HP Server with 2 bad drives (Mirror array) want data from them

[03Explorer]

If the server does not recognize the drives and they both (hot swappable) indicate a red light (don't recall icon with light shape... maybe x on cylinder icon)... can they be brought up in another system once removed from hot swap shell?

the computer diagnostics does not see any drives at all, even though they are in the system. I was expecting to see them but they were bad.

My thoughts are I could ... maybe ... mount them without the mirror array and hot swap hardware as independent drives so I can possibly see what has gone wrong. if bad sectors, maybe use another OS to read what I can off of them...

New grounds for me in dealing with Mirror Arrays and both drives are bad. But the data is wanted off...


any insight would be helpful

 

[blister911]

What server, array controller, and hard drive(s) are you using?

I'm sure for the right price you could find someone who specializes in data recovery. However, I would hope that you had good backups instead.

Normally, when a drive fails it's worthless. One thing you could try is a firmware upgrade on them. You might get lucky. We have had some drive resurrect by doing it. About 5% (guessing, here). Most think they are good, again, but fail as soon as you boot up with them connected.

Good Luck.


Light travels faster than sound. That's why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

 

[03Explorer]

blister911,

I am not near the server to know specifics... but the backups are bad as well. Someone did not check if the tapes were retaining current data. They were inventoried with data as recent as either 2006 or 2008 (nothing of this current year) OUCH!

I am helping the small business attempt to recover data without the specialist costs.

I will look into firmware update, nothing worse can happen at this point and 5% is better than zero.

Here is a live and learn lesson... if you have a backup plan, test it to make sure it is working, instead of swapping tapes daily to find in disaster that they were not doing their job!

 

[bobsa32]

I have had this in the past, on one occasion I used Acronis to image the drives to a usb drive, and then convert the image to a Virtual machine using vmware convertor.

I could then use it in an ESX server. this has only worked once though.

 

[technome]

For two drives of a mirror to die within a short period of time is near impossible. If the client just ignored the death of the first drive, and the second died after some time, I can see that. What is the story on this.
Before sending it out..
I would remove all cables and re-seat them, after removing re-seating the raid adapter. If the drives do not come on line automatically, go into the raid bios, see if they are recognized, if so, place them online. Next I would try to update the raid adapter firmware, then see if the drives are recognized. Personally I would not attempt a drive firmware flash without a backup.
If not I would get the exact same model drive and switch-out the electronics CBT board on the drives, maybe one will resurrect; not super difficult to do, steady hands are needed.
If that fails, a data restoration company will be able to get data off the drive unless a massive head crash occurred. If a drive's platters need to be pulled from the drives, it gets real expensive.

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