Completely MESSED up my RAID-1 array - i think...

[rezilient]

Hello.

I have a Dell PowerEdge 1850 that suffered a failed raid controller (Perc 4e) and I wanted to get the data off this RAID-1 array quickly.

I asked someone at work on our server team and he said it "might" work if I insert these into an HP Proliant server, it might recognize the array so I can grab the data. So I stuck both drives in a DL580 and waited. Well I was stupid and didn't hook up a keyboard so I could stop this from happening, because HP decided to automatically Initialize my drives (gee thanks HP, you are so helpful) which means I "think" it just overwrote the Dell RAID configuration with it's own HP crap.

I haven't tested the drives yet in a Dell. I am on the fence whether I should purchase the replacement parts for my Dell server now, or not. Because I have a feeling these drives are trashed and the data is LOST.

Can someone give me some hope? If I initialize the drives BACK to a Dell RAID array will I get my data back? Or is there some kind of recovery that can be done?

Thanks for any help.

 

[corkyg]

With a RAID i array, you don't need to access the array. Either of the two drives can be accessed individually - they should contain the same stuff. You can always put one in an external USB drive case and access the data unless the controller failure zapped the drive's index.

 

[sub.mesa]

Yes, note that Windows does not like to see two drives with the exact same unique identifier located in the filesystem. I read some reports Windows will hide both volumes if that happens. So just connect one of your disks and you should have access to your data.

If that doesn't work, try using Ubuntu Linux livecd to access the disk. But using Windows should just work. Be sure to connect to a non-RAID controller; like your chipset controller in AHCI mode, or an external USB harddrive casing.

 

[rezilient]

Ok cool, this is making me feel a bit more hopeful!

unless the controller failure zapped the drive's index.

So do you think the HP RAID initialization could zap the drive's index? Or is that something completely different?

Should I go back to work and just try putting 1 of the drives in the HP and see what happens? For some reason I thought I would need both, but I guess not!

 

[corkyg]

Ok cool, this is making me feel a bit more hopeful! So do you think the HP RAID initialization could zap the drive's index? Or is that something completely different? Should I go back to work and just try putting 1 of the drives in the HP and see what happens? For some reason I thought I would need both, but I guess not!

One drive is all you need. In RAID 1, the drives are "mirrored," i.e., carbon copies of each other.

 

[joetekubi]

+1 on the Linux Live CD suggestion.
You can try a Ubuntu Live CD, or one of the specialized ones live SystemRescueCD or CloneZilla.
If you've had a bit of luck, the HP only initialized some system partition blocks, and your data is still there. Booting off a Linux Live CD means the system won't try to access the disk to boot or possibly write anything to the disk. So boot a live distro, and first see if any partitions are still on the disk. If so, there is a good chance your data is still there. Copy the files to a known good disk (probably USB attached) and rebuild the RAID1 from scratch.

 

[FishAk]

I don't know much about Linux, but I put Puppy Linux on a USB stick, and I can boot from it (or an optical drive). It's very light, only 105Mb, and it puts the whole OS in RAM.

I only have experience with RAID 1 and 10, built from Intel's motherboard controller. I can access the files from those arrays, but it's not in RAID under Puppy Linux. I'm sure it would mess up the array if I changed something, but it reads just fine.

 

[Emulex]

not sure what you used to auto-initialize the raid but i just popped some drives in a dl380 g7 and it sat there and said no logical volumes, proceded to try network boot and failed with no o/s found.

standard issue P410i/1gb FBWC -

It sure as heck did not auto initialize anything - i had to F8 into the controller then create volumes through ilo3.

i've never heard of perc being compatible with smartarray.

smartarray is always forward compatible even across models (p212 -> p410 -> 812) etc. perc - not so much - i recall having dell bring me a new system since their own 1u kept dying - "you will have to reformat and reinstall" - lame.

 

[ElenaP]

How long did the initialization take?

If it was more like couple of seconds, you should be fine - most likely with just an USB enclosure, or in a worst case with a data recovery software.

If it was more like an hour or so, that would be more worrying.

 

[Emulex]

hp smartarray takes about 1 second to initialize a raid. depending on raid type it may or may not damage the data.

raid-0/10/5/6/50/60 will; raid-1 doesn't. i just did up a setup for sql and its raid-10/1/1 and the raid-10 drives took about 6 hours to stop activity; the raid-1 drives never had any activity on them. I talked to a storage specialist to confirm and this is how they work currently.

 

[rezilient]

Hi guys, thanks for all the support... Here is where I'm at.

The server guys at work are letting me use a DL580 to test with. I took a bare HP drive and installed Windows 2003 on it. Then I inserted 1 of my "Dell" drives (after putting it in the HP hot swap bracket) and Windows was not seeing this Dell drive. During POST the BIOS was only seeing 1 logical drive. We had to enter the RAID configuration screen and "Create a logical drive" for the drive to be visible. This didn't seem to format the drive or anything, I think it was just for initialization. The option for "Raid 0" was the only option, but that seems strange since I thought you need at least 2 disks for Raid 0.

Now Windows "Disk Management" can see the drive but its showing up as unallocated space. I thought this makes sense since its a Linux partition (EXT3 i believe). So I tried a few different tools to mount the Linux partition in Windows...

http://www.diskinternals.com/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2read/
http://www.fs-driver.org/index.html

None of them worked.

So I downloaded and burned an image of SystemRescueCD and booted from that.

gparted sees the drive as unallocated space
testdisk doesnt find any partitions on the drive, even with deep search


I have not done anything with the 2nd drive yet, ever since I did that first "initialization" when I popped in the two drives a few days ago.

I'm still hoping to recover some of this data, but I'm not very hopeful at this point. Even if I purchase the replacement parts for my Dell, the HP RAID crap seems to have screwed up the drives enough that I can't just pop them in the Dell and expect it to work.

Any idea what I should do now?

Thanks.

 

[rezilient]

Here are some screenshots of what I'm seeing.

I inserted the 2nd Dell drive. So you can see the HP Smart Array is only seeing 2 Logical Drives. I have the option to create a logical drive from this disk. I can see the 2 other logical drives, my 150gb Hitachi and the 70gb HP.

1. http://imgur.com/eMQYF
2. http://imgur.com/uy2R5
3. http://imgur.com/TdXYx
4. http://imgur.com/Flemo

When I boot all the way into Linux livecd I'm not seeing the 2nd Dell drive at all.

Thoughts?

 

[ElenaP]

Try booting into Windows 2003 and run a demo version of any data recovery software that supports ext3 (there are quite a few around). A demo version would at least confirm if the data is still there. If yes, you can continue the chase then, knowing that the data is still recoverable.

 

[rezilient]

Try booting into Windows 2003 and run a demo version of any data recovery software that supports ext3 (there are quite a few around). A demo version would at least confirm if the data is still there. If yes, you can continue the chase then, knowing that the data is still recoverable.

I can try this with the 2nd hard drive. But the problem is Windows can't even see the drive until I initialize it with HP's Smart Array which I fear is overwriting the data.

 

[FishAk]

Boot up with Puppy Linux, and see if you can see the data with it. If the data is there, you will be able to read and offload it with that OS. It will read more file types than Windows. You should probably clone the drive, and work on the clone.

 

[airdata]

Is the disk configuration stored on the raid card?

Did you look into getting a replacement? 1850's are pretty cheap on ebay and craigslist. I have a spare one in my garage too if you needed some parts.

 

[rezilient]

Boot up with Puppy Linux, and see if you can see the data with it. If the data is there, you will be able to read and offload it with that OS. It will read more file types than Windows. You should probably clone the drive, and work on the clone.

I booted with SystemRescueCD (Linux distro) and it wasn't seeing any data, it was just showing it as unallocated space.

When I insert the 2nd drive it doesn't even present itself to the OS. The only way I was able to get the 1st drive to present itself was to initialize it with the HP Smart Array, which I think was a bad idea.

I think I would need to somehow access this drive from a non-raid controller.

 

[rezilient]

Is the disk configuration stored on the raid card?

Did you look into getting a replacement? 1850's are pretty cheap on ebay and craigslist. I have a spare one in my garage too if you needed some parts.

I was eager to get the data off these drives, so that's why I just popped them into an HP server after getting a bad tip. Now unfortunately I think even if I bought the replacement riser card for my 1850 (which I will likely do anyway) it won't recognize them as a Dell array since the HP Smart Array initialized them.

Yes I think my plan will be to get the riser board for the Dell and try my luck with that server (instead of messing with the HP). That is what I should have done to start with, my impatience got the better of me.