RAID 5 problem

P

Pred

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 1, 2006
Messages
67
Hi,

Here's the situation. I have a RAID 5 array with 3 1.5TB drives from samsung connect to an onboard intel raid controller (ICH10R). On the same controller I have 2 non-raid drives, a 1TB drive and an ssd of 80gb. The drives were connected as follows: The RAID drives were connected on SATA_0 SATA_1 and SATA_3, the ssd on SATA_5 and the other drive on SATA_2.

Yesterday I was trying a overclock tool from Gigabyte which was supplied with my motherboard. I changed a setting and my pc froze up completely. I had to reset it manually. After that windows wouldn't boot anymore. It would simply hang while "loading windows..." (windows 7). Then I changed the order and put the ssd on SATA_0. Windows booted again this way but the RAID 5 didnt work anymore. I tried other combinations but the only one that works is when the ssd comes before the RAID 5 drives.

Ive been googling for hours to find a solution but didn't find one yet. I checked disk manager from windows. It shows 3 disks of 2.8TB (the RAID 5 array size). One shows up as unallocated the other 2 as RAW disks. Ive also tried recovery programs with mixed results. On some (iRecover, Filescavenger) I could access the RAID 5 and browse the files that were on it, but actually recovering it wasn't an option (not that I could see). But the fact that I could still see the array means its not a complete loss right ?

Also in the settings of intel raid the drives show up as non-RAID except one, which shows up as a member drive.

Does anyone know a way to recover the RAID 5 array ?

Other information:

Gigabyte P55 UDR3 mobo
i7 860 proc
8gb Corsair memory
Hot swappable hdd bay for the RAID 5 array (Corsair Obsidian case)
 
unfortunately i think you may be in trouble. i have 3 machines in RAID 5 with ICH9R and 10R (essentially identical), and the controller recognizes the RAID members appropriately regardless of how you move the ports around. if for some weird reason your RAID will only work with the ports in that order, try booting to a WinPE or linux live-cd environment with the ICH10R drivers pre-loaded (Acronis Workstation 10 has this option) so you can keep the RAID drives plugged into that same order. From here you can backup the RAID volume without needing to boot from your SSD period (if the RAID volume still exists). if this works you'll need some large storage drive to dump everything on.

the entire UDR series are great overclocking mobo's, but you should just do it from the BIOS like everyone else :) That way if it's a totally screwed up setting at least the computer will refuse to boot period rather than corrupt data while you are in a live OS environment.
 
I may have found a better solution in this thread: http://communities.intel.com/thread/3351?start=0&tstart=0 where someone linked to http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showpost.php?p=3329132

The people in the intel thread have a similar problem, drives not showing up as RAID members anymore. But since the disks are not broken and the actual data not modified, you should be able to just make a new array with the same settings and recover the partition that way. It worked for everybody that tried it in that thread.

Only problem for me is, I cannot boot with the RAID drives connected in their original position. Any thoughts on a way to boot with the RAID drives in their original position ?
 
This solution has fixed my problem. I did loose 800gb of data, unfortunately 800gb of the most important data. Only the bigger files seemed to have made it through.

I might be able to recover some of the other data with a regular data recovery program. Something I will try next.
 
GetDataBack is well recommended around these parts for data recovery.
 
I cheered too soon. Almost all files that were recovered are corrupt and unusable.. Im trying getdataback now to see if that will get me something but I'm about to loose hope of ever getting my data back.
 
This is a major bummer Pred. :(

I consider screw-ups to be part of the normal learning process but you have paid an excessive amount for this lesson.

I can only but hope that your post will save at least one other person from paying the same price.

GetDataBack has saved my buns a few times and I hope it will do the same for you.

Good Luck!
 
RAID 5 is great but you have to have a good backup, I learned my lesson not after the first time, but the second, and I have still lost stuff because of now backing up frequently enough.

TBH RAID 5 is a pretty risky RAID configuration, especially software RAID 5, I recently lost a RAID 5 array after installing a driver on my system and it resulted in a blue screen, luckily I had backed up immediately prior to making the changes to my system so didn't loose anything, but it is something for you to keep in mind...
 
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