? - Partial RAID recovery on HD we didn't want recovered - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

meanSpleen · 07-29-2008, 03:09 PM

Story - External HD loses its USB connection after it breaks off the board. We dismantle the unit, take out the hard drive, and try to slave it on a SATA computer

We didn't look hard enough and realized after the system starts up that we're on a RAID box (idiots = us). The system is RAID 5, mirroring, so it started the imaging process to get both hard drives sychronized. Note-we were the 2nd drive, being copied onto.

30-60 seconds, we notice it. Turn the computer off and go, "OH POOP!"

SO, it already started the process, and looking at it through Windows disk management, it had already started repartitioning the drive.

I am going to take the drive home with me since we seem to have zero SATA boxes here without RAID on it and cannot turn it off or get the system to recognize any drives after taking out the RAID controller.

So ignoring the box we were working on now - the drive is going home with me since I can use my box the way I want to. i have a copy of MiniPE and Hirens Boot CD with me that have recovery tools on it. I'm going to try what i can, but does anyone have any other ideas besides taking it to a professional shop? That is a last resort since this drive is full of pictures of the kid that this thing belongs too, and about 5 years of work and they never took precautions to have the data anywhere else.

Thanks!

rlbond86 · 07-29-2008, 09:03 PM

So let me get this story straight:

1. You had an external harddrive, of which the enclosure broke.
2. You dismantled the enclosure and attached it to your SATA controller.
3. Your computer recognized the drive.

Here's where I get confused:

4. Your computer automatically formatted the drive and added the drive to your RAID 5 array.

My question is, were you running a RAID 5 array with a drive missing or something? RAID 5 shouldn't autorebuild its data unless (1) a drive failed at some point in the RAID array, (2) you plug in a new drive to replace the broken one, and I thought (3) you have to tell it to add the drive to the array.

Was this software or hardware RAID? Since you say Windows formatted it, I would guess software, but I thought, in Windows, you had to specifically set dynamic disk partitions to be in an array. But I digress.

Try the free program called PC Inspector File Recovery, it should do what you need, hopefully.

meanSpleen · 07-29-2008, 09:33 PM

We took the 2nd drive out and slapped the external drive in its place. I think its a hardware controller, Dell sc17xx something server.

Currently using Recover My Files on my computer with the drive slaved onto it. No raid issues here because its my fricking computer!! Its found a bunch of files so far, and I'll probably continue with this as its working pretty good. I wanted to take an image of the drive first utilizing Hirens or MiniPE, but none of the included utilities really liked the drive since it was so f-ed up.

I'm checking out PC Inspectore File Recovery right now, and will probably keep a copy of it for the future. Thanks for the recommendation!

rlbond86 · 07-30-2008, 09:17 AM

Well, glad your stuff is (hopefully) safe. The moral of the story, of course, is don't take a drive out of a RAID array

I have to ask why you are running RAID 5 in the first place. RAID 5 is hardly oriented toward desktop users.

meanSpleen · 07-30-2008, 12:24 PM

Some manager who works here before me decided it would be a good idea to deploy it to the companies restaurants for their back office servers that control the Point of Sale. It was a fairly recent decision before he left, and that was literally the first time i was made aware of it. Nice eh?

So we retrieved about 100gigs of data, some of the word doc's are f-ed up, and about 98% of the pictures and videos she had on there were recoverable and seem to be opening correctly.

07-29-2008, 03:09 PM	#1 (permalink)
meanSpleen Squid hat! Location: A Few Miles Away From Halx	? - Partial RAID recovery on HD we didn't want recovered Story - External HD loses its USB connection after it breaks off the board. We dismantle the unit, take out the hard drive, and try to slave it on a SATA computer We didn't look hard enough and realized after the system starts up that we're on a RAID box (idiots = us). The system is RAID 5, mirroring, so it started the imaging process to get both hard drives sychronized. Note-we were the 2nd drive, being copied onto. 30-60 seconds, we notice it. Turn the computer off and go, "OH POOP!" SO, it already started the process, and looking at it through Windows disk management, it had already started repartitioning the drive. I am going to take the drive home with me since we seem to have zero SATA boxes here without RAID on it and cannot turn it off or get the system to recognize any drives after taking out the RAID controller. So ignoring the box we were working on now - the drive is going home with me since I can use my box the way I want to. i have a copy of MiniPE and Hirens Boot CD with me that have recovery tools on it. I'm going to try what i can, but does anyone have any other ideas besides taking it to a professional shop? That is a last resort since this drive is full of pictures of the kid that this thing belongs too, and about 5 years of work and they never took precautions to have the data anywhere else. Thanks! __________________ Like TFP? Donate To Keep It Alive!!

07-29-2008, 09:33 PM	#3 (permalink)
meanSpleen Squid hat! Location: A Few Miles Away From Halx	We took the 2nd drive out and slapped the external drive in its place. I think its a hardware controller, Dell sc17xx something server. Currently using Recover My Files on my computer with the drive slaved onto it. No raid issues here because its my fricking computer!! Its found a bunch of files so far, and I'll probably continue with this as its working pretty good. I wanted to take an image of the drive first utilizing Hirens or MiniPE, but none of the included utilities really liked the drive since it was so f-ed up. I'm checking out PC Inspectore File Recovery right now, and will probably keep a copy of it for the future. Thanks for the recommendation! __________________ Like TFP? Donate To Keep It Alive!!

07-30-2008, 12:24 PM	#5 (permalink)
meanSpleen Squid hat! Location: A Few Miles Away From Halx	Some manager who works here before me decided it would be a good idea to deploy it to the companies restaurants for their back office servers that control the Point of Sale. It was a fairly recent decision before he left, and that was literally the first time i was made aware of it. Nice eh? So we retrieved about 100gigs of data, some of the word doc's are f-ed up, and about 98% of the pictures and videos she had on there were recoverable and seem to be opening correctly. __________________ Like TFP? Donate To Keep It Alive!!

07-29-2008, 09:03 PM	#2 (permalink)
rlbond86 Insane	So let me get this story straight: 1. You had an external harddrive, of which the enclosure broke. 2. You dismantled the enclosure and attached it to your SATA controller. 3. Your computer recognized the drive. Here's where I get confused: 4. Your computer automatically formatted the drive and added the drive to your RAID 5 array. My question is, were you running a RAID 5 array with a drive missing or something? RAID 5 shouldn't autorebuild its data unless (1) a drive failed at some point in the RAID array, (2) you plug in a new drive to replace the broken one, and I thought (3) you have to tell it to add the drive to the array. Was this software or hardware RAID? Since you say Windows formatted it, I would guess software, but I thought, in Windows, you had to specifically set dynamic disk partitions to be in an array. But I digress. Try the free program called PC Inspector File Recovery, it should do what you need, hopefully.

07-30-2008, 09:17 AM	#4 (permalink)
rlbond86 Insane	Well, glad your stuff is (hopefully) safe. The moral of the story, of course, is don't take a drive out of a RAID array I have to ask why you are running RAID 5 in the first place. RAID 5 is hardly oriented toward desktop users.