Recover RAID5+SA5300

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.
Compaq user

Recover RAID5+SA5300

Post by Compaq user » Mon Apr 06, 2009 12:36 pm

I wonder if R-Studio can help in my situation.

Epilogue:
I have a Compaq Proliant ML370 server w/Compaq SA5300 SCSI Raid controller.
All six disk slots are ocupied w/72GB disks and they are configured as RAID5 no spare.
This RAID5 disk has only one volume and Windows 2003 Operating system. The system had no errors.
There was a need to save data from the system disk to an external storage.
For this purpose I used a cage I removed from a dicommissioned HP DL380G1 server.
Put four 150GB disks in and connected the external cage to the second channel at SA5300 and powered up the system.
At the prompt, I pressed F8 and got to the RAID controller utility and configured a 2nd RAID5 of all 4 disks.
Everything was working as expected.

Problem:
Then I tried to simulate the external cage removal.
I shut down the server and disconncted the external cage.
Turned on the server and pressed F8 to get to the controller Utility.
Then I deleted disk 2 and tried to Save the configuration.
This task normally takes less than a minute.
In my case it froze.!!!.
After I waited a while I restarted the server but NOW my system disk did not show up.
Controller reported "No logical disk present". The config. utility did nor show any configured RAIDs.
But I can see six idle disks with OK status.
Thus I lost my main disk.
Here's the question: Can I recover my data from lost RAID5?
If yes, can the R-studio sw help and how I can do this?
Can I just configure a new RAID with the same disk and try to recover lost partition?
Or ALL my data lost?
Please help.
Thank you.

Alt
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Re: Recover RAID5+SA5300

Post by Alt » Tue Apr 07, 2009 7:07 am

I think it's worth trying, though I expect a lot of time for the work.
You need to remember the RAID parameters such as disk and stripe order and stripe size. You also need a computer running under XP/2003/Vista, etc. with app. 500 GB of a storage space.
You download R-Studio from our download page and install it. It will run in the Demo mode. In this mode it can perform all data recovery operations except the real recovery of the files. When you will find your files, you will be able to quickly buy the registration and register R-Studio to actually recover the files. If all efforts appear unsuccessful, you won't lost your money.
Then you have to connect the first RAID disk to the computer with R-Studio installed and make an image of the disk.
See the online help for details: http://www.unformat-unerase.com/Unforma ... index.html -> Data Recovery Using R-Studio -> Advanced Data Recovery -> Images. Then you make images for all the RAID disks. After that disconnect all the RAID disks from the computer and work with the images to save the actual data from accidental corruption.
Then you can create a virtual RAID using the RAID disk images as its components. http://www.unformat-unerase.com/Unforma ... index.html -> Volume Sets and RAIDs -> Basic RAID Operations . Most likely R-Studio will find a volume on your virtual RAID. If not, you have to scan it to find the file. http://www.unformat-unerase.com/Unforma ... index.html -> Data Recovery Using R-Studio -> Advanced Data Recovery -> Disk Scan. Save scan information if you have to scan the RAID.
I recommend you to estimate recovery chances by previewing the files. http://www.unformat-unerase.com/Unforma ... index.html -> Data Recovery Using R-Studio -> Basic File Recovery -> Previewing Files. The files for the preview should be large enough. In your case, block size*6.
And have a good luck for the recovery.

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