Data Recovery for RAID

A

allanc

Well-Known Member
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Location
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
We are located in Canada and one of our clients needs data recovery for their Windows 2003 server running RAID.
There would be about 70 Gb to recover.

I have one three part question (as the buy-in increases):
1. Which low cost (<$200 or free) software would you recommend for data recovery.
2. Which other software (>$200) would you recommend for data recovery.
3. Which data recovery service would you recommend.

Thank you in advance.
 
allanc said:
We are located in Canada and one of our clients needs data recovery for their Windows 2003 server running RAID.
There would be about 70 Gb to recover.

I have one three part question (as the buy-in increases):
1. Which low cost (<$200 or free) software would you recommend for data recovery.
2. Which other software (>$200) would you recommend for data recovery.
3. Which data recovery service would you recommend.

Thank you in advance.
Click to expand...

Running which RAID level?
 
MobileTechie said:
And what has actually happened? Disk error or just deletion?
Click to expand...
Very long story which I will summarize - partially disk error and human error.
Started off as RAID-5.
One of the drives was failing diags but the RAID had not taken it offline, etc.
We forced the drive offline and swapped the drive.
Then a rebuild was tried which would not run.
Then a reconstruct was attempted.
The default was RAID-0 and I could not change it to RAID-5.
So, we reconstructed to RAID-0.
Now the system will not boot at all.
We spoke to Dell who said that reconstructing with one of the drives being empty will make the computer inoperable and that we should restore.
The customer's backup hardware failed a long time ago and they refused to spend the money to purchase a new one.
The only solution seems to be data recovery of one form or another.
 
Ouch that's potentially pretty damned complicated. It's hard to know what has happened to the data during that process. I'd be calling a DR specialist at this point I think.
 
Yeah, a client of mine had Raid 0 on his Sony Vaio. I couldn't clone it but was able to pull his very important photos he needed of a major contract he was working on.

It read it as a regular drive..

When I bought it, they had a pro and a home, the pro was really expensive so I went the with home for $79 and I still use that to this day. I have talked to them about it, and they dont seem to care about commercial use. Lifetime updates also.
 
Knightsman said:
Yeah, a client of mine had Raid 0 on his Sony Vaio. I couldn't clone it but was able to pull his very important photos he needed of a major contract he was working on.

It read it as a regular drive..

When I bought it, they had a pro and a home, the pro was really expensive so I went the with home for $79 and I still use that to this day. I have talked to them about it, and they dont seem to care about commercial use. Lifetime updates also.
Click to expand...
Great.
Thank you very much.
 
RAID 0 would have to read from both drives together. It is not like you can read only one drive.

Personally, I would call a DR Specialist and NOT touch it. If you do something that makes it worse, your customer is going to be mad at you.
 
I think you may be out of luck... When you rebuilt to RAID0, you more than likely erased the table the RAID controller used to map where data is stored on the vaious drives when it was in RAID5.

This is likely why it won't boot...You've erased the OS. RAID5 doesn't store all of the information on a single drive, so I'm not sure how you would rebuild a RAID array from the RAID controller, switching RAID types, and preserve the data...

A backup should have been made before trying to rebuild the array, regardless of the type of RAID you were going to rebuild to. I know at this point, it's like crying over spilled milk...Doesn't help.

I would agree with the other suggestions on contacting a DR specialist, and specifically someone who's experienced with dealing with RAID5 arrays.

My only thought would be at a low level, you may be able to recover the actual data on each drive, and possibly rebuild the files from the various parts spread out across the array, assuming it hasn't been irrecoverably over writen, but this is also likely to be *VERY* expensive.

Take this opportunity to revisit backups with your client. :rolleyes:
 
Re:

I would also say the data is gone. You can't just change from RAID5 to RAID0, without data loss. Not sure why you wanted to change RAIDs anyway. That was a bad move, especially since you didn't have a solid backup. Live and learn.
 
onetech4all said:
I would also say the data is gone. You can't just change from RAID5 to RAID0, without data loss. Not sure why you wanted to change RAIDs anyway. That was a bad move, especially since you didn't have a solid backup. Live and learn.
Click to expand...
To repeat ... I *strongly insisted* that the client purchase a backup many times and he refused (cash flow problems).
I won't let myself feel guilty (I realize that nobody is suggesting that I do).
 
My only suggestion would have been to make your own backup of the RAID5 array before you started working on it, assuming the system was running, which your original post doesn't really state, but with only one drive in a RAID5 array down, the system should still have been operational.

Whether the customer could afford it or not, I would have imaged the "Drive" first chance I could, just to insure the recoverablitiy of the client's data. Then I would have replaced the failed drive and attempted the rebuild...

Just my .02.
 
Yes in retrospect it would have been better to backup the data to an additional drive before performing any RAID operations. I know from personal experience these lessons are painfully learned sometimes.

I wonder why the RAID5 rebuild failed.
 
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