How to fix crashed SATA\RAID Drive

[gted]

The computer is built on an ASUS P4PE, 2.4GHZ P4, 512M RAM, SATA native to the mb, IDE also. It has two Maxtor drives hooked up to the SATA controller using adapters running in a RAID0 Array. The RAID controller is from Promise. OS is WinXP Home. It's all been working fine for about two years.

It started to run slower and slower for a number of days. While I was looking for spyware, frangmentation and everything else I could the drive gave me the message about what was wrong. It first hit me with an error that it couldn't find the boot.ini. Then it used an alternate ini and tried to finish starting. The splash screen showed up then the system rebooted. Since then that's the best I've been able to do with it.

To be more specific, and maybe a bit boring, the boot up sorta looks like: (1)Goes through POST ok, (2)Indicates a problem with the RAID array during initialization of the RAID controller (3)Reset the RAID parameters (4) The machine exits the RAID setup and reboots (5) Goes through POST and RAID initialization just fine. (6)Windows tries to start after delivering an error re the boot.ini. inidicating that it will use an alternate file. (7) Windows splash screen displays (8) Bang-reboot.(9)After that it starts all over again with the original RAID error.

After all the preceeding I can start an OS on an alternate IDE drive in the box. There is a RAID utility from Promise that will look at the drives state from inside the OS. It always shows the #1 drive as down. Yup, I can swap everything around, cables, adapters, etc. Doing that results in the missing drive shifting to the other drive. I believe I have ruled out everything but that one drive as a problem. I even tried hooking the drive to an IDE connection that can tie into the RAID on the machine. No change.

Maxtor had a utility on their web used to diagnose HD problems. It tried it. It showed one drive as good. The other was indicated as failing, not failed. Their software offered to fix some errors on the drive. I tried that. It may be slightly better but I can't define why I think it is better.

I've been torn about whether or not I can save my data without spending large amounts of money. The latter actually isn't going to happen. It appears that this thing is very close to giving me one more boot so I can get at the data at least long enough to move it. Close but now quite there.

Note that I don't really care if it boots on those RAID drives or not. It would be better but as long as the drives would be recognized by my alternate OS, on another drive, I can retrieve most of what I want.

One of the alternatives I am considering in all this is to fire up the machine using GHOST 9. Then I am hoping it'll see the drives long enough to do what I need to do.

Other craziness that I have considered include (1) hitting the drive with a mallet. I actually saw a similar suggestion in a newsgroup (2) Finding some kind of diagnostic utility other than GHOST to recover what I can.
#2 is actually what I have been concentrating on. So far I haven't found anything promising.

What is giving me a little hope is that the Maxtor utility can always see the drive. It always says something about restoring read access(the words could be a little different) as it does it. I need a data recovery program that is wqually stubborn.

One other bit of concern, I think unrelated, is that within a few days I lost one case fan, this one drive and my cable router. It's probably a coincidence but I don't like this kind of coincidence. Outlet voltage is slightly high at 123VAC the last time I checked. Asus' utility shows PS voltages as right on the mark.

Other questions include: (1( i believe one drive on RAID0 cannot yield any data without its mate. Am I correct?

Any ideas on all this are welcome. If you got this far reading my mess I thank you much.

 

[dbData]

You are correct with your "other question".

I presume both hard drives are identical. If so, you can try swapping the PCB's to determine if the problem is more serious than electronic. If the PCB swap works, you have a shot at being able to image the two drives to a set of new drives (one drive at a time). Even that can be problematic, but it's a start.

Things always get real nasty with RAID's during recovery. You can get additional information at hhtp://

http://www.data-recovery-hub.com,

that may give you more ideas to try.


Rick

 

[gted]

Thanks much.

A PCB swap is a good idea. The data should get backed up from the good drive first. That is if it can be done considering the RAID0 thing. Maybe it can be "ghosted" in the same manner as a stand alone drive. This is all getting pretty complex. It would be painful to lose all of my "stuff" on these drives.

Knowing how exposed I was should have motivated me to keep backups. In a work environment I know better than this. You'd think I'd do for myself what I would do for a business.

The link you referenced looks very good. If nothing else there will be some knowledge gained.

Thanks again.

I'll post my progress as it goes.

 

[mainegeek]

Can you junper the mobo to JBOD and set one drive to boot with the others set as JBOD in order to recover data from them?

 

[gted]

Mainegeek

Thanks for the reply. Here' a long answer to a short question.

I have another version of the OS on an old, 3 gig Maxtor IDE, in the same box. It boots on that one. The RAID drives should be JBOD then.


What happens is that the OS then boots, the good RAID drive comes on line. Actually, it is seen by the RAID management software. There wouldn't be any drive letter assigned by the OS due to having only 1/2 the RAID. The bad drive isn't seen by the Raid management software. That's even if I reconfigure the drives as the system boots. The RAID Controller setup sees both drives for the purpose of setting them up. Somewhere along the way the bad drive drops back off the controller's ability to access it.

I ran Maxtor's diagnostic software on the bad drive. It says something about restoring read access to the drive. It also tries to fix some kind of disk error, with my permission(probably a mistake). Then it indicates the drive is working. The first time it happened I got so excited they may have heard me yell three states away. In the end--no access or boot to those drives.

Maxtor's utility leaves me with an "A" prompt after its done. I am thinking about using that to my advantage. The bad drive is, I guess, to some degree on line at that point. What a business this is!

Ted (GTED)

 

[gted]

The saga continues-

The drive(s) are so close to working it can be smelled but they just don't quite get there no matter what.

The latest is that they will still almost boot. Gets to the splash screen, reboots then the RAID array goes offline.

I installed another IDE 80 gig drive and tried Maxtors drive copy software that came with it to get the files off the RAID array. Again, a near miss. The file copy process appears to try to start. It fails with an error indicating I should run scandisk on the source drive and try again. So, again real close. Very frustrating.

I also had tried Maxtor's diagnostic software on the offending array. Maxtor tells me that the SMART monitoring on one drive, based on the error code I get from their software, is bad. Unless I am mistaken that sounds like a problem on the PCB. Problem is I have two nearly identical drives but they were bought a couple of weeks apart. The model numbers are nearly the same except for one digit in the middle of the 13 digit id. The motors are obviously different and the pcbs also seem to have different numbering.

To get to the bottom line questions-

What do you do about the pcbs? Swapping them looks problematic.

Some of the drive companies make firmware available. Maxtor doesn't. I was thinking if the SMART is acting up maybe I could somehow flash the controlling software. Anyway to do this ever seen?

On the other hand maybe the data could be retrieved through a software solution. I am reasonably sure a data recovery company could do it but this is a home use computer. Spending that kind of $$$ is out of the question. Besides I'm an unemployed technoid.

Has anyone found reasonably priced software that could duplicate just one of the two raid drives? I'm going to look further but so far everything I find has some kind of reason why it won't work. Either the NTFS is a problem, the RAID or the time of day or the time of day.

 

[visualpearl]

I would not touch your system unless the data is irrelevant to you, which I doubt.
Get in touch with

http://www.unirecovery.com

they can fix it efficiently at cheap rates.

 

[gted]

Thanks much.

I'll take a look at the site. I have rebuilt a lot of the data from various sources I had including some backups on another computer. If there is much cost I am going to have to accept that I have done what I can. I think the lowest cost I saw thus far was just under 1k$. Not going to fly at this time. What I have done for now is left the offending drives in the box with their power disconnected for now. If it really becomes necessary to restore the data I can do it then.

 

[mainegeek]

gted,
I use GetDataBack often with high success rate.
You have to purchase it though.

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

 

[stduc]

If I have read this post correctly, [blue]gted[/blue], you are using a RAID0 setup. One disk is failing (failed?) am I right?

If so, you are facing a similar problem to the one I faced a few months ago. I got all my data back by putting the two drives in question onto an ordinary IDE controller. I used SpinRite from

http://www.grc.com

to spare the bad sectors on the failing drive and then RaidRecover from

http://www.runtime.org

to recover the data to a third drive, also on an ordinary IDE channel. I was able to boot the recovered drive into safe mode only. But this allowed me to get my data recovered 100%. I got really lucky however as very shortly after getting the data off the drive that was going bad, it failed totally.

If you are using RAID0 then you need both disks as every other sector is on every other disk!

If I were you, I would remove the bad disk from your system until you are ready to try recovery in case it fails totally before you have a chance to get the data off.

 

[gted]

Thanks all-

I've tried so many demo ver. of things I am not sure what I used anymore. I should have kept a written log of it all Some of it is documented in this thread.

It is one of the RAID0 drives that's near death. I'll take a look at that combo of Spin Rite and Runtime's software. Something will work with this drive. It is in a state that is very close to working. It just won't stay on line long enough to get anything done with it.