Initialize array after adaptec OCE?

J

jcazes

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
290
I just expanded my Adaptec array (model 51245) by a drive (just doing one at a time for safety), and after the 6-7 day OCE everything seemed to finish without a hitch. At some point during the rebuild my array disappeared from My Computer (running Windows 7 x64). I restarted my computer after the rebuild finished, and the array/drive still didn't show up. I opened up diskmgmt, and the array shows up but tells me it needs to be initialized. Here's a screenshot of the window:

diskmgmt.png


Does anyone think that if I initialize the array my data will re-appear? I'm skeptical for obvious reasons... as initializing usually wipes a drive/array, but I'm not sure I have any other options. Drivers didn't change (and are up to date), and nothing else about the array changed during Adaptec reconfiguration except the addition of a drive.

I would rather not pull from backups, so any help is appreciated!
 
Initialize is another word for format. So doing that will destroy any file system data that was on the drive previously, and possibly quite a bit of actual data along with it (depending on where FS structures end up). Your best bet is to download something like GetDataBack for NTFS and give see if it can find your old filesystem. However, doing that can take just as long as pulling from backups.
 
What drives are you using? which version of windows 7 (did the array show up after 7 was installed and only disappear during the expansion?)

If you have backups of everything lost the best bet is to just nuke the array and build a fresh set, then restore from the backups.
 
I'm using 8 WD5000ABYS drives and just added a WD5002ABYS (RE3 version of the same drives).

The array was created while using Windows Vista x64 last year, and when I installed Windows 7 x64 RC1 a few months ago the array was instantly recognized (and I've had no problems since).

I want to exhaust all options before nuking/recovering since I don't have backups of all of my files (I know, I know... ESPECIALLY since I was doing a risky OCE).
 
Check with adaptec support, maybe a firmware update could clear up the issue (only do so if they say so, though). I know arrays would do this (be inaccessible) if created with FW 16501 and moved to a FW other than the latest, so you might luck out.
 
sounds like I'm SOL again... I bought this card off ebay in supposedly new OEM condition, and it turned out to be a demo card. What that basically means is that I have to stick with the original firmware (if I attempt to upgrade the card will no longer work), so 15336 it is!

The strange thing is that I have used OCE before (went from 6 disks to 8 disks) and did not experience anything like this. I even had a drive fail during that OCE, and everything still worked out!

I may try to contact them anyway to see what's up.
 
quick update--getdataback seems to be pulling most of my files, so I feel like something with the array should be correctable before I do a complete recover. Unfortunately I'm not versed in filesystems to know what to do :\

I'll try to contact Adaptec to see if I can squeeze something out of them.
 
I think UBCD has some tools that will scan a hard drive looking for bootsectors and try to recreate the partition from the data within it. However, that require writing to the drive and if you get it wrong, you run the risk of writing over valid data.
 
I've had good luck w/ R-Studio for file recovery and Active Partition Recovery for fixing partition table problems. However I'd try to do the file recovery method first before trying to fix the partition table. These are not free but they have demo versions to see if they'll work on your particular problem.
 
RedBill said:
If your array was less than 2tb prior to expansion I'd say that it's because your disk is partitioned as a MBR disk and MTR doesn't support drives over 2tb's

You need to partition it as a GPT disk for windows to see it.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/GPT_FAQ.mspx
Click to expand...

This only applies to boot drives.

If you aren't booting from the array, then you can have volumes much larger than 2TB, and still use MBR.
 
I'm sorry but MBR partitions can't exceed 2tb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record
"By convention, there are exactly four primary partition table entries in the MBR Partition Table schem."[sic] "Both the partition length and partition start address are stored as 32-bit quantities. Because the block size is 512 bytes, this implies that neither the maximum size of a partition nor the maximum start address (both in bytes) can exceed 232 × 512 bytes, or 2 TiB. Alleviating this capacity limitation is one of the prime motivations for the development of the GUID Partition Table (GPT)."
Click to expand...

And http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc773223(WS.10).aspx
[sic]"The master boot record (MBR) disk partitioning style, [sic] that supports volumes up to 2 terabytes in size and up to 4 primary partitions per disk"
Click to expand...

So to surmise MBR disks can't have a partition that is more than 2tb's and can't have a partition whose start position is greater than 2tb.

Reading through though I'm also wrong about the operating system not seeing the partitions when the drive is greater than 2tb's. From what I can tell it should be able to see the partitions but would have the above limitations on the creation of partitions.
 
MBR can go to 16TB. It's called 4K blocks. I know this because I've done this.
 
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