL8 MB, Intel ICH7R RAID CONTROLLER IN RAID 10(4 HDD), WIN 2003 SERVER.
THE PROPLEM I AM HAVEING IS THAT I WAS REPLACING ALL HDD IN MY CURRENT RAID 10 ARRAY. HOW I DIDIT WAS TO REPLACE EACH ONE OF THE OLD 4 SATA GEN1 DISKS WITH NEW GEN2 SATA DISKS ALLOWING ARRAY TO BE REBUILT EACH TIME, ALL WAS GOING WELL UNTILL I NODDED OFF DURING THE 4TH HDD REBUILD. WHEN I WOKE UP THE SYSTEM SCREEN WAS BLANK THE MOUSE WORKED BUT NO SYSTEM RESPONSE. I COULDNOT CONNECT INTO IT USING REMOTE DESKTOP SO AS THERE WAS NO HDD ACTIVITY I TURNED OF AT REAR AND RESTARTED.
DURING POST THE INTEL RAID BIOS SHOWED ASSAY AS DEGRADED AND DISK 4 (THE LAST TO BE INSTALLED) AS SOMETHING LIKE UNKNOWN ERROR.
SO I JUST THOUGHT I WOULD LET IT RESTART AS ALL OTHER MEMBER DISKS WERE OK, BUT WITHIN A FEW SECONDS OF THE "WINDOWS SERVER 2003" STARTUP SCREEN THE SYSTEM RESTARTS, AS YOU CANT DO ANY ADMIN THROUGHT THE BIOS AND THE SYSTEM WONT RESTART I THEN DISCONNECTED THE 4TH HDD AND THE BIOS THEN REPORTS ASSY AS DEGRADED BUT STILL NO RESTART.
I THEN SWAPED ONE OF THE OLD HDD TO THIS POSITION BUT NO BETTER.
THEN I REPLACED THE SATA DATA CABLE AND PUT THE NEW DRIVE BACK IN. NOW THE ARRAY STATUS IS "REBUILD" BUT STILL NO RESTART
I HAVE ANOTHER RAID ARRAY ON A DIFF CONTROLLER SO I THINK I SHOULD INSTALL A COPY OF XP AND INTEL STORAGE MATRIX . BUT I AM NOT SURE WHAT THE BEST STATE FOR THE ARRAY SHOULD BE IN PRIOR TO BOOTING UP XP AS I THING THE RAID WILL REBUILD AUTOMATICALLY, SHOULD I LEAVE THE 4TH DISK OUT AND REPLACE WITH NEW DRIVE OR SHOUL I JUST REBOOT WITH THE 3 DRIVES IN ARRAY TO GET DATA OFF ARRAY WHILST IN ITS DEGRADED STATE.
CAN ANY DATA BE TAKEN OFF ANY DRIVES BY ANY OTHER MEANS.
PLEASE HELP BECAUSE I AM REALLY STUCK AND DONT WANT TO LOOSE DATA
REGARDS
GAVIN
SYSTEM IS ABIT AL8 MB, Intel ICH7R RAID CONTROLLER IN RAID 10(4 HDD), WIN 2003 SERVER.
THE PROPLEM I AM HAVEING IS THAT I WAS REPLACING ALL HDD IN MY CURRENT RAID 10 ARRAY. HOW I DIDIT WAS TO REPLACE EACH ONE OF THE OLD 4 SATA GEN1 DISKS WITH NEW GEN2 SATA DISKS ALLOWING ARRAY TO BE REBUILT EACH TIME, ALL WAS GOING WELL UNTILL I NODDED OFF DURING THE 4TH HDD REBUILD. WHEN I WOKE UP THE SYSTEM SCREEN WAS BLANK THE MOUSE WORKED BUT NO SYSTEM RESPONSE. I COULDNOT CONNECT INTO IT USING REMOTE DESKTOP SO AS THERE WAS NO HDD ACTIVITY I TURNED OF AT REAR AND RESTARTED.
DURING POST THE INTEL RAID BIOS SHOWED ASSAY AS DEGRADED AND DISK 4 (THE LAST TO BE INSTALLED) AS SOMETHING LIKE UNKNOWN ERROR.
SO I JUST THOUGHT I WOULD LET IT RESTART AS ALL OTHER MEMBER DISKS WERE OK, BUT WITHIN A FEW SECONDS OF THE "WINDOWS SERVER 2003" STARTUP SCREEN THE SYSTEM RESTARTS, AS YOU CANT DO ANY ADMIN THROUGHT THE BIOS AND THE SYSTEM WONT RESTART I THEN DISCONNECTED THE 4TH HDD AND THE BIOS THEN REPORTS ASSY AS DEGRADED BUT STILL NO RESTART.
I THEN SWAPED ONE OF THE OLD HDD TO THIS POSITION BUT NO BETTER.
THEN I REPLACED THE SATA DATA CABLE AND PUT THE NEW DRIVE BACK IN. NOW THE ARRAY STATUS IS "REBUILD" BUT STILL NO RESTART
I HAVE ANOTHER RAID ARRAY ON A DIFF CONTROLLER SO I THINK I SHOULD INSTALL A COPY OF XP AND INTEL STORAGE MATRIX . BUT I AM NOT SURE WHAT THE BEST STATE FOR THE ARRAY SHOULD BE IN PRIOR TO BOOTING UP XP AS I THING THE RAID WILL REBUILD AUTOMATICALLY, SHOULD I LEAVE THE 4TH DISK OUT AND REPLACE WITH NEW DRIVE OR SHOUL I JUST REBOOT WITH THE 3 DRIVES IN ARRAY TO GET DATA OFF ARRAY WHILST IN ITS DEGRADED STATE.
CAN ANY DATA BE TAKEN OFF ANY DRIVES BY ANY OTHER MEANS.
PLEASE HELP BECAUSE I AM REALLY STUCK AND DONT WANT TO LOOSE DATA
REGARDS
GAVIN
ASKER
thanks for the prompt response
do you think the current controller is not capable of a sucsessful rebuild?
what's the diff between the 2 states "degraded" and "rebuild"?
will the controller not try to rebuild automaticly in windows or will it only do this the software is installed?
what do you think my chances are of sucsessful outcome?
regards
gavin
do you think the current controller is not capable of a sucsessful rebuild?
what's the diff between the 2 states "degraded" and "rebuild"?
will the controller not try to rebuild automaticly in windows or will it only do this the software is installed?
what do you think my chances are of sucsessful outcome?
regards
gavin
It could be that the controller is suffering a problem, and if you don't know what drives were in what postions, you dont' want to trash your data playing around.
(If you have good backups, play a way by all means.)
If you know what drives are good, what drives are bad and where exactly they were in the box, I'd give you a 75% chance of getting it all working.
If you don't know exactly what drives were where? I'd give you a 50% chance of toasting your data.
Fortunately as long as you have 2 striped pairs, you should theoretically be able to get everything back.
(If you have good backups, play a way by all means.)
If you know what drives are good, what drives are bad and where exactly they were in the box, I'd give you a 75% chance of getting it all working.
If you don't know exactly what drives were where? I'd give you a 50% chance of toasting your data.
Fortunately as long as you have 2 striped pairs, you should theoretically be able to get everything back.
ASKER
hi there
sorry to be a pest!!
i've also got the old set of 4 which were all ok but system was rebooted after every drive was changed and rebuilt so will this mean they will no longer talk to eack other. should i pout them all back into system, i have a note of what drives went where
regards
gavin
sorry to be a pest!!
i've also got the old set of 4 which were all ok but system was rebooted after every drive was changed and rebuilt so will this mean they will no longer talk to eack other. should i pout them all back into system, i have a note of what drives went where
regards
gavin
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ASKER
mounted 2 old drives and it worked, rebuilt from there.
fantastic no data loss but several services such as DHCP no longer work and Exchange information store will not mount (minor issues)
Thanks for the help.
fantastic no data loss but several services such as DHCP no longer work and Exchange information store will not mount (minor issues)
Thanks for the help.
You are very welcome sir.
(You need disk 0 & 2, or disk 1 and 4) typically on that controller.
Raid 10 works like this
Disk Number Raid Member
0 Striped Pair 1 Disk 1
1 Striped Pair 2 Disk 1
2 Striped Pair 1 Disk 2
3 Striped Pair 2 Disk 2
So you need 1 disk 1 and 1 disk 2 to reassemble a working striped raid.
I would stop messing around and go download runtime software's raid recovery tool
(If you didn't label the drives, you can still use the tool to find the drives)
Hook 2 disks (any two but preferably disk 0 and disk 1) to a computer running RAID recovery.
You can run the utility, chose the 2 disks, let it determine the striped pairs and empathy.
then you can destripe the array to an external Drive with enough space.
Then you can run Get Data Back to recover the NTFS partition and get all your stuff back.
Alternatively, you may be able to just mount 2 disks at a time on your controller in position 1 and 3 )(0 & 2) until they mount in the controller, However, Typically the more you play with these things the more screwed up they become and the more hopeless your recovery becomes.
(This is like a $3000 plus job to destripe and recover your partition in some cases due to the headaches involved)
So good luck to you on your recovery attempt.
Chuck House
Core Data Recovery