Enjoy my tragic story, have a laugh at least...
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So, I get this wonderfully cheap card that does Raid5 for a screaming deal of about $180. I install it, plug in my SAS to SATA cables and hook it up to 6 shiny new 3TB drives.
I figure, just to be on the safe side, let's build a RAID5 array so I have some redundancy for about 10TB of data, and since it doesn't come with a cache just to really be on the safe side, let's just make it 'write-through'. I initialize the array and wait about 2 days for this whopping ~13TB RAID5 array to build. I format it and off I go.
It serves as a catch all for all my external drives I've accumulated over about 10 years. I figure, RAID5, it's safe, so I've been cutting/pasting to make it also easier to stop at a whim and resume from where it left off.
I get about 9TB into the data move and decide, you know, it's been a while since I rebooted (about 3 days of just non-stop data transfer)... things have started to slow down a bit... maybe a reboot will speed them back up to the initial speeds I was seeing of around ~80mb/s.
So I reboot, and the RAID BIOS splash screen comes up and begins scanning for the drives... It finds 2. I quickly hit Ctrl+H to go into the BIOS, it actually sees all 6, but only 2 are "Legacy". The other four are listed as "New". Wonderful I think to myself, this must be some trick in the BIOS and that's because I used the Web GUI in Windows to build it. The Windows driver will know what to do -- I'm sure -- I just need to let it start up and let it figure things out... So I quit out of the BIOS and let it resume it's load into Windows...
So, Windows comes up and presents me with a nice shiny "Drive F:" must be formatted dialog box when I log in. At this point I just wonder, "something just isn't right. Maybe I need to let the system do a hard reboot or something." So full shutdown ensues and I wait a bit...praying. So I bring it back online and surprise -- the same behavior is observed. Ok, now panic starts to begin as I know that all the data I'd put on these drives has been "cut" off of the old externals.
Fortunately for me, I have a normal HDD that I still use as my boot drive, so I go into windows and start scanning the net. The first thing I check is Adapter BIOS/Driver Version/WebGUI Version. All are out of date and stock "as-shipped" versions. I decide I better upgrade them as I see a support ticket coming. I first begin with the Driver upgrade. I then upgrade the WebUI, then use it to upgrade the Adapter BIOS. Once the Adapter BIOS is upgraded, upon reboot, all 6 drives show "Legacy" in the scan results...
With High Hopes, I go into the WebUI and notice that still, the container/array isn't listed, and all drives show as "Legacy". I try to [Create Array] which presents me with a page where I could rebuild the array, but none of the drives are available -- so that isn't an option. It appears that I'd have to Initialize them first, which I don't want to do in case there is still any prayer of getting this data back.
I also dig around the net and find that there is a raidtool.exe piece of software that Highpoint issues that might be able to recreate the array definition without overwriting all of the data. I then proceed to build a DOS bootable floppy and add raidtool.exe to that image. I reboot into DOS with high hopes that we can get this resolved. Once I launch the raidtool two windows show up and no arrays or drives are listed. No functions can be performed.
At this point I realize just how 'toast' I am. Abhorring engaging support by nature, I finally, begrudgingly log into the web site and create a support ticket since there is no phone support. It's now been about 12 hours with no responses.
At about hour 3 I decided to start trying my luck at "undeleting" all of my data across all of my external drives in a fun, "what a way to waste a work day and weekend" way, and begin to pray to the data gods.
While I watch "GetDataBack for NTFS" churn away with nice Orange progress bars (god, couldn't they have made them Green or something to provide some 'soothing' affect of hope?), I decide, "Hey, bozo, aren't you glad you saved $200 bucks on that card instead of buying that Adaptec?"
On the bright side, due to all of my ranting, wailing and gnashing of teeth, I think my wife would rather I just fork out the real money and get the Adaptec than listen to me persist.
Be very very very very wary....
Any of you RAID gods have any recommendations besides crying with me?
----
So, I get this wonderfully cheap card that does Raid5 for a screaming deal of about $180. I install it, plug in my SAS to SATA cables and hook it up to 6 shiny new 3TB drives.
I figure, just to be on the safe side, let's build a RAID5 array so I have some redundancy for about 10TB of data, and since it doesn't come with a cache just to really be on the safe side, let's just make it 'write-through'. I initialize the array and wait about 2 days for this whopping ~13TB RAID5 array to build. I format it and off I go.
It serves as a catch all for all my external drives I've accumulated over about 10 years. I figure, RAID5, it's safe, so I've been cutting/pasting to make it also easier to stop at a whim and resume from where it left off.
I get about 9TB into the data move and decide, you know, it's been a while since I rebooted (about 3 days of just non-stop data transfer)... things have started to slow down a bit... maybe a reboot will speed them back up to the initial speeds I was seeing of around ~80mb/s.
So I reboot, and the RAID BIOS splash screen comes up and begins scanning for the drives... It finds 2. I quickly hit Ctrl+H to go into the BIOS, it actually sees all 6, but only 2 are "Legacy". The other four are listed as "New". Wonderful I think to myself, this must be some trick in the BIOS and that's because I used the Web GUI in Windows to build it. The Windows driver will know what to do -- I'm sure -- I just need to let it start up and let it figure things out... So I quit out of the BIOS and let it resume it's load into Windows...
So, Windows comes up and presents me with a nice shiny "Drive F:" must be formatted dialog box when I log in. At this point I just wonder, "something just isn't right. Maybe I need to let the system do a hard reboot or something." So full shutdown ensues and I wait a bit...praying. So I bring it back online and surprise -- the same behavior is observed. Ok, now panic starts to begin as I know that all the data I'd put on these drives has been "cut" off of the old externals.
Fortunately for me, I have a normal HDD that I still use as my boot drive, so I go into windows and start scanning the net. The first thing I check is Adapter BIOS/Driver Version/WebGUI Version. All are out of date and stock "as-shipped" versions. I decide I better upgrade them as I see a support ticket coming. I first begin with the Driver upgrade. I then upgrade the WebUI, then use it to upgrade the Adapter BIOS. Once the Adapter BIOS is upgraded, upon reboot, all 6 drives show "Legacy" in the scan results...
With High Hopes, I go into the WebUI and notice that still, the container/array isn't listed, and all drives show as "Legacy". I try to [Create Array] which presents me with a page where I could rebuild the array, but none of the drives are available -- so that isn't an option. It appears that I'd have to Initialize them first, which I don't want to do in case there is still any prayer of getting this data back.
I also dig around the net and find that there is a raidtool.exe piece of software that Highpoint issues that might be able to recreate the array definition without overwriting all of the data. I then proceed to build a DOS bootable floppy and add raidtool.exe to that image. I reboot into DOS with high hopes that we can get this resolved. Once I launch the raidtool two windows show up and no arrays or drives are listed. No functions can be performed.
At this point I realize just how 'toast' I am. Abhorring engaging support by nature, I finally, begrudgingly log into the web site and create a support ticket since there is no phone support. It's now been about 12 hours with no responses.
At about hour 3 I decided to start trying my luck at "undeleting" all of my data across all of my external drives in a fun, "what a way to waste a work day and weekend" way, and begin to pray to the data gods.
While I watch "GetDataBack for NTFS" churn away with nice Orange progress bars (god, couldn't they have made them Green or something to provide some 'soothing' affect of hope?), I decide, "Hey, bozo, aren't you glad you saved $200 bucks on that card instead of buying that Adaptec?"
On the bright side, due to all of my ranting, wailing and gnashing of teeth, I think my wife would rather I just fork out the real money and get the Adaptec than listen to me persist.
Be very very very very wary....
Any of you RAID gods have any recommendations besides crying with me?
