Recovery of RAID 5

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.
Carrot
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2014 1:47 am

Recovery of RAID 5

Post by Carrot » Fri Dec 05, 2014 7:39 pm

Hi
I relied on R-Studio years ago to recover some crucial data from a single disk.

Recently however, my RAID 5 set up on am 8TB Terramaster F4-300 went offline with an error. The 'Terramaster HW Raid Manager' reported "[Controller 1: 1, Disk 1: ST3000DM001-1CH166 (W1F22KE9)] Error- This disk has the following error(s): Page 0 Damage Error"

Strangely, the HW Raid Manager reported Disk 1 W1F22KE9 as having the error, but the LED light on the unit itself indicated that the disk in the HDD2 slot was faulty. I turned the unit off, and found that the serial number on the disk in the HDD2 slot was W1F22KE9. I pulled the disk and replaced it with a new harddisk of identical brand and size, nothing happened. The Terramaster F4-300 unit did not try to rebuild the 8TB RAID array. After extensive searching online, I found that the Terramaster has a good reputation in China and the problem lay in the use of Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB disks which are now on the "not recommended" list of most NAS makers.

When I rebooted, Windows 8 "Disk Management" (inside "Computer Management") wanted to initialize the entire F4300 RAID. I did not do this. I shut the unit off and have been seeking advice on how to proceed.

What is the best way to proceed. I read the recovery guide here: community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/24731-recovering-data-from-a-failed-raid-5-on-desktop-pcs
I am wondering what is the best way to make an image of the 5 disks from the Terramaster box.

Can I remove them and connect them to my notebook via BlacX Duet SATA dock (its USB or eSATA)?
Or must I connect them directly to the motherboard of a big desktop machine?
Do I scan the disks one by one?
Can I put the R-Studio scans on another NAS RAID box that can hold the 8TB?

Thank you very much for your recommendations. As soon as I understand the process, I'll get to work recovering the data.

Best Regards,
CA.

Corsari
Posts: 131
Joined: Wed Aug 14, 2013 4:18 am

Re: Recovery of RAID 5

Post by Corsari » Sat Dec 06, 2014 1:11 am

Hello!
Please find other posts I've written on the forum

- yes it is a must that you do an image of each single drive
- beware STx000DM allow only a really short time to save the disk after the first SMART warning has popped
- no you can't plug drives from one RAID to another, if you do that, do it with the copies, if you do it with the copies, do a copy of the copies first

Finally, the recovery process.

In R-Studio you have to build a RAID starting from the copies / images of the drives
- find and set all the RAID parameters
- build

If everything is ok, you have done.

When cloning the drives, you may find one drive that hangs. If that is the case and your data are valuable, you'd better send the drives to a company that will clone the drive with proper data recovery hardware devices, otherwise you risk to kill that drive and loose all the possibilities to reconstruct that RAID, means you'll kill yourself data with no return.

In my company, we have flat rates that start from very low fees per disk (longer recovery time).

Feel free to send me a private message even for free remote diagnosis of the single drives.

Beware doing experiments with the original drives, one is gone and the others are strict twins of it, so realistically they may leave you soon with the same issue (seconds? Minutes? Hours? Who konws? Prevent is a must)

Regards
Robert
RAID Reconstruction Specialist
@ RecuperoDatiRAIDFAsTec
Robert
Technical Manager @ Recupero Dati RAID FAsTec (Italy)

USEFUL RULES and GUIDELINES
1) What to check BEFORE begin a disk image/clone process [link]
2) Disks that are too slow while imaging/cloning them [link]
3) All my posts on this forum [link]

Alt
Site Moderator
Posts: 3129
Joined: Tue Nov 11, 2008 2:13 pm
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Re: Recovery of RAID 5

Post by Alt » Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:33 am

I would add that you may use R-Studio to find the RAID parameters.

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