Today I rebooted a Windows 2003 Server R2 and lost both RAID 1 drives

capeconsultant

Senior member
Aug 10, 2005
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I have never seen anything like it. Both RAID drives and the Adaptec RAID card seem to be fine, and then present a Please select boot device or reboot error message.

Array says OPTIMAL, it boots BIOS and RAID card and finds the Array as a single drive, as it should because it is RAID 1, and then throws the error.

I have tried to Ghost the drive, done data recovery and it finds some data, even the boot files, but looks like I will have to rebuild the server. This is, of course, a very important computer for a business client.

I was working OK when I got there, I used Malwarebytes to remove 4 trojans, and when it came time to reboot, BAM, nothing. It is really the oddest thing. Then I read about this:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009...sLatestHeadlinesArea.0

Just like it says, if you REBOOT, you are in some serious trouble. I was going to backup the drive 3 different ways after this reboot. Talk about a hair too late :( Client has some backups, and we have some scrambled data from the original drives so hopefully we can rebuild.

Right now as a desperate attempt, we are cloning a drive using TerraByte Unlimited, which seems to be actually doing it, when many other similar software cannot even see a drive.

I just thought I would throw this out to get some feedback and possibly warn others, Thanks, Dave
 

capeconsultant

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Aug 10, 2005
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Update: We were able to do data recovery by the skin of our teeth, and did a fresh install of Server 2003 on a new hard drive and have the important stuff, well, some of it, up and running. A MYSQL file got somehow corrupted. Just a 1MB in size, but has some important info. Not a fun experience.

No partitioning software was able to help, and we tried them all. After using Terrabyte Unlimited to image the drive, there was still nothing showing on the drive. So, in a big way, we lucked out, and I told the client so. I have to remember, it was him that chose to run his business for years not properly backed up and with active viruses on the machine (server). Sheesh, what is with people ???
 

Blain

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: capeconsultant
No partitioning software was able to help, and we tried them all. After using Terrabyte Unlimited to image the drive, there was still nothing showing on the drive.
Was it Image for Windows that was able to image the RAID array?


 

capeconsultant

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Aug 10, 2005
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Well, it was what APPEARED to image the drive, but no data was showing up after it was imaged. I thought maybe somehow the software wold reset/repair the partition, but no go.

I since researched this software... http://www.dtidata.com/file-recovery-programs.html and was very impressed. It saw the data on both drives (separately, not as an array) and restored it very quickly. They do have a RAID software but I did not try that.