recovery of DL 320 G5 RAID--lost bios data

[Wendy Gauntt]

We were copying data to the server last night (Win SBS 2003 Std) when suddenly it hard locked for no apparent reason. We attempted a reboot but it no longer recognized or even powered up the hard drives. When we reboot from Windows CD, the BIOS shows the RAID is disabled.

It appears that the bios that contained the RAID info somehow lost it, and now the data is sitting on those hard drives but completely inaccessible. HP support said they have no idea what happened or why.

For a number of reasons we would strongly prefer not to rebuild the server from scratch. There are a couple of complicated apps, plus the owner of the company REALLY wants yesterday's data (our backup is from the previous night).

Does anyone have any ideas on how to recover the RAID, or at least pull data from the hard drives? Or even insight into what happened and whether we need to worry about it happening again?

Thanks,
Wendy

[Ryan Goff]

What happens when you turn raid back on? Anything at all? What post errors do you get if any? What are the lights doing on the drives?

[Wendy Gauntt]

Well, we haven't turned RAID back on because it looks like it would wipe out all data currently on the drives. The lights aren't coming on on the drives; it appears that they aren't getting powered on.

We got them connected to another computer. Using a utility we can see the partitions, so we're pretty sure the data there. We've got a data recovery place assessing options but we're scared to hear the $$$ associated with recovery. Any alternatives would be welcome.

Thanks!
Wendy

[Joshua Small_2]

You are generally able to pull out all hard drives, boot to the raid Online Raid Configuration Application, and make sure it's enabled, and delete any existing configuration.
Power down, plug drives back in, it _should_ just read the raid config from them and start it up.

I've used this several times when moving drives to an identical alternate server.

Although given something obviously went wrong with your server, it's hard to state definites.

[Ryan Goff]

turning raid back on shouldn't clear out the data, simply because the raid is only inititalized from CTRL+A inside the raid bios. The switch inside the bios to turn raid on/off is simply just that. It won't read/write to the drives.