raid0 recovery help

[patrick99e99]

Hi everyone,

I have a macpro with 4 internal 1tb drives. 3 of which were formatted as a 3tb raid0 with Disk Utility (I used them for music and video production so speed was important). Just as I was thinking "Hmm.. I better back up some of these files..." I noticed that the raid0 volume began behaving weirdly. I'd get a spinning ball when accessing files, things would slow down very badly and I would have to reboot. After rebooting, things would be fine again, but after accessing several files, I began getting the spinning color wheel again... That was the point when I said, ok I need to try to copy these files now-- but it was too late. When I booted back up, the raid showed up as a mounted volume, however when I opened it, it showed 0 files-- but the funny thing was it still reveals the amount of free space it has (83.45gb). I tried running Disk Utility to repair it, but it gave me the error that the volume could not be ejected / unmounted because it was in use! Even though it was not in use... After trying rebooting a few more times, the raid volume no longer even showed up. Next, I pulled the drives out and put them in firewire 800 enclosures and chained them together-- after messing with the combinations of the drives, the raid mounted again.. Yay! But still 0 files, 83.45 gb free, and when I try to eject it, it says it's in use.

When searching around for solutions to my problem, I learned about R-Studio, and so I installed the mac version and ran it in demo mode (if it proves to be able to recover my data then I will buy it). My device listing showed up as this:


I noticed that the 4th entry under local computer is ST31000333ASCC1F -- 2.73 TB, which is obviously the raid volume, however, I directly under that is the actual physical drive, which does not have any sub-items like the other raid slices do.. I am not sure if this is my problem or what? Should that drive also have a little triangle beside it and an EFI System Partition, Apple_RAID_OfflineV2_Untilted_X and a Booter?

Anyway, so I went up and chose Create Virtual Raid > Create Virtual Block Raid.. I dragged the 2nd ST31000333ASCC1F, and the other two ST31000340ASAD14's. And I got:


The properties tab showed:


So I went ahead and selected Scan, specified HFS as my file system, set the start to 0, and size to 2.73 TB... I also set the Known File Types to only pull up .png and .jpg-- as I just wanted to see if it could find some pictures... I did the detailed view, and told it to scan.. Immediately after that, I saw my log spitting out over and over and over:


And I am totally confused.. If I have my settings to raid0, why is it complaining about a raid5 parity? Am I missing something else?

Oh also, I know someone is going to say "you should be using an image rather than your drives".. But I don't have 3tb worth of free space to store a 2.73tb image... I was hoping a simple scan with R-Studio would tell me if it's possible to recover or if it's hopeless.. If it's hopeless, I will move on, but if it's possible I definitely want to work to get the data back...

I should also mention the drives themselves sound fine.. They spin up and spin down, their boot sequence noise sounds normal.. no clicking, no scary sounds..

Anyway, if anyone can give me some insight into what I'm doing wrong and how I might save my volume, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!

-patrick

[Alt]

We tried to reproduce your problem but failed...

[patrick99e99]

Hi,

Well-- today I took my drives over to a friend's house who has a PC, and I hooked up my drives one by one, and created a virtual raid block and did a scan looking for jpeg images.

I let it scan for a few hours, and then stopped the process and examined the outcome. It showed the scan blocks the magenta color showing HFS+ files, and each square showed a number of files... Then I examined the found files, and saw a ton of things... But they didn't make sense.. For example I had a text files category that showed a ton of text files with names like 1.txt, 2.txt, 33.txt, 100.txt, etc..

in fact all of the found files had numbers for names.... So I am unsure of what this means...

However, the fact remains, I was able to scan my drives and did not get the "raid-5 parity" error that I was getting on the mac version, so it seems like my drives are not dead...

I just am not sure how I am supposed to deal with data recovery.. I did not know what offset or blocksize or anything for my setup.. The order was also only had "default" and "custom" was grayed out, so I was not sure what to do with that.

Anyway, I saved my (partial) drive scan and have posted it here:
http://collinatorstudios.com/www/patric ... _1.scn.zip

I am hoping someone can point me to the right direction as far as what my options are... It seems like my data is still there, it's just not easily accessible because I don't know my blocksize or drive order-- But I was completely confused how to change the drive order from within R-Studio.

Thank you for any help...

-patrick

[Alt]

What you saw is the result of search for Known File Types. They always have numbers instead of real names as they are discovered by the content of data rather than the folder/file structure of the disk. You should have waited for the end of scan and then opened one of recognized partition to search for the lost files.
Well, as you saved the scan info, you may load it and continue to scan the disk.
See more for the scan process: (the Windows version) http://www.unformat-unerase.com/Unforma ... index.html -> Data Recovery Using R-Studio -> Advanced Data Recovery -> Disk Scan.
The Mac version: http://www.unformat-unerase.com/Mac_Help/index.html

[patrick99e99]

You should have waited for the end of scan and then opened one of recognized partition to search for the lost files.

Oh.. Well I was following myharddrivedied.com's advice on scanning only for a little while to find some .jpg or .png images, and then adjust the block size or order based off of how the image looks (if you see part of the image and then garbage then you know the block size is wrong)...

However, when I tried to view any .jpg images that it claimed it found, it would say it was damaged and unavailable to be previewed.

So I should try again and allow a full scan of all 2.7 tb ?

-patrick

[Alt]

I'd rather scan app. 100MB of data, and look at recognized partitions. And remember, you may scan the entire disk successively, and R-Studio will accumulate the results.
Maybe, you can post screenshots with recognized partitions here or elsewhere?

[patrick99e99]

Hi,

Ok.. I got access again to a PC and I have taken many screen shots.

They can be viewed here:
http://collinatorstudios.com/www/rstudio_pc/

I'd rather scan app. 100MB of data, and look at recognized partitions.

... I did a scan of 100mb.. It happened very quickly, but I don't know where to proceed from there. I don't see anything about partitions other than what showed up in the device info when I selected the various raid slice volumes...

After the scan, it gave me a extra found files folder, but it just has in it Root > unicode_Document > 0.txt through 5.txt...

Could you please guide me on what I should be doing?

Thank you.

-patrick

[Alt]

Strange enough, I see no Recognized partitions, like those in the on-line help:
http://www.unformat-unerase.com/Unforma ... index.html -> Data Recovery Using R-Studio -> Advanced Data Recovery -> Disk Scan on the R-Studio Main panel. Or for R-Studio for Mac: http://www.unformat-unerase.com/Mac_Help/index.html -> Data Recovery Using R-Studio -> Advanced Data Recovery -> Disk Scan
Frankly speaking, I believe something wrong either with the raid parameters, or with data on them. I think you may find your raid parameters by creating a new one (not from the disks from which you are recover your files), and looking at the default parameters on the raid console.

[patrick99e99]

Hi,

Ok.. Prior to 1tb drives being available, I had previously setup a raid with three 300gb drives, and I still had them.. So I first mounted them on my mac-- The volume is fine.. I inspected Disk Utility to atleast get the block size, which was 32kb. There is no info about offsets or number of rows or anything on the mac, so that information wasn't available.

Next, I plugged those three drives onto the PC, and ran R-Studio, and I have posted many screenshots:
http://collinatorstudios.com/www/rstudi ... king_raid/

I still am very confused about how this is supposed to work. R-Studio recognizes two partitions, and it found many extra files.. Though it claims to have found a bunch of files that I know for sure are not on this volume.. It claims to have found Kodak PhotoCD, Macintosh Paint Image, and VP6 encoded video.. Those things simply are not on my drive.

Anyway, along with the list of extra found files, it found a bunch of jpg images, and I tried opening them but each and every time it would give me an error that it was either damaged or the file format is not supported by the previewer.. Which I am suspicious of, because I thought R-Studio should be able to display a jpg regardless of the file system?

In the parents tab of the virtual block raid, I tried moving up and down the 3 drives to get all of the possible orders: 123, 132, 213, 231, 312, 321.. No matter which combination I chose, it still could not open the jpg...

I am quite confused... And I don't know how this information is supposed to help me figure out how to recover the files from my other drive...

Can you please give me some advice?

-patrick

[Alt]

I'd like to see screenshots with those recognized partitions.