R-Studio for RAID recovery
Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 11:59 pm
Hello. Here's my situation. I was running RAID 0+1 (4 disks striped & mirrored) and had a drive fail (confirmed it was dead). Shortly after that a second drive failed (or at least the RAID suddenly was broken). I ran the manufacturer's diagnostic tools on the three drives, but no problems were found. It wasn't until later that I learned this kind of diagnostic software is known to write data to the drives it inspects! So it's possible some data was written to these drives, further damaging RAID parity. So I'm left with three drives: the two good drives which were mirrors of each other, and the one problem drive that contained the other half of the RAID, but likely has some bad sectors, and may have had some additional data written to it. I have since installed Vista on the redundant drive and am now concentrating on recovering the RAID from the two remaining drives (treating them as RAID-0).
I have tried a number of different RAID recovery software, and have had varying degrees of success, but can't seem to fully recover the RAID. Using R-Studio, I can "virtually" reconstruct the RAID, and it shows me the file directories intact, as well as the file names, but when I retrieve individual files, like a JPEG, they are all corrupt to some extent - only half the file displays, or it won't display at all.
Other recovery software seems to have issues scanning the second drive. It will get about a third of the way through scanning and then run into errors (I'm assuming bad sectors?).
The data is not critical enough to pay someone to retrieve it. I'm getting close to throwing in the towel, but the fact that I can see the file directories intact, and preview partial files gives me hope. It seems like I'm so close! So I'm looking for some insight and suggestions.
Is it a question of tweaking the RAID recovery parameters until I find the magic combination?
Should I consider trying to fix the problem sectors on the bad drive, or will that only further disrupt the parity?
Any help would be appreciated.
I have tried a number of different RAID recovery software, and have had varying degrees of success, but can't seem to fully recover the RAID. Using R-Studio, I can "virtually" reconstruct the RAID, and it shows me the file directories intact, as well as the file names, but when I retrieve individual files, like a JPEG, they are all corrupt to some extent - only half the file displays, or it won't display at all.
Other recovery software seems to have issues scanning the second drive. It will get about a third of the way through scanning and then run into errors (I'm assuming bad sectors?).
The data is not critical enough to pay someone to retrieve it. I'm getting close to throwing in the towel, but the fact that I can see the file directories intact, and preview partial files gives me hope. It seems like I'm so close! So I'm looking for some insight and suggestions.
Is it a question of tweaking the RAID recovery parameters until I find the magic combination?
Should I consider trying to fix the problem sectors on the bad drive, or will that only further disrupt the parity?
Any help would be appreciated.