Lost multiple drives

[skoj]

Hi all --

 

Running unRAID 5. Lost multiple drives in my array and looking for advice with regards to recovery.

 

I was careless while swapping out a drive cage and plugged in a molex connector backwards. Now 4 of 12 drives aren't recognized by the BIOS and I suspect the logic boards on those drives are fried.

 

The array didn't mount since it has 4 missing disks and I turned the server off to prevent any further damage.

 

Looking into data recovery services. I have some questions about how unRAID works which would affect my next decisions.

 

1) Are the individual drives mountable on another server without reconstructing RAID encoding? I vaguely remember hearing each drive was an independent ReiserFS filesystem that could be mounted on any Linux system.

 

2) If they are able to recover all data on the 4 bad drives, they could clone the disk image to a fresh drive. Is it possible to connect those clones to my server and instruct the array to start with the clones? I suspect this will be problematic since I see the drive serial numbers in the UnRAID config.

 

3) If #2 isn't feasible, is this plan an option?

  a) Start array with 8 good disks (understanding that files from bad disks won't be available)

  b) Copy files recovered by service into array

 

4) Can you recommend anything else I should try? Are there any options I've neglected to consider?

 

5) Can you recommend any recovery service? Perhaps someone you've used in the past?

 

Sorry for the long post. Appreciate any help you can offer.

 

[JonathanM]

1) Are the individual drives mountable on another server without reconstructing RAID encoding? I vaguely remember hearing each drive was an independent ReiserFS filesystem that could be mounted on any Linux system.

 

2) If they are able to recover all data on the 4 bad drives, they could clone the disk image to a fresh drive. Is it possible to connect those clones to my server and instruct the array to start with the clones? I suspect this will be problematic since I see the drive serial numbers in the UnRAID config.

 

3) If #2 isn't feasible, is this plan an option?

  a) Start array with 8 good disks (understanding that files from bad disks won't be available)

  b) Copy files recovered by service into array

 

4) Can you recommend anything else I should try? Are there any options I've neglected to consider?

 

5) Can you recommend any recovery service? Perhaps someone you've used in the past?

 

Sorry for the long post. Appreciate any help you can offer.

 

http://www.donordrives.com/services

No affiliation, just a satisfied customer.

 

Each drive is indeed independent, and should be recoverable.

 

If it were me, I'd take this opportunity to do some reorganization and upgrading.

 

I'd purchase enough new drives to hold all your existing data, set up a new array with XFS formatted drives in unraid v6.1.9, one at a time mount the old and recovered drives using the unassigned devices plugin and copy the data to the new array.

 

That way you have all the old drives as backup drives, and you are starting fresh with much higher capacity drives.

 

The drive service that I referenced actually sends back the repaired drive ready to use if it's only the circuit board that was bad. Cloning to another drive is only necessary if there is other damage.

 

If you don't want to spend the money to set up full backups like I outlined, you definitely can just put back all your newly working data drives in unraid. You set a new config, and assign all the drives to data slots, and leave the parity slot blank unless you know for sure which drive was parity and want to erase it and recalculate parity.

 

All your data should be intact at that point.

 

 

[skoj]

Thanks for the referral to donordrives.com jonathonm. I'll give them a call in the morning.  I was in sticker shock from a data recovery firm's estimate when I saw your reply.

 

Replacing all drives is good advice as I can't fully trust even the good drives after this. Not sure I'll be able to follow it as replacement cost for all my storage would be rather high.

 

[JonathanM]

Now that you are primed price wise, use the savings from using donordrives to buy all new drives, job done. 

 

Seriously though, most people have priority data that must be online all the time, and then some data that's nice to keep online, and other data that may only be accessed once in a great while. Perhaps you can scrape together enough to get a new array big enough for your critical stuff, and as funds permit you can expand and repopulate with the lower priority stuff.

 

If nothing else, use this as an opportunity to get your critical stuff backed up NOW.

[skoj]

@jonathanm Thanks for the referral to donordrives. They repaired the logic boards on the blown drives at a reasonable cost so I didn't wind up losing any data.

 

@limetech Thanks for the e-mail assist as well.

[JonathanM]

@jonathanm Thanks for the referral to donordrives. They repaired the logic boards on the blown drives at a reasonable cost so I didn't wind up losing any data.

 

@limetech Thanks for the e-mail assist as well.

Glad it worked out for you.

 

Do you have a backup strategy in place now? You may not get as lucky next time.

 

All hard drives eventually fail, predicting exactly when it's going to happen, and replacing them before it happens is the hard part.

[trurl]

@jonathanm Thanks for the referral to donordrives. They repaired the logic boards on the blown drives at a reasonable cost so I didn't wind up losing any data.

 

@limetech Thanks for the e-mail assist as well.

Glad it worked out for you.

 

Do you have a backup strategy in place now? You may not get as lucky next time.

 

All hard drives eventually fail, predicting exactly when it's going to happen, and replacing them before it happens is the hard part.

But predicting when is a lot easier with the Notifications features of V6.

 

In addition to a backup plan, you really should upgrade if you haven't already.