Lost a drive in RAID config, now can't get any data from one of original unaffected logical drives

[ndavies]

Basically I have been uing a HP LH Pro server with the following configuration to store my CAD data:

- 3 x 2Gb disks, RAID 5, Logical Drive, Mounted in Windows 2000 Server as drive C:
- 3 x 9Gb disks, RAID 5, Logical Drive, Mounted in Windows 2000 Server as drive D:

I used the first logical drive as my Windows 2000 server system disk and the second logical drive to store CAD data.

One of the 2Gb drives in the first logical drive had failed last Friday and the server failed to boot up. I replaced this with another 2Gb drive but could not get it to rebuild (due to my lack of experince no doubt).

In the end I removed the 3 x 9Gb drive from the server as I was getting worried that the data would get lost and proceeded to try and get the first logical disk working. I eventually did this by clearing the RAID configuration and starting a fresh with just the 3 x 2GB disks, I succesfully reinstalled W2K server as recovery of the original was not happening.

It now came to a point where I needed to re-introduce the 3 x 9gb disks back into the server config. I plugged them up and powered up, I then used the RAID config built into the BIOS to select the drives which were shown as ready and mark the end array. I then created a logical disk.

I now rebooted and got into W2K server. I can see the second logical drive in explorer but can not access any data off it. I used Disk management in control panel > Administrator tools > Computer Management and can see the drive there with a "Healthy" mark under it" but no information of the file system it has, it was NTFS.

Now, I am really looking for some help with this as I need to get at my data and only have a backup of it from 3 weeks ago.

I would really appreciate any help with getting it back.

Thanks in advance.
N

[ndavies]

One thing I haven't mentioned yet, I haven't service packed this server yet and will not get a chance until tomorrow now.

[kris rombauts]

Hi ,

you didn;t specified the type of raid ocntroller, since this is a LH Pro it could wel be the older Mylex but since you mentioned the BIOS utilty it must be a Netraid controller in this case.

If you removed the 3 * 9 gbyte disks offline and inserted them back (after recreating 3*2GB raid 5 and reinstalling w2k etc etc) and created a new array WITHOUT initializing the array/logical drive then the data should be available without any problem, i have done this several times.
However, this is only so when you created the identical same array (same stripe size, raid level, exact same logical drive size inside the array and used the same disk position in the disk slots etc etc).


Kris

[ndavies]

Thanks for the response Kris.

It is a netraid and the server is in fact a LH plus and not a pro (as i mistakenly specified).

The drives are back in their original slot. I remarked the drive as online but as I exite dthe netraid utility it said the drives were not initialised and I was to initialise them. I answered no at this point.

As far as I know I've set the raid up with the default settings that were used previously.

I'm starting to look at utility that claim to be able to access drives regardless of their condition including mixed up drive order. Hope this helps.