I have 3ware 9550SX-8 card, with a 3.5TB array (8x 500GB drives). Running Linux and I use the CLI tool.
So, it's been a bad day. I notice the array is degraded and the CLI says p0 is not working right. Something about a "power reset" or something. So I reboot, and p1-p7 all come up, just p0 is degraded, and it won't rebuild. So I grab my spare off the shelf, swap out p0...and now p2 is dead. The drive itself is not even seen by the controller...it's just gone. I check out the power supply, everything looks fine, reboot a couple of times...p2 is just clicking. It's not working at all. So I remove the new, bare drive from the p0 port, and plug in the old p0 drive, and connect the new bare drive to the p2 port, and the array is inoperable, but at least this proved the power and connections worked.
So here's my situation:
p0 : visible to the controller but apparently unreadable.
p2 : will not power on
p1, p3-p7 : fine.
How badly am I screwed? Can I send p0 and/or p2 to a drive recovery shop and be able to get my data back?
Matt you can't loose 2 drives in a raid5 and it work. You can loose 1 and rebuild but not 2 as you probably know just stating the facts. The cost to recover this will run 3K to 5K from my own experience. In your case the drives need to be imaged and the bad drives repaired to hopefully be able to re-build the raid set. RAID DATA RECOVERY - In-Lab and Remote Data Recovery is a good company for this type of work tell Craig I sent you if you decide to move forward with your recovery.
Thanks for the info. Is it made more complicated by the fact that it's part of a raid array? While the data on p0 is out of sync, p2 should be fine as it was shut down properly....it just didn't come back up. I have a data recovery benefit as part of my professional indemnification insurance that'll let me get a drive recovered from drivesaversdatarecovery.com for about $250.
Just trying to figure out my options. If I could just send in 1 or 2 drives for $250-$500 I'd probably do it for convenience, but if it's going to be 3k-5k and I'll have to send in all 8...ehhhh that might be a bit much. I'm pretty good about backing up my data, so I don't think there's anything awful I'd lose by just restoring my backups...a few things, but nothing major.
Question...is it an all-or-nothing prospect? As in, the 6 drives that are fine...can I see what data is on those and just copy it off? Could be the stuff on the other 2 disks is nothing I care about anyway.
With RAID 5 each file is stripped across all of the drives so you really can't recover anything unless you have all of them. Data recovery from a RAID array is much more complex.
You really dont understand raid parts of each file are spread out across all drives its all or nothing. Only proper diagnosis of the entire raid set will tell if recovery is possible. I think you said drive 2 was clicking ? If you indeed have a good backup then your fine re-create a new raid5 and restore if not call craig for a consult.
Tomorrow I'll call around for some quotes and see what my insurance covers, and I'll report back what the price ranges are. Was hoping for a quick fix, but if it's too expensive I'll just restore from backups.
Just to report back, problem solved thanks to the really great support I got from 3ware/LSI.
I can't describe how impressed I am with their engineers. I called their tech support number and a knowledgable human being answered the phone. I didn't have to go through a computer answering system and "press 3 for RAID support..." or anything. I called the 800 number, a person answered, and he know exactly what product I had and understood my problem immediately.
They had me make a DOS bootable USB key and load on a diagnostic program. I did that, ran it, got the results, emailed it to them, and they emailed me a script that repaired the array so I don't have to spend days slogging through backups.
Anyway, just really impressed that their support was that fast and effective. And free, considering this is a 5 year old product long out of warranty. They made a customer for life right here.
Oh, and just to explain, despite the thread title...I didn't have two dead drives, just one dead and one out of sync. So the array was "inoperable," but the data was all there on p0, it just had a corrupted DCB. Repair the DCB on p0 and the array works again in degraded state, and then rebuilt on a replacement disk for the dead p2.
Glad you got it repaired I have dealt with a lot of raid recoveries this is the first time I have heard of this myself. I have been told by IBM HP Dell and others in similar situations you are SOL repair drives restore from backup etc.
I will mark this thread solved. Thanks for the feedback I am sure it will help those that visit and actually "search" for solutions.
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