RAID question help -Results Recovered!!!!

itdaddy

Hey dudes

I have a mirrored set at home RAID 1. and on boot up it says Invalid raid
what does that mean Invalid RAID?

Question of the day:

Can I delete the raid 1 set 0 and 1 and recreate raid1 set without deleting the data on the drives I will not format it but delete the raid set and recreate will this delete all my data?

I tried to read the drives as a single drive and no way !
Do i have to delete the raid 1 set first and then it will read as a single drive?
I have never had this and do not wanto brick my drives will my 160 gb of data?
thanks for your help

RobertKaucher

No matter what you do, you need to make a backup. Any time you modify RAID you run the risk of everything being lost. Plug one of these drives into another system and back it up.

Since this seems like a real environment and not a test, let me ask you what type of RAID are you dealing with? Is this the standard, software RAID of the Server 2003 OS?

itdaddy

RobertKaucher

you are 100 % right I should have backed it up man I thought RAID1 mirror was perfect
not I have learned my lesson. I had no idea from my reading you can have 2 bad raid 1 drives?
holy crap.

it is in windows 2003 environment oS and hardware raid1 2 drives mirrored
booted up and said Invalid Raid no drives in My Computer explorer.

holy crap not sure what to do? do I just hook up like you said in another system
and say put the pin on slave?

thanks for you help

If i can get it going I will back it up to my 500 GB usb 2 drive like know

RobertKaucher

Yes, hook it up to another computer using slave method. Since it is RAID 1 it will need to be another server based OS.

Any number of drives can go bad at any time. I have seen two drives on a RAID 5 go bad at the same time, I've seen Jr. admins who think they understand what they have been told to do data is ok because it's on a RAID (it was RAID 0 I might add). Prepare for the impossible.

Good luck!

EDIT: Seems like my palm slipped on the touchpad and deleted a protion of my post. Should read:
I've seen Jr. admins who think they understand what they have been told to do and format a RAID valume and then think it's ok because it's RAID, and admins who think data is ok because it's on a RAID (it was RAID 0 I might add).

bertieb

Look on the bright side ( I know what you're thinking - )

You've learned an invaluable lesson here. RAID does not constitute or substitute a defined and tested backup strategy. I've seen lots of admins rely on RAID as a 'backup' strategy only for then to lose multiple disks in a RAID5 array etc and the world comes tumbling down around them.

itdaddy

RobertKaucher



hhahaah RAID 0 and they thought that it was redundant weird..I even know that but
I guess it is possible to have 2 drives go bad wow and 2 on a raid5 no wonder they back up RAID no matter what lots of redundancy... I was stupid not to tomorrow i will be working onit to
get it going and will let you know what happend thanks so much for your help.
you are the man! I can build raidbut it is times like these I really love (as long as i have abackup) that I really learn the ropes of the ins and outs.

itdaddy

bertieb

hahah yeah you are right; I have backups but they are way old thinking i was okay
shi iiiiiit NOT! as soon as I get it going again. will make sure and back it on reguarly
just sucks when you have GBs of data but I guess i do know how to back up changes
once my SEED is made..just been lazy
wed and thurs rebuilding my entire lab gong to be VMware big time
new skeletek 28 u rack for my new ccnp lab with Voip yeah
and my new ASA 5505 fwl i am instlling will post pics when i am done on my blog

itdaddy dot wordpress dot com

thanks

astorrs

As the others have said, backups are essential.

Don't forget it's not just drive failures that can kill your RAID set. So too can controller errors (see Claymoore's post here for an excellent example) or file system corruption (say the O/S going mental on you and trashing the data). Neither of those are going to be caught be any RAID level - in fact it will "help" you by mirroring or updating the parity data to include the errors - hence good backups =

motogpman

While doing field service for a certain company named "D" and "H" in the past taught me to not always trust that the "supposed" bad drive is actually the culprit. When a raid controller has issues, it may actually show a good drive to be bad or point out the wrong drive as being defective.

There have been cases where even the helpdesk has misdiagnosed the problem by not actually taking the time to use the onboard diagnostics to test each drive. It can be a timely process and we all know that most customers want things fixed yesterday, but taking the safe way is usually best.

Scenario: The system/controller interface states that a specific drive has failed ( Raid 5 set). The drive is replaced without actually doing a consistency check on the drive. This manufacturer's controllers were notorious for doing this and a good drive was replaced, the actual defective unit was left in the array, when a rebuild was performed, well... it is still trying to rebuild from a defective set and now the whole set is damaged. Meanwhile, the good drive has already been sent back and never seen again.

Just a little side note, probably doesn't relate to this particular post, but figured I would share this. Not sure if your controller actaully has a debug/consistency check tool, but I would highly reccomend using if it does. Also, be very careful of the "initialize" feature.... it had bitten many people.

Ok, back to my beer.....

itdaddy

Okay men this is what happend.

I tried the single slave disk in another server OS bad results. I could no IMPORT the foreign disk
errors each time with both and if I converted to BASIC I would lose all my data (so you think and so MS says

---

NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!


what I did was converted one of the raid set disks to BASIC scared I was.. then
I used my FAVORITE data recovery program - GetDataBackNTFS.exe these guys
who made this data recovery program shoould get a purple heart in IT man! I have alway
gotten my data back and this what my trick.

what I did was convert to BASIC disk and I did create a partition nor did I format it (a given)
but do not partition and format it. leave it as BASIC disk.

Then I usedGetDatabackupNTFS.exe program and copy all your recovery data it fines
which was all160GB amazing to a USB 500GB external drive. SUCCESS

Lesson learned: always backup my raid set to USB external reguarly. Do not rely on RAID!
lesson learned even though I am sure I can get it back. Way too risky for what I have on my Raid drives..wayyyyyy to risky...

HOPE this helps all others...I enjoyed learning this but would rather have had it backed up
to lesson the possible price paid! OUCH! hahaha ;thanks dudes

dynamik

Wow, nice job! I'm glad you were able to get that resolved

itdaddy

dynamik

dude that man! holy crap was I scared; man I cannot believe both drives duded on me.
but what I think was something with the RAID card but will find out. what I am going to do
is recover all data to my 500 GB external usb drive and make sure I have atleaste 130 GB of data recovered which is what i about had and then recreate the raid1 sets and see if it comes back man these drives are fairly new (can happen) but I just dont think it is a bad drive
just a lost config or something so going to retry them and make sure i have the same data
on my external usb 500gb saved..that is arpart of my new lab setup.i am building myCCNP rack
and a part of my new lab is to complet some decent Disaster recovery system in place that
has atleast data/images in two spots at all times simple and easy...;)

thanks; me toooo. man I have getdataback.exe 2x in my life this time and while i ago
when i was partitioning a drive and forgot i had another drive hooked up and wiped out partiton
did the same thing. this program i smagic..;) i learned alot and didnt cost me all my data
holy crap had visions of along time ago losing like 1000 songs of mine on a drive i didnt backup
almost got sick ahahah phew

almost back to normal phewww!
thank god I can laugh cause i was crying before

RobertKaucher

itdaddy wrote:

Okay men this is what happend.

I tried the single slave disk in another server OS bad results. I could no IMPORT the foreign disk
errors each time with both and if I converted to BASIC I would lose all my data (so you think and so MS says

---

NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, in fairness they mean standard methods. Essentially your data was gone, you needed to use a 3rd party data recovery tool to reserect it. You can't blame MS for being cautious and covering their proverbial asses.

I am very glad you recovered it and thanks for posting how you did it. If I ever find myself in a similar position out in the field I will try that application.

itdaddy

RobertKaucher

thanks I know yeah essentially it is gone but man..nothing worked I couldnt believe
changing it to another server to at least read it..but looked like whenI recoverd it it was in
process of updating or rebuilding the 1 of the 2 drives and got locked for some reason
but I have been blessed to just convert to basic disk or use quick format andnot the full
and luck to get all my data back with the GETDATAbackNTFS.exe amazing program
amazing! thanks....i always try the stuff that works and I know by doing my quick formats I can get it back and wasnt sure about basic convert but just went for broke nothing to lose
but i also discovered that getdatabackntfs.exe works and will recover a disk that is not readable by the OS..So personally I woudl just leave the Dynamic in error state with Windows OS
cause getdatabackntfs.exe willl still read the disk the error. what i mean is just because windows OS doesnt see it in My Computer doesnt mean getdatabackntfs.exe doesnt see it.
getdatabackntfs.exe will see and recover disks that the OS cannot see. totally bitchin!
serious goingto write a letter to getdatbackntfs.exe company and tell them amazing product!
all my data is restored all of it amazing. It takes awhile but if you have a drive connected
willl go faster. I had usb 2.0 500GB drive rather slow but buss to buss is fast.
Robert
I alwasy love to post real world issues that can be solved..power is in the people sharing knowlege but thank you for your help! it did educate me and i will always try your ideas first before going to alternative means..just makes sense too..thank you
robert