Dell PERC S300 SAS Power Connections

One of them connects to the PSU, the other provides power to the DVD as you can see here -
http://cdn1.itpro.co.uk/sites/itpro/files/images/dir_220/it_photo_110326.jpg

As dlethe says you may make it worse although if it's RAID 1 then there's a chance of seeing the data if you skip past the metadata and find the filesystem.

Hi dlethe!

Thanks for the response, it is greatly appreciated.  

I've resigned myself to the fact that this is probably NOT going to work and that I'm going to have to start over from scratch (had replacement disks delivered this morning).  It's not necessarily a bad thing as I've learned some things about RAID 5 and "spinning rust" since I originally setup this box.  The failed disks are from a RAID 5 array so I'm pretty much screwed.  I have an older backup of the specific file I'm trying to recover so it's not an "epic" problem but I'd still like to give it one last try before I give up.  

I have used SpinRite in the past on single drives and it was able to recover them.  I have also used it on as many drives (if not more) where it was NOT able to recover so - even on a single drive level - it's a crap shoot.  That said, there is reference to success stories on grc.com (of course right :P) about running SpinRite separately on physical disks from a failed RAID 5 array.  

The content is not worth the cost of sending it out for pro recovery but, I don't want to do something totally stupid that'll definitely destroy it either.

So my thought process is this:  

• If I physically remove the failed drives from the production server,

• attach them (one at a time) to a separate physical server,

• run SpinRite and let it try to repair the disks and, if it can repair at least one,

• stick the disks back into the production server and rebuild/boot.

Does that have even a snowball's chance in hell or is there something I'm missing (frequently the case)?  

If it does have a chance - can I connect the SAS drives one at a time to the PERC S300  in the "test" box?

Thanks again for the response and the word of caution.  "STOP" is always prudent advice when it comes to recovery!  :D

Thanks for the response Andy.  

I think those are SATA drives in your picture.  My question is in reference to connecting power for SAS drives that connect to the PERC.  The SAS wiring harness has two plugs on the end (P1 and P2) I'm uploading a better image with the plugs circled.  

Thanks again for the responses!
percsaslarger.jpg

what is the file size and the RAID5 stripe size and how many disks in the RAID, and how many failed. Assuming best case scenario and the file is contiguous on the filesystem (LOW probability), then one can do a little math to see whether recovery it is improbable, impossible, or really hard to do.  Consider that if the file is so large it spans multiple drives and even offsets on the same drive then you have to reconstruct the RAID as well.

conversely if stripe size is 128Kb and the NTFS is set for 64K and the file is 4KB  in size, one might just do a forensic recovery on raw device and not have to worry about reconstructing anything.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the input Andy.  Just looking at it i assumed that's what needs to happen but I just wanted to make sure since i hadn't used it before.  

Thanks again dlethe.  The file is a 250GB .raw file and there are 8 drives - 2 failed.  I don't know what the stripe size is.  But I'm guessing with the file size forensic recovery sans reconstruction is probably out of the question?  

Thanks again to you both.

spinrite isn't going to recover that file.  Take it to a pro and be prepared to spend $3000+, and you might get lucky.   Otherwise, give up and save yourself the  time and effort.   Sorry.

Thanks guys.  Hope you have a great week.