Need Advice on Data Recovery

les_garten

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 12, 2007
Messages
499
I have a Windows 2008R2 Server that just got nailed hard. The drive is not recognized by the controller(LSI 2308 onboard) This is a Supermicro X10SL7-F Motherboard. This drive was part of a RAID1 on that controller. One of the drives shows failed. The other shows ok, but trying to resync. We pulled off the bad drive that had failed and tried to run a Windows Repair procedure off the Install DVD. This hasn't worked because the drivers won't load and recognize the disc even though the controller sees it in the bootup up interface. Windows won't do anything with it and acts like it's not there.

The drive is a 1TB drive that was about 750GB of Data that we need back.

1) I need some recommendations of where to go to?

2) Any estimate(ball park of course) of how much it would cost?

3) If you get data back, is it just a bunch of numbered file names that you have to try and figure out what it is?

Had a bad day so far... Would appreciate any help I can get
 
depends what the raid1 resync did

as its raid1 you should be able to just plug the disk into a normal PC and see what's on the disk (raid 5 or 6 needs raid controller)

Note raid isn't a backup (raid1 or raid5 only has 1 redundant protection, use RAID6) have 1-2 backups, can be a something like a synology 5 bay nas in RAID6 and offline backups (USB or/and cloud),, using USB disks make sure you have at least 2 different disks (like seagate and WD), USB HDDs are not as reliable as fixed NAS/PC server setups

make sure you have at least monthly run read or consistency checks once a month (in a nas it be raid/data scrub check and extended smart disk check)
 
Hi,
I'm looking for advice for after the trainwreck, not how to prevent one. So was wondering if someone could help me with the 3 questions I asked.
 
as stated, plug the good disc into a working computer and see if it has any data on it. (don't boot to it, just plug it in as a secondary)

you need LSI drivers if you would like to reload windows (don't do this obviously)

if you send the drive out, you will get some data that is just blobs, not only will you have to guess what it was, you will have to guess what file type it is, some data will have the correct file type but no name, same data will be complete. you will NOT get all data back. Recovery as a service usually starts at 500$ and goes up (rapidly) from there. there are people here that would probably even help with that if needed, provided you don't run everyone off.
 
Does Windows Server not repair the array if you just put a new disk in there? All the data should be there on the second stripe, I must be missing something.
 
pull the LSI card out, pop in a sata disk, set bios to boot to sata and not the LSI, install an OS, then put the LSI card back in, install the LSI drivers and see whats on the raid1 drive which should now be like a D or E drive?
 
So we tried to see if we could boot to Hirens and "see" the drive on a sata controller. Nothing. It's like the drive is not there. We boxed them up and sent them off for recovery.

Thanks for the quick replies and help. Sorry if I sounded terse, very stressful circumstances.
 
i assume you sent all the disks (i would assume 3 if you tried a resync), first time it happens is the worst time, when you trust raid to much

raid1-10 is very fast at remirroring until it doesn't work then you see why raid6 is generally a better choice as you don't have to worry as much when 1 disk has failed as you still have redundancy (you shouldn't need to re run the backup manually when using raid6 when 1 disk has failed)

with raid 5 or 1 and raid10 you have 0 redundancy soon as a disk is lost (raid10 can technically lose more then one disk but if its the mirror of the failed disk you lose everything) and should back up immediately before messing with replacing disks, not recommended using hotspare with single disk redundancy setups as there is no way to auto correct URE errors or second full disk fails when auto hotspare kicks in and can sometimes crash the array

raid6 only have to worry if you lose 2 disks (+hotspare if used), but smart errors or/and consistently check and read patrol should pick up a secondary failing disk before that happens (or on a nas, a extended disk smart check and raid scrub monthly task) just don't run them on the same day or the second task will fail (2,3,4 days apart depending on size of disks in the array, usually give 2 day gap per 4TB disk size so 4x4tb, 4x8tb, 4x12tb)

use NAS or enterprise HDDs (normal disks have TLER/ERC disabled witch can make the whole disk fail just on one 4k read error)
 
Back
Top