Deleted RAID 5 Dynamic Volume 1

[jdrogers]

Hello All,

I accidentally deleted my RAID 5 dynamic volume while reinstalling Windows Server 2003. The deletion occurred while doing the routine disk configuration portion of a Windows installation where the user has the option of creating/deleting partitions and formatting. I had not been booting from the RAID nor was I trying to setup a bootable RAID. The RAID was/is just for storage. I accidentally deleted the volume using "Delete Partition". I am currently trying to run 3rd party recovery programs from inside Windows Server 2003 (which is up and running normally). As I am new to RAID technology I don't want to try rebuilding since I don't know if it will work and I don't want to further damage the RAID by making more changes to it.

The program I am currently running is called "DiskInternals RAID Recover 2.8." I find it interesting that while My Computer does not see the RAID at all (which isn't surprising since I deleted the partition) the recovery program sees the RAID and has assigned the correct drive letter (R which I had manually assigned via Windows Disk Manager when I first setup the RAID. Anyway, the first attempt at recovery was not successful because while the program did find about 7,000 files they all had weird names and they seemed to be some sort of system/hidden/back-end files that users don't normally see. I wondered if it may have been due to telling the program the RAID was in NTFS format. I had to specify a file system to start the deep scan, but I didn't actually remember the RAID file system, so I chose the format used for Windows Server 2003. Now, I am rerunning a deep scan and recovery with the file system specified as FAT. The program has currently found 134,962 files and it is 26% complete. Don't know what to make of that...

Does anyone have experience with something like this? Any advice about better ways to recover? Is recovery futile?

Best Regards,

James

 

[rclarke250]

from the tape back up you made before starting anything? Also you most likely won't see the raid 5 as a raid 5 in windows, it will see the raid as a normal hard drive and report it as such. most servers that run a dedicated raid controller, use special software to see and maintain the raid, something like ServRaid Manager in an IBM. Each manufacturer would have there on dedicated software for this purpose.

 

[goombawaho]

1. Data from backup is your best plan. You DO have some backup, I hope.

2. Professional recovery and man is it going to cost you.

Sorry.

 

[jdrogers]

Thank you both for the replies. For the record if this happens to anyone else, it is possible to recover your data provided you do not alter the data on the RAID5 other than deleting the partition. I downloaded software called R-Studio (

http://www.data-recovery-software.net/).

R-studio programs specialize in data recovery. The version I downloaded was simply called "R-studio." which would work on NTFS and FAT. After installing, R-studio auto-detected the RAID volume (RAID of course was enabled in BIOS). I then performed a generic "disk scan" of the RAID which identified almost all of my data both files and programs (~98%). Recovered content will be in one of two forms: whole recognizable files and fragments that have not been matched to anything. In my case, 98% of my content was reassembled in about 2 hours and then R-studio kept copying file fragments that were never successfully recombined into usable files. Everything it recovered was copied from the RAID to my desktop ( I told the software to save it to the desktop). It continued copying until my C drive was full. Perhaps if I had had a much larger C drive I could have recovered even more. I rebuilt and reformatted/partitioned the RAID and it is working normally. All files and programs that were recovered work normally.

 

[kjv1611]

Thanks for posting back. I think I've at least tried that one once before.