• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

recovering from raid failure - need help/advice

J

JeffS

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 5, 2003
Messages
200
Ok, my raid0 is no raid 0.5 since one drive this morning decided to spend
it's time going click, click, click instead of working correctly.

I'm looking for advice / help getting it to come back (for at least an hour or so) so that
I can backup the data that was on this set and then replace the phyical drive.

Background:

The drive is a maxtor 250gig, with a highpoint rockethead to allow it to work with my
onboard sata raid controller (MB = A7N8X Deluxe). peroiodically for the past month or so, the drive has not shown up on reboots, etc. This was fixed by ziptying the highpoint firmly into position. I had read on here that they could be a bit loose and it was usually after opening my case and messing with something else, that it would fail.

Now, I'm getting the dreaded harddrive click, which makes me think it's the drive itself that's failing and not the controller adapter not seated correctly. (opinions? thoughts?)


Recovery Question:
Since I made the raidset with the onboard raid, does this mean I can only use it on this controller? Can I get another raid controller (one where I don't need to use sata-to-pata adapters to controll the disks, and would the raidset be intact (providing that the drive doesn't click itself to death?)

I'm guessing that it's the wonky array of adapaters that are making these drives talk to my board that are causing the problems (ok, I'm hoping it's only that) but I don't want to lose my data.

Is there a reasonably reliable way to get one drive back up temporarily, or salvage half of a raid to another disk so that I can rebuild my stripe, even in read-only mode - backup and then kill the disk?


thanks
for any help
-Jeff
 
that sounds like the drive problem, not the controller...
first get your controller to like your drive then you MIGHT have some hope. other than that, i dont think you can salvage your data, since data is split among the drives. If you did jbod, you can get some your data.

thats raid0 for you!

raid5 is your friend!
 
If I get another controller, will the existing raidset work with it (assuming the the drives are both functional) or will a new controller not be able to recognize what is already there?

I'm hoping that a night of fiddling with the drive may or may not be able to get it working...

BTW, someone once told me something about putting a harddrive in the freezer...
does that do anything or am I just grasping at straws...

thanks
-Jeff
 
It would only work if you bought a controller with the same chipset on it and could read the stripeset data off both drives (i.e. both are working fine). Chances are you will also need to enter the stripeset data, target disks, stripe size, etc., into the new controller's BIOS in order to initialize the array.

The freezer trick only works on seized drives, and clicking is not a symptom of that, whereas grinding and/or a failure to spin up are. It sounds more like the drive is having electronics trouble.

What exactly have you ziptied here?
 
I used a couple of zipties (though recently replaced with electrical tape) to firmly hold the highpoint rockthead attached to the drive.

the drives are normal ulta-ata drives. I had two wasted sata raid ports on my mobo so...
enter sata adapters :)

unfortunately, they find kind of loosely whereas a normal ide cable fits rather snug.
So, enter the zip-tie / electrical tape to hold things together.

Yeah, ghetto, and raid are probably a bad combo.

And I made sure not the cover the breather hole on the drives. One drive is fine
the other is wonky, and both are setup identicaly.

-Jeff

ps. pardon my spelling and grammer, I didn't have time
to check myself...
 
IT LIVES!!!!!!

or at least it did for an hour...

I was ready to give up hope, accept total loss of all data when I decided to
go for broke. figuring that it was a dead drive and once it's broken I can't break
it, what the hell. I tried everything I could think of (though I never got to the freezer)
after spining it, slapping it, rapping it, smacking all sides, shaking, shaking the drive
too, and praying. It finally came up and recognized.

I copied all the important data to a good disk, wiped it, broke the raid set, and
called it a night. This morning, I tried to boot up with it attached to see if it still
wanted to work, and nothing.

Now, it's onward and upward to raid 5 (once I can cost justify to the wife)
((my boss is an easier sell :D ))

-Jeff
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top