Help!! How to recover a failed raid??

[rootcause]

Hello and Help!!

Can anyone tell me if or how to recover a raid 5 setup showing failed.. Well its two raid 5 setups with four disks in each..

History.. Had a boot disk hard drive and then a raid 5 setup running for data and another raid i manually sync'd to to back up the main raid..
But when the DVD/CDrom failed it took out the boot drive, I had to start again and reinstalled the os, but with the new boot disk build I have lost the raid settings (I understand that, but thought the whole point of running raid was for it to recover from that type of issue)... How can i recover all the data on tho's raid disk?? please don't tell me i have lost it all...

there must be a way??

Best wishes,

Julian

 

[goombawaho]

Prepare to pay.

http://www.gillware.com

 

[Freestone]

Unless your RAID5 arrays were software defined, your hardware RAID controller should still have the arrays defined. What does it show (there should be a way to get into its BIOS during POST)? Have you loaded the necessary RAID drivers into your new OS install?

 

[rootcause]

All drivers are loaded, the motherboard has two raid controllers on it, one i set as hardware configured, i have tried to enter and recover from there, as it seem to have a option to used old disks, were as the other one is software configured via the OS computer management console..

when looking in there both raids are see as raid 5, but both have a x and say failed, but all drives are online, but i have no options to recover, configure etc etc..

would it be possible that when the bootdisk and rom drive failed, it also damaged the information on the raid disks??

J

 

[cdogg]

Did you change any settings in the BIOS?

If this is Windows XP, keep in mind that using the "dynamic disks" feature only creates a striping array that does not offer redundancy (no parity). So RAID 5 is not something you could have setup in Windows without a 3rd-party application.

As far as I know, the one you configured using the hardware utility should still be intact. Make sure you have installed the latest "chipset" drivers from the motherboard manufacturer's website. Sometimes Windows will not properly detect your SATA or IDE RAID controllers until that is installed.


If that doesn't help, maybe this will:

http://www.diskinternals.com/raid/

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
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[Freestone]

Perhaps posting some hardware specifications would help too.

 

[goombawaho]

If you reset the RAID settings (not knowing what they WERE) you probably have lost everything. If you haven't reset them and IF there is an option on your RAID controller as follows, you might be able to set things back the way they were.

Look for an option to (and I'm paraphrasing) "Read configuration from drives". Which would scan the drives for the previous RAID setup that you had.

 

[wahnula]

I had to start again and reinstalled the os...All drivers are loaded

If WinXP or 2003, did you load those drivers at the F6 prompt at the very beginning of OS installation? It's only a 3-second window and easy to miss. These drivers need to go in BEFORE the OS loads.

I have this exact same scenario and have replaced the OS twice and the RAID structure was detected by RAID BIOS immediately. Make sure, in System BIOS, that RAID is enabled for the controller you're using. There should be a prompt during POST that says "Press Alt + F8 (or another key combo) to enter RAID configuration" or something to that effect.

Another thought is using RAID Reconstructor from

http://www.runtime.org,

but if the controller is not seeing the drives that's your first problem to solve.

As Freestone has mentioned more specs (mainboard, RAID chip etc.) are always welcomed.


Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[rootcause]

Thank u all, its all starting to work, the system is chugging away rebuilding its self.. It looks like some of the powersupply has died, not sure if thats caused the original issue with the dvd etc, but that been changed, the dvd is working and so did a boot drive build... U learn something every day..

Never seen anything like it, all the lights worked, disks spun, motherboard worked, but the read write seemed to fail?? Sure done my head in..

Thank u for all your help..

Julian

 

[rootcause]

Oh the system was a Intel D975xbx, daul pro, 4gb ram, two onboard raid controllers, promise supertrack 13850 and a 4 port Sii raid card, 9600GT vid card, 16 hot swap 500gb drives, 1 x 200gb pata boot drive, 1 x pata dvd writer/reader, 1 sata dvd/cdrom and all running on win 2000, but think i will rebuild with XP 64, Is that a good idea??

J

 

[wahnula]

...i will rebuild with XP 64, Is that a good idea??

Depends upon whether you can get 64-bit drivers for all your hardware and if the board & CPU are 64-bit compatible. You did not specify your CPU.

I doubt that will be a problem with the video card but the RAID cards??? Maybe. Do you already own the XP 64? If not (and you have time to play around) download the Windows 7 64-bit beta and see if the hardware works.

Here's another oddball to chalk up to PSU problems.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[rootcause]

Hi, All hardware supports x64 on the server, but i have had a few issues with windows 2000 server os, hense asking about xp64, which i have, but used on a itx dualcore system.. Do you think it would be better to change the os for the server to a x64 and drop the 2000 server os for one, then i was thinking of getting vista for the itx platform as i use that for more multimedia??


Julian