Recover Missing Volume Set

Discussions on using the professional data recovery program R-STUDIO for RAID re-construction, NAS recovery, and recovery of various disk and volume managers: Windows storage spaces, Apple volumes, and Linux Logical Volume Manager.
Space3001
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Mar 13, 2021 4:20 pm

Recover Missing Volume Set

Post by Space3001 » Sat Mar 13, 2021 4:44 pm

Hello there,

first a little background..
i have a 24 Disk Raid 6 Array and yesterday one of the Disks was lazy and took a little longer for the spin up.. and got thrown out of the Raid set..
the Raid went into degraded mode
normally not a big deal.. happens every few months, i just remove and re-add the drive and reboot, and the raid controller re-recognizes the missing disk, does a rebuild and everything is fine..
unfortunatelly.. yesterday i didn't get the degrades mode email and 4 hours later there was a NTFS Filesystem Failure on the System SSD.. with Bluescreen Reboot in a loop.
i did a chkdsk repair on the SSD, which fixed this problem.. and this was the time i found out that the Raid was in degraded mode..
i did the same thing as everytime. The controller did the rebuild.. but the Volume set is now missing.

a little search told me that r-studio can help me recover the volume set
but so far i couldn't fix anything..
i use r-studio in the demo mode.. and it shows me only the System SSD.. not the Raid Controller or one of the 24 HDDs..

can anyone give me a hint ?

Data-Medics
Posts: 220
Joined: Tue Oct 20, 2015 10:13 am
Location: Providence, RI USA
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Re: Recover Missing Volume Set

Post by Data-Medics » Sun Mar 14, 2021 11:49 am

You can't work on the RAID through the RAID controller. You'd need the drives independently connected to the motherboard. The RAID controller will only mount a virtual disk to the system when there is an array healthy enough to mount. So you are a bit beyond degraded at the moment, or the controller has just gone stupid.

A 24 drive array isn't going to be easy to figure out, just FYI. If you think auto-detect is going to figure it out, I'd think again. That only works about half the time on a 3 or 4 drive array. There's a 0% chance it'll work for 24 drives.

I think you are going to need a specialist. Let me know where you are and I can perhaps recommend someone.

Space3001
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Mar 13, 2021 4:20 pm

Re: Recover Missing Volume Set

Post by Space3001 » Mon Mar 15, 2021 2:56 am

ok, i had the hope that the Problem is just the same as with the System SSD, a bad Information in the "MBR" which can be fixed somehow easily..

i'm also already in contact with Areca, let's see what they can do..

but in the end.. the lost Data is not important enough to pay a specialist for recovering..
I have a backup of everything important

the good side of this.. if it's not fixable.. i can rebuild the machine with more CPU Power etc.. without the fear of dataloss
and maybe even replace the drives from 24x 3G to 8x 12G or something like that

Data-Medics
Posts: 220
Joined: Tue Oct 20, 2015 10:13 am
Location: Providence, RI USA
Contact:

Re: Recover Missing Volume Set

Post by Data-Medics » Tue Mar 16, 2021 9:09 am

Well, the good thing about Areca is that the drive numbering is easy to find in the metadata. I could probably assemble the RAID in a couple of hours if you were willing to make a "donation" toward my time. But, you'd need a way to connect all drives or have image files of all drives connected to the system before we could even attempt that.

Areca tech support is probably just going to walk you through the level 2 rescue array feature, which often can find an array if it just went stupid on you. I've had a few times where Areca arrays randomly dropped like 8 drives offline, but the rescue function found and mounted the array again. So it might work. Lucky for you you had a good quality controller.

This is probably what they are going to direct you to try: http://www.softwareguru.com/thegurusblo ... escue.aspx

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