[ale] Hardware RAID5 recovery in software

Thu Mar 13 02:22:40 EDT 2014

ddrescue didn't do the trick for me either - the drive had a bad head;
maybe the EM coil that moves it around got messed up somehow. Not
that it would matter, though. After looking at the array info, that
drive had fallen out several months prior and a hasty recovery attempt
had already been made with the two good drives. Like I said though, it's
out of my hands now. I hate it for the guy :P

On Thu, 13 Mar 2014 02:13:46 -0400
dev null zero two <dev.null.02 at gmail.com> wrote:

> your next best bet is ddrescue on the damaged drive.
> 
> Sent from my mobile. Please excuse the brevity, spelling, and
> punctuation. On Mar 13, 2014 2:04 AM, "Dustin Strickland"
> <dustin.h.strickland at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Jesus, I've been short of time lately... I didn't realize that it's
> > been a whole week since I was able to check up on this. Anyway, I
> > can't try anything else as it's out of my hands now, but I tried
> > everything I could think of. Unfortunately, I couldn't recover
> > anything.
> >
> > As per Jim's suggestion, I tried swapping out the logic board in the
> > bad drive, which had no effect. Before and after, it would only read
> > 153MB of data from the drive - I thought it to be a bad head, which
> > I confirmed by spinning up the drive with the top cover off(mostly
> > for my amusement; I wouldn't have done it if I wasn't totally sure
> > the drive was bad).
> >
> > Raidextract failed to produce anything useful. When I ran it,
> > regardless of the settings I used it only produced errors about
> > parity mismatches. After looking into it a bit more, it seemed like
> > the array had been running in degraded mode for several months
> > before anyone noticed a problem, and that my client(a Windows IT
> > admin) had tried to fix it previously and neglected to inform me of
> > what he had done. This was the worst-case scenario.
> >
> > On Thu, 6 Mar 2014 14:15:36 -0500
> > dev null zero two <dev.null.02 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Also http://www.freeraidrecovery.com/ works really well for being
> > > free. Windows only but you just connect your two good drives,
> > > point the software at them, it detects the RAID parameters and
> > > then lets you save a dd image of the resulting reconstructed
> > > array that you can then mount or access however you want.
> > >
> > >
> > > On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 2:09 PM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > If all 3 drives are the same make and model, dd the working 2
> > > > drives first. Then try replacing the failed drives board with
> > > > one from a good drive.
> > > >
> > > > with 2 drives out of 3 in a raid5, you're still OK data-wise.
> > > > raidextract may be able to rebuild the data from the 2 drives.
> > > >
> > > > I used a tool a zillion years ago that I can't find right now
> > > > that did exactly this: from a dd image of all the available
> > > > drives, extract all the file possible to a new location.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 1:29 PM, Dustin Strickland <
> > > > dustin.h.strickland at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> Sorry, let me give you guys a better idea of the hardware -
> > > >> this appears to be a custom build. Some Asrock motherboard as
> > > >> far as I can tell with a VIA chipset and an Athlon XP
> > > >> something... an unbranded SATA2 RAID card(which doesn't work),
> > > >> and the 3 80GB hard drives.
> > > >>
> > > >> Jim,
> > > >>
> > > >> That's what I was afraid of. Only 2 of the drives still work. I
> > > >> couldn't get any data off the third drive. Do you think
> > > >> raidextract might still work in this case?
> > > >>
> > > >> On Thu, 6 Mar 2014 12:12:53
> > > >> -0500 Benjie <benjie.godfrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >> > Is this a SATA or a SCSI HBA?  Is the HBA a card, or is it
> > > >> > built into the motherboard?  Is it a software raid using the
> > > >> > mainboard's SATA interfaces? Can you answer those questions?
> > > >> >
> > > >> >
> > > >> > On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 11:18 AM, Dustin Strickland <
> > > >> > dustin.h.strickland at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >> >
> > > >> > > I just want to put this out there: I'm not *very* familiar
> > > >> > > with RAID, but I get by. I have a unique situation and I'm
> > > >> > > not sure how to handle it -- suggestions would be
> > > >> > > appreciated.
> > > >> > >
> > > >> > > So, my client has a machine - an *old* machine - that was
> > > >> > > running an ancient version of Redhat, acting as a Samba
> > > >> > > server. I'm not too clear on the details of what happened,
> > > >> > > but the result: the motherboard in the server is
> > > >> > > apparently bad. So is the RAID card that was installed.
> > > >> > > Also one of the disks of the three that were installed.
> > > >> > > The other two work fine. This machine will not boot, I
> > > >> > > tried everything. We've made the decision to set up
> > > >> > > another machine to run Samba. Now here's the hitch. The
> > > >> > > only available machine has only two SATA ports and we
> > > >> > > still need to grab his old data.
> > > >> > >
> > > >> > > Yesterday I used a Live USB stick to dd the data from both
> > > >> > > of the good drives, one at a time, on to a third. Now, I
> > > >> > > don't even know if the data is recoverable - after we
> > > >> > > started copying the second disk, we left it to run
> > > >> > > overnight so I haven't been able to check it out. If it
> > > >> > > *is*, how would I go about it? I've never encountered
> > > >> > > hardware RAID before, either
> > > >> > > - would this even be possible to fix in software?
> > > >> > > _______________________________________________ Ale mailing
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> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > --
> > > > James P. Kinney III
> > > >
> > > > Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail.
> > > > What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like
> > > > feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog.
> > > > - Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > *http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
> > > > <http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/>*
> > > >
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