1

We have a Dell PowerEdge R740xd server with PERC H730P Mini RAID controller. It has 2x 1.28 Tb SAS hard drives, 1x 12tb SAS, and 6x 12 Tb SATA hard drives installed.

RAID1 was assembled from 2x 1.28 Tb SAS drives, a RAID1+ 1 SAS 12tb hot spare was assembled (it had OS Win Serv on it). RAID6 (data archive) was assembled from 6x 12 Tb SATA hard drives.

We've got a task to add another RAID5 array to store information on 3x 14 Tb SATA hard drives. When creating RAID5 using Dell BIOS → Configuration Management → Create Virtual Disk, we made a fatal error, checked the "Select all available disks" option to create RAID5, and all the listed disks turned out to be available. Accordingly, after a new RAID5 array was created, there was only one RAID5 in the Virtual Disk Management menu, RAID1 and RAID6 disappeared. Moreover, all the SAS hard drives in RAID5 are not turned on, they are in Ready mode. The RAID5 array was quickly initialized.

Realizing my mistake, I turned off the server. I took out 3 SATA 14 Tb hard drives so that full automatic initialization (Background Initialize) would not take place (I thought that this option was not excluded.)

Now the new RAID 6 is disassembled accordingly on the server. Please advise me.

Is there a way to restore RAID1 from SAS disks in this state, while preserving the information? If you rebuild it without performing initialization, for example?

Is there a way to restore RAID6 to the state it was in with data retention? For example, by executing Virtual Disk Management → Deleting virtual disks, and then recreate the RAID6 array with only the original disks (without initialization), or restore it using the Importing or clearing foreign configurations menu? Perhaps dell has tools to roll back such actions? for example?

Is it possible to recover any information from a reassembled RAID6, for example, using utilities, if the previous file structure is not restored after the build?

New contributor
Анна Попова is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering. Check out our Code of Conduct.

1 Answer 1

2

I had such recovery experience on LSI MegaRAID SAS (which is an OEM for Dell PERC), but in my case nothing was written onto the disks — the RAID10 array was simply mistakenly removed, the mistake immediately recognized and the system shut down. When I re-created the array without initialization, everything appeared to be fine.

What you suggest would be a correct recovery procedure: assemble the same-shaped arrays from the same disks, without initialization. I doubt there is correct foreign metadata, as it must have been overwritten when RAID5 was created. But, knowing that RAID5 might have written something onto disks data area, I would not have much hope that data will appear intact. The background initialization has probably started immediately, so at least a few sectors in the beginning of the disks would be overwritten. That means, some parts of the file system would be damaged beyond repair. Whether it could be recovered or not, depends on how much was damaged.

This is exactly the kind of the situation backups are for: a human mistake. Check if they work if you have them, and in that case, try to recreate RAID6 and then run its consistency check, and try NTFS recovery tools like GDB NTFS on it. It is only reasonable to do if there might be newer data versions than in backups; and, whatever is not recovered that way, you fill from backups.

If you don't have backups, it's still the way to go, but you'd advised to make dumps of your disks first. Needs a lot of spare space and work, right? That's why data recovery services would charge you a lot for this job. Seriously, if the data is valuable and for whatever stupid reason there was no backup, but you are asking this question, don't try to recover yourself. Better ask paid professionals.

As for the system disk, I think it's wiser to just reinstall the OS and software, than to cope with any anomalies it might have gotten even if its file system somehow gets recovered.

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.