indie Posted January 27, 2006 Posted January 27, 2006 I've been asked if I can look into recovering some data from a broken RAID 0 array. Has anyone has any success in doing this? They're not overly bothered about the data, so spending hundreds on getting a data recovery company to do it is out of the question. There's 3 drives in the array and one is completely borked. It's proper hardware based RAID just for some stupid reason they didnt go with RAID 5! Am i right in thinking every file is spread across the 3 drives or might 2 of the drives have some complete data? Active File Recovery for Windows says it can reconstruct a broken RAID 0 array and could recover some data, has anyone used that or has anyone got any suggestions?
webman Posted January 27, 2006 Posted January 27, 2006 Websites on RAID say this about level 0: Not a "True" RAID because it is NOT fault-tolerant The failure of just one drive will result in all data in an array being lost Should never be used in mission critical environments IIRC, RAID 0 is used to increase disk capacity and performance. I'd give the software a go.
indie Posted January 27, 2006 Author Posted January 27, 2006 Yeah I know there's no fault tolerance in RAID 0, just wondering what the chances are that there's some data on the two good drives?
DMcCoy Posted January 27, 2006 Posted January 27, 2006 Yeah I knew there's no fault tolerance in RAID 0, just wondering what the chances are that there's some data on the two good drives? The data is striped across the disk, so the blocks of data will end up on all the drives. Lose one, lose everything. Its gone, dead, expired, passed on. This is the risk with raid 0 and why I use raid 10 instead for my high performance applications. You would need a data recovery company to resurect the dead disk. I suppose small files may exist on a single block.
webman Posted January 27, 2006 Posted January 27, 2006 If you need it back, try CBL Data Recovery, they have an office in the region. (Royal Quays)
indie Posted January 27, 2006 Author Posted January 27, 2006 The data is striped across the disk, so the blocks of data will end up on all the drives. Lose one, lose everything. Its gone, dead, expired, passed on. Heh, thats what I thought! Oh well, at least it's not my data, i'm not stupid enough to use RAID 0!
Norphy Posted January 27, 2006 Posted January 27, 2006 Are all the disks still alive? If so, try this: http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm That help me recover more than 300GB of data on a RAID 5 array when the raid controller it was sitting on died. If not, as already said you're pretty much screwed.
ChrisH Posted January 27, 2006 Posted January 27, 2006 Looks like a decent app that probably worthy of an entry on the essential software list on the wiki Id say. Can also run from a Win PE CD Rom even better
indie Posted January 27, 2006 Author Posted January 27, 2006 I can get the drive to power up without it clicking like hell now, so I might give RAID reconstructor a go!
ajbritton Posted January 27, 2006 Posted January 27, 2006 For RAID 0 to give any kind of performance benefit, the data MUST be divided between the disks which would surely mean that any data recovered from one disk is going to be swiss cheese at best. If it's the case that the blocks are split alternately between the two disks then you'll only recover half the blocks. Even with a large block size, the data will be full of holes!
flyinghaggis Posted January 27, 2006 Posted January 27, 2006 Every 3rd section of data written to the disk would be corrupt so even if you manage to recover some of the files they're likely to all be full of missing data from the dead drive :? Unless you can somehow recover the data from the dead drive I don't think you'll manage to piece together anything useful.
webman Posted January 27, 2006 Posted January 27, 2006 A clean room, lab coat and some very large hammers methinks?
indie Posted January 30, 2006 Author Posted January 30, 2006 CBL Data Recovery are going to do a free evaluation of the RAID array, they said the prices range from £1000 upwards and the people who's data it is amazingly are going to pay it!
webman Posted January 30, 2006 Posted January 30, 2006 Re: CBL. Yeah they will tell you if they can get it back or not. Speaking from experience here.. they charged £580 or thereabouts for a Seagate 200GB disk of mine formatted as linux/ext3. They managed to get back just about everything. Obviously with RAID it's a different matter.
indie Posted January 30, 2006 Author Posted January 30, 2006 They said the price starts at £1000 because it's a RAID 0 array and there's more than just one drive involved! Not looking forward to the tyne tunnel this evening!
webman Posted January 30, 2006 Posted January 30, 2006 Why not just get a courier to pick it up and deliver it for you
indie Posted January 30, 2006 Author Posted January 30, 2006 Nah, I can make more money out of them by dropping them off myself then charging a nice mileage
webman Posted January 30, 2006 Posted January 30, 2006 Good thinking indie, treat yourself to a pint on the way back
indie Posted January 30, 2006 Author Posted January 30, 2006 Nope, gotta come back to work tonight, thats the downfall of working at a CLC, we're open 8 AM - 9 PM and i'm doing some support tonight!
indie Posted January 30, 2006 Author Posted January 30, 2006 It gives me an excuse to put my new TomTom One through it's paces too
indie Posted February 8, 2006 Author Posted February 8, 2006 Woot! Just got the data back from CBL this morning. Now i've got to go over and set up a new server and put the data back on it And rejoin all the clients to the domain and set up AV and all their other software... Diagnosis was a broken drive bearing and they gave a 20% educational discount.
webman Posted February 8, 2006 Posted February 8, 2006 Excellent news indie (Apart from having to rebuild and reinstall everything that is...) RAID5 this time?
indie Posted February 8, 2006 Author Posted February 8, 2006 Yes, I told them they we're getting RAID5 this time. Stupid council tech's did RAID1 last time. Don't mind all the work really, they pay me £20/h
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