intel srcs28x

[narkevich]

I’m using your wonderful product (Pro version) for almost a year, for a long time my drives configuration was a follows – 6 drives connected to sata ports on motherboard, and 4 drives connected via simple fasttrak 4 port pci sata controller… I wanted to add two more drives, and last week I’ve got a good deal on intel raid pci-x (my motherboard is asus with two pci-x slots) model number is srcs28x – I’ve replaced fasttrack adapter with intel pci-x controller, and pluged existing 4 drives… during setup I discovered that it is impossible to specify jbod configuration on this adapter, but is possible to add each drive as raid 0 array with only one drive… setup mentioned that no data is affected… after adding drives I have discovered that unraid simply does not see them, and report drives as missing… I failed to start unraid with intel controller, so I’m sending my syslog to you… but it’s got worse – I’ve installed fasttrack card back, and unraid found the missing drives, but now they appear as unformatted! Is there any way to launch unraid with intel srcs28x controller and restore drives information?

 

[NAS]

I went through a very similar experience myself and done a few weeks of testing with various cards i had purchased (since my data means alot to me).

 

IMHO you dont want to touch multiple RAID 0 cards. They are in many/most/all cases not the same as a non RAID controller writing extra data to the drive making recovery at a later date extremely problematic at best and more likely impossible. So whilst you "may" make it work you lose one of the main features of unRAID in being able to take a drive and mount it elsewhere for whatever reason.

 

This will be easy to test. Crate a RAID 0 volume on the disk. Partition the drive, stick some smaple data on it  then move it to a standard SATA port. Betcha you cant read the  drive and that recovery tools throw a fit. (which might be what your saying when you mention fastrack and missing)

 

Out of interest what PCI-X controller are we talking about an Adaptec one?

 

Sorry to say it but i predict your PCI-X cards are for the bin or ebay

 

Edit: The best way to try and recover your data is to use a live CD like Sidux and see if it can recognise your drives. Be very careful to mount them read only as you are on a knife edge here. If you can read the data slowly and surely move the data to other drives. I cant stress enough how careful you are going to have to be. DO NOT TRUST claims from the RAID card that moving data or changing RAID anything will mean no data loss. Simply put it may be true but if ANYTHING goes even slightly wrong in ANY tiny way you will end up losing everything.

 

Edit2: Forget the question about the controller i misread and assumed the model number was the MB

[narkevich]

thank you very much for detailed answer, i suspected something like this... i will try to use sidux livecd... but may be there is another way to restore data? some windows utilities that can read reiserFS?

[narkevich]

update - failed to mount drives in sidux (impresses by linux by the way, never seen it =), drives are recognised as hardware, but it is impossible to mount them - partition is missing =(

[Joe L.]

you might try to see what the partition table looks like.  It might have been mangled by your raid card.

 

fdisk -l /dev/???      (for whatever your disk is detected as under your live sidux CD) 

 

basically, you want a single Linux partition, as big as your drive allows like this

root@Tower:~# fdisk -l /dev/hdb

 

Disk /dev/hdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes

1 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15504336 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 63 * 512 = 32256 bytes

 

  Device Boot      Start        End      Blocks  Id  System

/dev/hdb1              2    15504336  488386552+  83  Linux

[RobJ]

This may be good news, although I don't want to raise your hopes too much yet.  When I read the earlier messages, I am afraid I thought your situation was dire, as there are no recovery tools for ReiserFS, as far as I know.  If it were a FAT or NTFS partition, then tools like GetDataBack could have helped.  It sounded like the RAID 0 card had already overwritten the file structures at the beginning.

 

BUT...  Now that you have determined that there is no partition, that means the RAID card probably did nothing but delete the partition.  If it had tried to write anything at all, it would have had to start by creating a partition.

 

Go to http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/index.htm and download a copy of BootIT NG, great software for your toolkit.  Using it, create a bootable floppy or CD, which ever will be more convenient.  I keep a floppy drive connected, but lying inside, in the bottom of the case, so I won't lose a 3.5" drive slot.  I would skim the Quick Start pdf, for a basic understanding of BootIT, but you are only interested in the partition management functions.  You are not interested in installing it, using the Boot menu, or the imaging functions.

 

Adjust your CMOS settings to boot from this floppy or CD, and boot it.  Be very careful at the first prompt to NOT install BootIT!  Select the middle button, 'Cancel' I think.  Then select Maintenance mode, and select the 'Partition Work' icon.  (I'm working from faulty memory here, please pardon any confusing instructions.)  You will have to carefully examine each of the drives, in order to find your failed drive, should be the only one without any partitions.  Then select the 'Undelete Partition' button on the right, and hope for a miracle.

 

I don't want to give too much hope, as I don't know if the partition recognition algorithms will find a ReiserFS partition.  If unsuccessful, it is possible that there are other partition undeletion tools that may have knowledge of Reiser systems.

 

Edit:  Just saw that Joe had posted, good ideas.  Another option, if you have a drive that is an absolutely identical model, there might be a tool that could copy the MBR from it to the failed drive, and restore the partition table.

 

[RobJ]

Found TestDisk, a good tool that claims to recover a ReiserFS partition, as well as just about any other partition types I can think of:  http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk.  It can be added to a bootable DOS floppy, or is already included in many Live Rescue CD's.  I think it should be just what you are looking for, easier than BootIT NG.

 

[Billped]

Downloaded that one, just in case ....

 

 

Bill