Recovering data off HD (Red Hat Linux)

[J Fujii]

Have the following server:

HP Proliant DL380G5 w/HP Smart Array P400 Controller, two SAS HDs

Red Hat Linux Enterprise 5

Problem is this:

Originally the two HDs were set up in the Smart Array Controller as a mirror. We needed to reload the OS but needed to save some data. As there was at the time no way to get the data off the mirrored drive(s), I pulled one of the drives and reconfigured the Smart Array Controller for a single RAID 0 logical drive, with the hope of trying to get the data off the pulled drive later. Reloaded the OS on the remaining drive, then added the pulled drive as another logical drive in the Smart Array Controller (There seemed to be no other way of getting the OS to recognize the pulled drive. I couldn't just insert it back in the server).

Now there doesn't seem to be a way of accessing (mounting) the pulled drive. The only way seems to be to add it to the current logical volume (which also seems to mean initializing (reformatting) the drive). The Hardware Browser sees the drive as a LVM Physical Volume.

I tried to boot off the pulled drive, but it's no longer recongized as a boot drive. I'm thinking either it's because it was originally part of a mirror or something got overwritten when I added it as a logical drive in the Smart Array Controller.

Is there any way of recovering data off the drive?

[Rob Leadbeater · Accepted solution]

Hi,

What exactly did you do when you "added the pulled drive as another logical drive in the Smart Array Controller" ?

If you've changed the RAID type, ie RAID 1 to RAID 0, then you've probably got no way of getting any data back - unless you want to spend lots of money...

Cheers,

Rob

[J Fujii]

Unfortunately I did change the RAID type from 1 to 0....