0

After one of the reboots (normal one after windows update) Windows 2008 R2 marks software RAID-5 disks (OS-Based) as "Invalid". RAID structure is intact - I can see it via R-STUDIO. All data are OK and read by R-STUDIO correctly. However restoring using R-STUDIO is not an option - I didn't have another 12 TB spare space to recover all data.

Is there any way to recover this RAID?

1
  • Can you post the output of diskpart list volume and diskpart list disk ? Sep 10, 2014 at 21:59

1 Answer 1

0

My researches for recovering RAID-5 itself shows that there is no way to do it - as far as I know. So fall-back plan was put in motion - recover most critical data to bunch of burrowed drives then delete RAID and NEVER make it again.

As I mention before R-STUDIO v5 was able to see all data on disk... until I didn't make a mistake: swapped RAID drives to attach spared drive directly to MB SATA connector. After that all goes to hell. RAID drives order changed and R-STUDIO failed to see data on it. Some tries to remember disk order was unsuccessfull.

However after some lurking on google I find several programs that tries to reconstruct drives order. Almost all of them failed - except for "ReclaiMe Free RAID Recovery". It's found exact drives order. Moreover - it's provide step-by-step instructions for making work virtual RAID volume in several data recovery programs.

I tried to use this instructions on R-STUDIO - but it was a fail. RAID was rebuild and seems fine but R-STUDIO can't find partition on it. Scanning doesn't help very much - too much trash was found in process and recovering data becomes pretty hard.

More lurking in google, more installs/deinstalls and tests - and there emerges UFS Explorer Professional Recovery v5. ReclaiMe supports it too. UFS Explorer have trial mode in which I was able to reconstruct RAID 5 and scan - it's shows that full version will recover 100% of my data. So I bought full version and start recovering.

Fortunatly, trial version was right - seems I recover all my data pretty fast - as fast as it takes to copy 9 TB of data and swap spare drivers. I can not sure for 100% that all data was recovered but selective check on about 500 GB data didn't find any broken files so I presume that all other data also was recovered OK.

Final words: NEVER user software RAID-5 on Windows Server 2008. I almost lost all my data just after trivial reboot after update installation. It costs me time (several days) and money (more then hundred of bucks) to return my precious belonings. Using basic discs or even soft-mirror would make recovery much easier.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .