Data Recovery and Disk Utilities Forum @R-TT

If you wish to evaluate our flat low rates, feel free to write me a private message

Those cheap rates are intended specifically with a mutual advantage for those subjects that are not in the hurry of getting their data back.

Obviously the policy is "no recovery, no fee"

Cor

Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to focus on imaging/cloning each drive(5 total) very soon. I'll keep the images on my Amazon S3 account - recognizing that I'll have to temporarily purchase the next tier of storage.

I did come across the articles you referred to when I originally visited the forum and found some other posts that dealt with RAID issues. I only wish that those articles were updated with direction for true 'newbies' and additional options just as you stated when suggesting disassembling the RAID in the RAID Bios and configuring each drive in JBOD mode as well as each drive as a Virtual independent drive. Perhaps then R Studio can then see my 5 drives and attempt the Auto RAID detection and Auto Fix as well.

Thanks again.

Although cloning the disks is a very wise step which is highly recommended, you still may work with the original disks directly. R-Studio does everything possible to avoid data corruption on the original objects. Though do this if you have absolutely no means to clone the disks and you're sure that the disks' hardware isn't failing.

Most likely you can disassemble the RAID in the controller by entering its BIOS and selecting something like the JBOD mode. Then you'll see the components of your RAID separately. You need to create a virtual RAID out of them and then try to determine RAID parameters like disk order, block size and pattern. Those articles may help:
[url=http://www.r-tt.com/Articles/RAID_Recovery_Presentation/index.shtml]RAID Recovery Presentation[/url] - general information on how to work with RAIDs.
[url=http://www.unformat-unerase.com/Automatic_RAID_Detection.shtml]Automatic RAID Parameter Detection[/url] - some advices on automatic RAID parameter recognition.

Some thoughts about your case. RAID rebuild is a very lengthy process. If you're sure that not much time had passed between the incorrect disk connection and moment when you discover that, chances are high that you'll recover data correctly. Otherwise, it's better to go to a data recovery professional.

Destripeing is the real reconstruction process which consists of:

- determinate the disk order
- calculate the stripe size
- determinate which is the so called parity "rotation" type

The controller "knows" its drives

If you had swap them, likely, it has happen nothing "automatically"

Anything that could had happen, it has ONLY if you forced some process through the RAID control panel (in the controller' BIOS)

When I'm talking about having backup/imaged the drives, please re read above :-), I mean
" have you create the images of, or cloned, the single drives when this issue has begun"?
Which mean: those drives (if have not got disrupted by some process forced by yourself) are the unique copies of your valuable data:
BEFORE to "play" with them (either simply moving the around desks, plug unplug from the data recovery workstation), you must save your bo**om creating their copy (this is the first step we do during RAID data recovery operations at RecuperoDatiRAIDFAstec). Prevent is better since Things may go wrong.

Sa stated above, next the images/clones will be used to reassemble them
- destripe them (with R-Studio this process is dynamic)
- dump the entire storage (again dynamic with R-TT)
- find the filesystem
- locate requested directories

P.S. How many are HDDs? Which capacity?

Unless there is no corruption in the single HDDs content, thing may be done with the R-TT support (hopefully) otherwise must be done manually. Which realistically mean to forward to us or similar specialists the disks set, since we (you understand) cannot divulge our knowledge.

Though, on the R-TT website is written a guide on how to find disk order and hopefully get the RAID assembled.

But don't forget to avoid playing with the originals or to take care so much of them

Cor

Hello, thanks for any assistance you can give. The RAID 5 workstation is actually one of the PC's that I have in my home, I have used it for both work and personal of course.

Images/Clones? Unfortunately not. I had copied [i]some[/i] data from my RAID 5 drive(when it was working correctly) to online cloud solutions.
I also -ahem- did backup [i]some[/i] data over time to about [i][b]30 DVD's[/b][/i]. Let me say, it was massively tedious going through those DVD's just to reacquire some of the important data I needed. I only wish I had copied all the important data to my Amazon S3 or MSFT Onedrive cloud storage solutions(as I've now started to do). But I never made images of the separate drives. In fact my RAID 5 drive had dozens of images and vm's stored on it.

As far as the rebuild question, yes - most likely. The LSI RAID controller I have has automatic rebuild, and other auto tasks. So I believe (to my horror) the controller rebuilt the array with the 5 'out of correct order' drives. And thus possibly made any resolution nigh impossible.

Are yours home data? Or business data?

Do you have imaged for backup (means imaged/cloned) purposes your original drives?
(see my other posts on the forum)

Though R-Studio and every RAID Reconstruction Specialist won't use the drives plugged to the RAID' controller. (That's another reason why I've asked if you have the clones or the images of the original drives)

Instead they/we will work with their clones (with the exception of some really rare huge arrays)

RAID reconstructions begins from single drives analysis and if the situation is corrupted, there will be no automatic process provide by any kind of tool and the job will be hand made.

Also, when drives have been swapped, has it been run any rebuild or forced process that made the drives to process/work altogether simultaneously for so much time?

Feel free to write me a private message for further questions.

Cor
RAID DR

OK, I've read numerous posts here in the forum in an attempt to solve my issue. Not successful unfortunately.

I have a 5 drive RAID 5 configuration on an LSI controller. Somehow a drive or drives were disconnected and connected in the wrong order. Once the controller accepted the incorrect order(even with a warning of data corruption) - I was in a world of 'hurt', the drive now shows as 'raw' in Window 7-64bit.

I've run a full scan with the R-Studio, purchased the product as I concluded it would recover my data without problem(ahem, newbie mistake -sorry). 99% of the files it recovers are corrupt/non operational. I've seen a post about the '[color=#00BF00]recognized[/color]' file color scheme and that 99% of the data that R-Studio recognized on my full scan are [color=#FFBF00]orange[/color], [color=#FF0040]red[/color] and such. Only around 1% of the data is recognized with the [color=#00BF00]green[/color] identifying color scheme. I wish to admit I have minor skills but my determination is high on figuring out a solution to my problem.

Also I've seen posts with pages referred by the R-TT staff and I've visited them. However, in the R-Studio GUI when attempting to auto correct a RAID configuration I cannot 'add objects' (to create a virtual raid/auto detect/auto fix RAID order)due to the LSI controller is presenting the 5 drives as 1 drive volume (drive D:) in Windows. That's all R-Studio sees, therefore and not the separate drives that LSI MegaRAID management software sees (both physically and logically).

Any help on fixing a corrupted, 'drive out of order' RAID 5 setup? I also purchased support by the way if I need to contact R-TT in another venue.

Thanks much for any assistance.