topic Re: Recover re-intialized RAID 5 array in Disk Enclosures

Recover re-intialized RAID 5 array

george_76 — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:46:21 GMT

I have re-intialized a RAID 5 array that has 3 SCSI disks. is there a way to recover the data on it? i have attached it to a server that has windows instlalled.

Re: Recover re-intialized RAID 5 array

Hein van den Heuvel — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:06:52 GMT

>> is there a way to recover the data on it?

Probably not. A typical controller will init new raid-5 volume by writing zeroes all over it to get a known, correct, initial parity value.

How did you re-initialize it?
With Windows tools, or with the storage controller tool.

If you want further help on this, then you need to provide the exact details like which storage cotroller, which program used to do the init, what exact command requested.

To check for yourself whether there is any hope, I would suggest to find a RAW disk reader tool and dump a few sample blocks, like blocks: 10,100,1000,10000,100000,1000000,2000000

See a pattern? (like all zeroes ?)

I have never needed such tool on Windows, but google came up with:
http://www.e-f-w.com/content.php?cid=rda

If I needed to analyse this, then I would probably boot some Linux variant from a USB stick and use commands like:
# dd iseek=xxx bs=1k count=1 /dev/s... | xd

Hope you have a good backup, or that the data can otherwise be reconstructed!

Good luck,
Hein.

Re: Recover re-intialized RAID 5 array

george_76 — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 06:47:01 GMT

What happen is
I have changed the order of the disks by mistake. after that i got a POST message to re-intialize the disks and i press ok. after that i found no partions on windows and i can not find the data. is there a way to restore or i lost all thing.