RAID 5 Recovery Service or Software

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GreatestOne

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 15, 2005
Messages
488
Ok I have been informed fairly certainly that my RAID 5 is not rebuildable. 1 of 3 went bad, and before I got that drive back form Samsung, another drive went bad (Samsung HD scan in DOS stated bad a sector). Nice... which means only one healthy drive, no rebuild. So now onto recovery option... getting past the fact that I shoulda woulda coulda have had a real backup, etc, I need to make a decison here how to try to gain some data back, and any opinions would be appreciated, especially if you have done or gone through this before....

I see this software for $800

http://www.topshareware.com/Quick-Recovery-for-RAID-5-download-35903.htm

but at less than 3 MB, can it be legit, or anyone heard of this?

I called what seems like a good company, drivesavers.com, and they said about a $400 charge even if NO data is saved, some analysis fee... but they said from my case, they should be able to save most data... to save and deliver, they say for me about $4500, but can be less if they recover less than all the data, like per GB or # of vital files they cannot restore... I will talk to them more tomorrow. But of course I rather just spend the $800 (ya, JUST) and do it myself if this is valid software that wont also eradicate my data and make it totally non-recoverable.

Of if anyone has another place or software that works for this situation, please let me know, thanks.
 
You could try to ghost the 2nd "dead" drive over to the new drive and see if it can be added to the RAID

I'd give that a shot first. if it's only a couple bad sectors and a failing drive... typically you can ghost those...
 
Blazestorm said:
You could try to ghost the 2nd "dead" drive over to the new drive and see if it can be added to the RAID

I'd give that a shot first. if it's only a couple bad sectors and a failing drive... typically you can ghost those...
Click to expand...

Interesting... I havent done that before, can u pleeease elaborate for me? right now I am running off my single drive, and I have the other 2 RAID drives plugged in (I can see the drives in explorer, no data of course), and can plug in the 3rd empty drive as well. Are you sure I can do this for RAID drives even though I am not running RAID right now?
 
I will post back on this thread, consider this a placeholder. There is a free raid recovery software piece out there that is free, but the name escapes me right now.
 
If you ever have a bad drive and want to get data off oen of first things I'd do is use ghost or dd_rescue to copy data to new/good drive. Then you can mess around with it and try to recover.

Unsure if ghost will skip over errors, dd_rescue was kinda made to continue on if it can't read a block or something.
 
If you are going to ship the array anywhere ship it to Ontrack by far one of the best data recovery services that I have worked with. Not exactly the cheapest place to go, but they always seem to be able to get the data back somehow.
 
bexamous said:
If you ever have a bad drive and want to get data off oen of first things I'd do is use ghost or dd_rescue to copy data to new/good drive. Then you can mess around with it and try to recover.

Unsure if ghost will skip over errors, dd_rescue was kinda made to continue on if it can't read a block or something.
Click to expand...

Yes Blazestorm also suggested this, and I have no idea how to start ghosting a RAID 5 drive without making sure I dont damage anything.... is there any software that makes it fairly simple, or I guess I can try the software first and come back if i have any questions.


xxan0xx said:
If you are going to ship the array anywhere ship it to Ontrack by far one of the best data recovery services that I have worked with. Not exactly the cheapest place to go, but they always seem to be able to get the data back somehow.
Click to expand...

I was looking at Ontrack (they seem to be closed on weekends so I will call tomorrow) and drivesavers.com, who quoted me what I stated in the OP. But of course I much rather pay a grand or so for software that will do this effectively than ship and pay a few grand.
 
Using something like Norton Ghost, you literally just tell it the source drive (should give you 1 option if the new drive is blank) then the 2nd drive.

It basically makes a bit-for-bit copy of the drive... atleast it tries to... you can tell it to "force clone" which makes it skips bad sectors

This is the cheapest way imo and could potentially work. Honestly I bet it's one of the procedures they'd go through.
 
Blazestorm said:
Using something like Norton Ghost, you literally just tell it the source drive (should give you 1 option if the new drive is blank) then the 2nd drive.

It basically makes a bit-for-bit copy of the drive... atleast it tries to... you can tell it to "force clone" which makes it skips bad sectors

This is the cheapest way imo and could potentially work. Honestly I bet it's one of the procedures they'd go through.
Click to expand...

That sounds good... does Ghost have a special imaging process for RAID 5 drives as opposed to anything else? I have never used Ghost before.... and can you suggest any other similar software that you know will do the job? And I assume I do this while I boot off my single drive and have the other 3 (1 good data, 1 bad data, 1 blank replacement) plugged in?
 
GreatestOne said:
That sounds good... does Ghost have a special imaging process for RAID 5 drives as opposed to anything else? I have never used Ghost before.... and can you suggest any other similar software that you know will do the job? And I assume I do this while I boot off my single drive and have the other 3 (1 good data, 1 bad data, 1 blank replacement) plugged in?
Click to expand...

You can boot up a Linux LiveCD and use dd to low-level copy (like Ghost), or use one of the GNU utilities like dd_rescue which does the same thing but optimized for data recovery.
 
djBon2112 said:
You can boot up a Linux LiveCD and use dd to low-level copy (like Ghost), or use one of the GNU utilities like dd_rescue which does the same thing but optimized for data recovery.
Click to expand...

You can use LiveCD to copy XP files? I guess "dd" is a feature of Linux that allows u to do this for failed RAID disks? If it were you, would you use LiveCD or dd-rescue in my situation? Thanks.
 
One of the data recovery specialists told me I may not be able to just generically ghost from the bad sectored drive over, that I will need a software that does a sector by sector imaging from the bad drive to a new one, ie, not like a Norton Ghost program. Has anyone done this successfully in the recent past, and what software did you use? (is dd_rescue such a utility?)

If this all fails, I have at least started a bidding war between drivesavers and ontrack, so we'll see how much money I can not lose on this ordeal.
 
GreatestOne said:
One of the data recovery specialists told me I may not be able to just generically ghost from the bad sectored drive over, that I will need a software that does a sector by sector imaging from the bad drive to a new one, ie, not like a Norton Ghost program. Has anyone done this successfully in the recent past, and what software did you use? (is dd_rescue such a utility?)

If this all fails, I have at least started a bidding war between drivesavers and ontrack, so we'll see how much money I can not lose on this ordeal.
Click to expand...

Did you check out Raid Reconstructor by GetDataBack ? Raid Reconstructor was made just for this sort of situation.
 
GreatestOne said:
You can use LiveCD to copy XP files? I guess "dd" is a feature of Linux that allows u to do this for failed RAID disks? If it were you, would you use LiveCD or dd-rescue in my situation? Thanks.
Click to expand...

A live CD has dd_rescue.

dd is a Unix/Linux application to do low-level copying. Literally copies each byte one at a time. dd_rescue is a GNU utility that uses dd specifically for rescue purposes.

If you boot up a LiveCD, open a terminal then try "man dd" and "man dd_rescue" to get more info. There's also guides on the internet, and I really don't have much experience with it. Please be careful with both though, if your command with dd isn't flawless you can erase your entire disk!
 
[LYL]Homer;1033270065 said:
Just for clarity - you'll need RAID Reconstructor to 'set up' the volume that GetDataBack will look for and read. So you'll need both pieces of software. It works great and I've used it a couple of times now for clients.
Click to expand...

I've run raid recon and it said it cannot see the files, and had to run a RAID Probe to send to them to see if THEY could recover on site, but then they charge no matter what, so then might as well go with the data recovery people. They didnt seem very friendly either.
 
djBon2112 said:
A live CD has dd_rescue.

dd is a Unix/Linux application to do low-level copying. Literally copies each byte one at a time. dd_rescue is a GNU utility that uses dd specifically for rescue purposes.

If you boot up a LiveCD, open a terminal then try "man dd" and "man dd_rescue" to get more info. There's also guides on the internet, and I really don't have much experience with it. Please be careful with both though, if your command with dd isn't flawless you can erase your entire disk!
Click to expand...

Awesome help, thanks... I guess I better get my oversized kb out, cant afford to miss a letter right?

Holy cow, what is up with these 79635762 diff version of Live CD??? Is Scientific the "official" one or..... does it even matter? knoppix, feather linux, berry lynux, diet linux, this a joke?
 
GreatestOne said:
I've run raid recon and it said it cannot see the files, and had to run a RAID Probe to send to them to see if THEY could recover on site, but then they charge no matter what, so then might as well go with the data recovery people. They didnt seem very friendly either.
Click to expand...

They only charge if they can find the parameters needed for raid reconstructor to operate. If they can't find the parameters, then you don't get charged.

Even if you consider their raidprobe charge of $299 + $178 for their software, it is still way cheaper than professional data recovery service.
 
SJConsultant said:
They only charge if they can find the parameters needed for raid reconstructor to operate. If they can't find the parameters, then you don't get charged.

Even if you consider their raidprobe charge of $299 + $178 for their software, it is still way cheaper than professional data recovery service.
Click to expand...

And they actually recover the data like the other services, like put it on another drive, etc and send it to me?
 
GreatestOne said:
And they actually recover the data like the other services, like put it on another drive, etc and send it to me?
Click to expand...

No, they don't do the recovery for you.

If the raid recovery software cannot determine the correct raid parameters on its own, it can't see your raid array. You run the diskprobe, send the disk probe data to them, and they'll (hopefully) send you back the data that gets entered into raid recovery software which will be able to make a "copy" of your raid array.

From this point, you run getdataback on the raid 5 copy and perform the actual recovery.
 
GreatestOne said:
Awesome help, thanks... I guess I better get my oversized kb out, cant afford to miss a letter right?

Holy cow, what is up with these 79635762 diff version of Live CD??? Is Scientific the "official" one or..... does it even matter? knoppix, feather linux, berry lynux, diet linux, this a joke?
Click to expand...

Sorry about that. Easiest to try would be Ubuntu.

www.ubuntu.com

Download and burn the 8.10 32-bit ISO, then boot into it. It gives you a full GUI (web browser, etc.) while you work. Then open a terminal ("Applications" -> "Accessories" -> "Terminal") and go "man dd_rescue". That gives you a basic manual for the utility. Your RAID array will probably be /dev/sdX, where X is a letter. For example, /dev/sda is the source (crashed array) and /dev/sdb is the destination. To copy you'd go "dd_rescue /dev/sda /dev/sdb"

It's quite involved, and as I said I don't have much experience with it, you'd best try
Googling for more info on the utility and what to do with it. I suggest it because it's free and gets the job done ;)
 
djBon2112 said:
Sorry about that. Easiest to try would be Ubuntu.

www.ubuntu.com

Download and burn the 8.10 32-bit ISO, then boot into it. It gives you a full GUI (web browser, etc.) while you work. Then open a terminal ("Applications" -> "Accessories" -> "Terminal") and go "man dd_rescue". That gives you a basic manual for the utility. Your RAID array will probably be /dev/sdX, where X is a letter. For example, /dev/sda is the source (crashed array) and /dev/sdb is the destination. To copy you'd go "dd_rescue /dev/sda /dev/sdb"

It's quite involved, and as I said I don't have much experience with it, you'd best try
Googling for more info on the utility and what to do with it. I suggest it because it's free and gets the job done ;)
Click to expand...

Thanks, I already ended up dl Ubuntu and the command for the copy was

sudo dd_rescue /dev/sr0 /dev/sr1

for my config... I would not have known the sr0 or sr1 convention unless at startup it showed a bunch of sector errors for my bad drive, sr0, so I dunno how anyone is supposed to know the proper syntax for their own system.

Anyways, I gave up on it... the copy only took like 5-10 min max, didnt seem right, and then I tried to run the command for recover/save it on the new drive, "sudo fsck....." and it didnt do anything, so I think I'm just going to send it away and get it recovered.. I already negotiated over 20% off with no assessment fee so.... also with this dd_rescue, even after it is dont successfully, my disks are no longer labeled RAID drives, they are labeled NON-RAID as u see in the screenshot, so then I guess I have to use RAID Reconstructor and etc etc etc......

Thanks for your help tho, good to know for the future and now i know a few Linux commands, ya....
 
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