Data Recovery from corrupt software RAID-5 set.

[Julian Voelcker]

Our server is configured with 3 x 17Gb drives configured as dynamic
disks with the following drives:
C: 5Gb mirrored partition at start of Disk 0 and Disk 1
D: 24Gb Win2k Software Raid 5 partition made up of 12Gb partition at
end of Disk 0 and Disk 1 and start of Disk 2
E: 5Gb partition at the end of Disk 2.

We had problems re-installing the OS on the C drive and ended up
deleting the partition during the win2k setup. This worked, however
seems to have messed up the Raid-5 D drive.

We have now managed to recover the C drive and it's mirror, but the
Raid partitions on Disk 0 and Disk 1 are appearing as unallocated in
the disk manager. The RAID partition on Drive 2 is still there, but
marked as failed.

Further down in disk manager there appears to be two drives marked as
'Missing' - they are what I would expect to see on disk 0 and disk 1 -
a 5gb mirror on the first partition and then a 12gb raid partition.

Trying to recover these 'Missing' configs fails, although the fact that
they are still appearing gives me hope that we can do something to
recover the three raid partitions.

I suppose the question is, what is the best thing to do to recover the
data on the raid-5 drive d:?

The route I am currently pursuing is trying to find where the data
relating to the 'Missing' drives is stored to see if there is any way
to tie it to the relevant drives.

I have already got most tools I might need, it's mainly a case of
working out what to do with them next.

Any pointers would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Julian Voelcker

 

[Bjorn Landemoo]

Julian

Reinstalling on dynamic disks, and deleting/recreating a volume during
this, is one of the most common reasons why people loose data from dynamic
disks.

Those two MS Knowledge Base articles explains more:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=227364

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=236086

Perhaps MS PSS could help, or a third party recovery firm.

Best regards

Bjorn