Extreme bad luck - 2 drives failing, same day

N

Nir

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May 2, 2010
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38
Some Background ..

My NAS was built about 2-3 years ago, it was my first so I wasn't aware of how easy data can be lost, so my build did not contain any sort backup, no Raid1/5 , no external backup what-so-ever, yes I was so innocent.
all I did was connecting 5 drives as spanned volume in Windows 7, so It would appear as one drive.
Just two months ago, after visiting these forums, I've came to the conclusion i'm playing with fire, and with the help of some members here (espicially sub.mesa) I've came to the conclusion I need to bring more safety to my precious files, so i've had a ZFS build in mind, but havn't actually got to purchase the damn thing :(

What Happened Today :
just came back from work to discover "clicks" coming from my NAS.
at first I thought it was my fan hitting some wire, but soon enough I realised the worst.. a failed hard-drive.
I immidiatly took the failing disk out (a Seagate1.5TB 7200.11 series, newest firmware - SD1B ) and connected it to my desktop, trying to extract some data from it, but without success, the BIOS hardly recognise it, but even if it does, Windows failes to access it, including any proffesional software I got my hands on (Spinrite 6.0, Hiren's BootCD recovery tools)
after admiting the failure 2 hours later, I've turned the NAS back on to try and see how windows reacts without one of it's disks, only to discover another Hard-Disk giving the same clicks (it hasn't before, i'm sure about it), and it's also the same make/model.
it really looks to much to be coincidence, both drives operating for 1.5-2 years without a hitch, finally to drop dead on the same day ??

anyway, i'm planning on taking the drives to the experts and pay a premium for a recovery, as I've tried almost everything I can do at home (someone suggested using a hammer, no thanks)

A very important question to you loving understanding people :

before I'm actually giving away my money for some data recovery company - will the Spanned volume work again incase the data will be moved to a diffrent hard-drives ?



I trust not many have much expirience with spanned volumes, but even if you read this far, thanks for listening, and learn from my mistake - backup your data if you havn't.

Thanks all.
 
Sorry for your luck man. Past 30 days at work I have had two drives fail in our storage array. First time in 12 years I had ever had any type of hard drive failure. Luckily its a RAID 5 and had a hot spare ready to take the load.
 
Spanned volumes depend upon every disk being "seen" to work and can spread data anywhere/everywhere between the disks.

To have the entire volume work, all 5 drives will have to be sent to data recovery and I can't imagine how much that would cost.

IDK if the data can be recovered from one drive at a time.

Hopefully someone will come along with a better/cheaper idea.
 
Old Hippie said:
Spanned volumes depend upon every disk being "seen" to work and can spread data anywhere/everywhere between the disks.

To have the entire volume work, all 5 drives will have to be sent to data recovery and I can't imagine how much that would cost.

IDK if the data can be recovered from one drive at a time.

Hopefully someone will come along with a better/cheaper idea.
Click to expand...

thanks for you response, I fear the data recovery company will charge me more than I can afford, but I won't get response from them untill sunday.

I think the only viable solution is that In case they managed to access the data, they would need do a complete hard disk duplicatation to a new 1.5TB hard drives.
ironiclly , i'd probably have to purchase the same seagate drives for that to work, only to dispose them a week later when I'll build a more proper Storage array.
but i'm being optimistic here..
 
they would need do a complete hard disk duplicatation to a new 1.5TB hard drives.
Click to expand...

I don't believe that would be the case.

The first thing would be to repair your 2 faulty drives. Sounds to me like your data is still there but your drives have a mechanical problem. I'm sure they'll have donor drives for repair and they've probably seen this mechanical problem a zillion times....at least! :D

At this point all your drives should be working and the data could be moved anywhere.

I'm sure somewhere down the line you'll have to purchase at least two drives to replace the faulty units but not all 5.

I'm no pro and could be way off base but I could see it coming down like that.

PSSSSS....I just wanted to add.....DO NOT TRY ANY DATA RECOVERY SOFTWARE if you're planning to send the drives to a pro!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It COULD screw-up some of the data.
 
Update

the Data Recovery company I used have just got back to me with their diagnostics :
they said one of the drives have PCB issues, and they would charge 600$ to repair that issue.
the other drive have issue with the head, and they want 2k$ to repair that with 80% probability it will be solved.

I denied their offer, can't afford that price.
the good news for me is that the PCB is easy to replace by myself, but I don't think that replacing the heads of the 2nd drive will be easy.
but i'm gonna try anyway, i'll look for guides over the net.

thanks for all the advices here, i'll update with my results.
 
Since you spanned the volumes they depend on every volume being "seen" to complete the picture.

Data for one thing (program, movie, music, whatever) could be spread anywhere between those 5 discs.

You would have been much better off with JBOD rather than a spanned volume.

This HD head replacement video is excellent.

Good Luck and please give updates!
 
Old Hippie said:
Since you spanned the volumes they depend on every volume being "seen" to complete the picture.

Data for one thing (program, movie, music, whatever) could be spread anywhere between those 5 discs.

You would have been much better off with JBOD rather than a spanned volume.

This HD head replacement video is excellent.

Good Luck and please give updates!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the video.
and yes - indeed, I realised how bad it was to use volume spanning..
IF i'll manage to recover the data, my next build will most probably be raidz1 with ZFS
 
Thanks for the video.
and yes - indeed, I realised how bad it was to use volume spanning..
IF i'll manage to recover the data, my next build will most probably be raidz1 with ZFS
Click to expand...

I tried swapping a pcb with a board from an identical unit once with no luck. I think that drive had a bad motor that spun the platters. I would never consider doing heads, but if it is dead anyway, best of luck to you. Let us know how it goes good or bad.

My current NAS has 3 drives in Raid 5 that I backup to another NAS that is running in Raid 1 mode. The really important stuff like my music and photos get an additional backup on USB hard drives. I just bought new TB drives for those drives.

I have 2 new drives on order for my main NAS, a Thecus N5200. I am going to update that system to a Raid 6 with 5 drives for a total of 3 TB of storage space that can lose 2 drives and still be online. I know that is possible to lose 2 or 3 drives at once, but not likely, right NIR. ;) But the RAID on the main system is just to keep it online, not a backup solution.

Don
 
The video was interesting. Thanks. However, I think it would be way more difficult for the typical hard drives that contain 3 platters instead of 1.
 
drescherjm said:
. However, I think it would be way more difficult for the typical hard drives that contain 3 platters instead of 1.
Click to expand...
No doubt! :)

I saw another video with triple platters and it was a little more involved but basically the same.
 
Ah the infamous Deathgate click of death. It's not bad luck. It's normal for these 7200.11 drives to fail. I should know. I have 8 7200.11 drives in various stages of failure. Well actually 7 now. I just sold one. It's just something you have to accept when you buy Seagate drives nowadays. Although actually nearly all the 1TB+ drives are unreliable compared to the older generations of drives. That's why 7200 rpm drives have gotten so rare. They have trouble making them at all. You would think I would shy away from Seagate after all this, but instead I have again embraced drive failures by buying a Seagate LP drive. Now of course you realize that striping 7200.11s is liking playing Russian Roulette with every chamber full. It may not be much consolation but, what happened *had to* happen. There was nothing you could have done except back up the data and unraid them ASAP.
 
Old Hippie said:
No doubt! :)

I saw another video with triple platters and it was a little more involved but basically the same.
Click to expand...

if you got a link it would be awesome, I've seen many videos over the last few hour, most of them with 1 platter, only one video with 3 platters but they used a special tool which cost 500 euro.
sadly, this model I have is 375gb/platter, so it means it's a 4 platter drive.

anyway, the drives should come back tommorow, i'm going to try and switch PCB's on both before i'm going to switch the heads, it's possible the data recovery company gave me wrong analysis since they charge more on head replacement.
 
if you got a link it would be awesome,
Click to expand...
Sorry, I looked earlier and couldn't find it.

I've never seen the one with the special tool.

On the one I saw the heads were just "propped" in place with spacers, same as the first video, and removed and replaced.

Same technique as the first video but with more heads, platters, and spacers.
 
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