Update---Data recovery specialists, Im begging for help....
06-23-2004, 06:45 PM
#31
Race Director
Here's a summary of various types of RAID systems: Understanding Disk Arrays
What hasn't been answered is what kind of hardware controller was used to create this RAID? The ECC in Level-2 is most likely in hardware on the controller with and the physical data on the drives would be stripped just like in a pure RAID-0 configuration. However, the probability of failure is increased by 100% (double) over a single-drive setup.
"Windows XP boots up with the loading bar, then goes into a stop blue screen with an error (unmountable volume), which i gathered from the internet means a bad mbr."
Your MBR is could be fine if you get this far. A bad MBR would result in an error of something like "no OS found" right after the hardware POST. Or no message at all. It might be something a little further down the file-system. Could be the MFT has gotten corrupted somehow. A backup copy of the MFT is stored at the logical middle of the partition.
I say you install two hard-drives. One hard-drive to store a new copy of WinXP. Boot from CD and install a clean copy of WinXP onto it. Then with the 2nd hard-drive, which should be as large in capacity as your RAID array, mirror your sector-by-sector over to the 2nd hard-drive. Then use repair and recovery utilities on that copy.
What hasn't been answered is what kind of hardware controller was used to create this RAID? The ECC in Level-2 is most likely in hardware on the controller with and the physical data on the drives would be stripped just like in a pure RAID-0 configuration. However, the probability of failure is increased by 100% (double) over a single-drive setup.
"Windows XP boots up with the loading bar, then goes into a stop blue screen with an error (unmountable volume), which i gathered from the internet means a bad mbr."
Your MBR is could be fine if you get this far. A bad MBR would result in an error of something like "no OS found" right after the hardware POST. Or no message at all. It might be something a little further down the file-system. Could be the MFT has gotten corrupted somehow. A backup copy of the MFT is stored at the logical middle of the partition.
I say you install two hard-drives. One hard-drive to store a new copy of WinXP. Boot from CD and install a clean copy of WinXP onto it. Then with the 2nd hard-drive, which should be as large in capacity as your RAID array, mirror your sector-by-sector over to the 2nd hard-drive. Then use repair and recovery utilities on that copy.
06-23-2004, 06:59 PM
#32
Racer
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chris 924s is correct, this is more than simple undeleting. Allow me to go into more detail.
Raid 0 is striping. It uses 2 drives, then combines them as 1, effectively, in theory, doubling performance. It is true that I probably should not be using it, but I have for years and was very stable. If 1 drive goes down, you only have half the data blocks you need and recovery would be impossible. however, this appears to not be the case, because of all the info I can get when I try to start it up. It asks me if I want to try safe mode or normal, etc. It boots up the Windows XP loading screenm etc. There is data that is accessible somehow.
Next, I am a poweruser, and would consider myself on a level of 8/10, 10 being big time computer hot shot. So I tried all normal methods. I installed an OS on another HD and tried accessing it from there. Raid drive mounted, but when I clicked on it in "my computer", it said "drive not available".
I tried all software programs, get back data, virtual lab, etc. But since the drive can not be accessed for some reason, I get a message saying "drive not ready, cancel, retry, continue" everytime a piece of software tries to access it. It doesnt matter which since it is not of the proper configuration cause its messed up.
On to the Dos low level operations. It appears that the partition and MBR have been screwed up, perhaps by a virus. Regardless, I am puzzled by the fact that when I try to copy over a new MBR with the methods I described before, it gives me an error message. Hmmm.
A striped Raid has the MBR on ONE drive from what I gather, since it is 512bytes, it is said to be held on the first drive in the raid. Someone had a question about this.
I have reas online that if the MBR is screwed up, you will not be able to boot, but can access it from another drive. Since I can't do this, it looks like the partition area of the MBR has been screwed up as well. So, the clues are:
I can see drivers loading in safe mode. I have a loading XP screen. So data is still on it, but only if I try loading up with the raid, not from any external source.
The MBR was not saved over when I tried the XP equivalent of fdisk /mbr
The partition appears as a new, full partition when viewed from anywhere like fdisk, or if you get the properties from the spare HD, it appears as "0 bytes used up, 0 bytes available". Some kind of partition problem.
The drive gives error messages of "not available" when attempting to access it from my WINXP spare HD.
Any ideas guys?
Raid 0 is striping. It uses 2 drives, then combines them as 1, effectively, in theory, doubling performance. It is true that I probably should not be using it, but I have for years and was very stable. If 1 drive goes down, you only have half the data blocks you need and recovery would be impossible. however, this appears to not be the case, because of all the info I can get when I try to start it up. It asks me if I want to try safe mode or normal, etc. It boots up the Windows XP loading screenm etc. There is data that is accessible somehow.
Next, I am a poweruser, and would consider myself on a level of 8/10, 10 being big time computer hot shot. So I tried all normal methods. I installed an OS on another HD and tried accessing it from there. Raid drive mounted, but when I clicked on it in "my computer", it said "drive not available".
I tried all software programs, get back data, virtual lab, etc. But since the drive can not be accessed for some reason, I get a message saying "drive not ready, cancel, retry, continue" everytime a piece of software tries to access it. It doesnt matter which since it is not of the proper configuration cause its messed up.
On to the Dos low level operations. It appears that the partition and MBR have been screwed up, perhaps by a virus. Regardless, I am puzzled by the fact that when I try to copy over a new MBR with the methods I described before, it gives me an error message. Hmmm.
A striped Raid has the MBR on ONE drive from what I gather, since it is 512bytes, it is said to be held on the first drive in the raid. Someone had a question about this.
I have reas online that if the MBR is screwed up, you will not be able to boot, but can access it from another drive. Since I can't do this, it looks like the partition area of the MBR has been screwed up as well. So, the clues are:
I can see drivers loading in safe mode. I have a loading XP screen. So data is still on it, but only if I try loading up with the raid, not from any external source.
The MBR was not saved over when I tried the XP equivalent of fdisk /mbr
The partition appears as a new, full partition when viewed from anywhere like fdisk, or if you get the properties from the spare HD, it appears as "0 bytes used up, 0 bytes available". Some kind of partition problem.
The drive gives error messages of "not available" when attempting to access it from my WINXP spare HD.
Any ideas guys?
06-23-2004, 07:03 PM
#33
Racer
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The controller is a PCI card, a promise FASTTRAK100.
This is an idea I was considering, buying (or renting, hehe) a large HD from best buy, imaging it over, then going nuts on it. I was considering doing a quick format, then partition, then trying data recovery software, as the drive should be accessible at this point. I wasnt sure if imaging it would even work, since it is not accessible in the first place. But it is if I try to start up with it, I get the winxp loading screen. Very frustrating.
How could it load up files and data on its own, but be totally unaccessible from any other means? This must be a major clue.
This is an idea I was considering, buying (or renting, hehe) a large HD from best buy, imaging it over, then going nuts on it. I was considering doing a quick format, then partition, then trying data recovery software, as the drive should be accessible at this point. I wasnt sure if imaging it would even work, since it is not accessible in the first place. But it is if I try to start up with it, I get the winxp loading screen. Very frustrating.
How could it load up files and data on its own, but be totally unaccessible from any other means? This must be a major clue.
06-24-2004, 04:44 AM
#34
Race Director
"The drive gives error messages of "not available" when attempting to access it from my WINXP spare HD."
What are the chances that the controller could be bad? I've got a pile of Fastrak-66 RAID controllers I can send you to test.
What are the chances that the controller could be bad? I've got a pile of Fastrak-66 RAID controllers I can send you to test.
06-24-2004, 09:02 AM
#35
Nerd Herder
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It is a distinct possibility the controller has gone south- software fixes look to be exhausted.
As a rule, I blame software on 99% of every issue I see until I rule it out- then look to a hardware problem. (This may seem unorthodox, but it's usually the case and saves me a ton of time)
If you are the same way I am , as though your truobleshooting methods indicate, see if you can locate an alternate controller (Identical would be ideal- I dont know the specific differences between the currently installed FASTTRACK100 and the 66 Danno has) and verify this. FWIW get 2 controllers to test, I learned from working on Compaq servers if a controller fails in the field, chances are it's replacement will as well in short order.
Six sigma my Bass Ale.
I am absolutely paranoid about losing data- been there, done that.
The only thing that has saved my butt is that I will do a complete filecopy to a HDD dedicated to be nothing more than a tertiary file backup. All files I need and want are copied onto a supplimental HDD that hangs from cables until I'm done with the backup, then it comes out of the box- back into an anti-stat bag, and put away for another 2 weeks. If ALL my drives fail, I can setup my OS and copy it back. Disaster recovery is then attained.
My .02 is now on controller hardware failure with the additional info provided.
FWIW Paul- I meant no harm if I seemed affrontive on your selection of storage methodology- I just know from years of field NOC experience that all raids are different- I get calls and work on NOS's with arcane stoarge setups which would have never been my choice in the setup.
Oh the war stories I could share.. about a SCO Unix box running Token Ring- the original guy who set it up had died and nobody would touch it.
Yes, I have seen 2 of 3 HDD's fail in Raid5 at once and shred and scatter data blocks onto bad sectors- It was a Dell Poweredge- Great server, Damn Quantum HDD's.
I love a challenge.
I have my preferences for NOS setup for fault tolerance and disaster recovery to eliminate these problems- and also guarantee they have to call me to get it fixed as well.
Peace out- Chris
As a rule, I blame software on 99% of every issue I see until I rule it out- then look to a hardware problem. (This may seem unorthodox, but it's usually the case and saves me a ton of time)
If you are the same way I am , as though your truobleshooting methods indicate, see if you can locate an alternate controller (Identical would be ideal- I dont know the specific differences between the currently installed FASTTRACK100 and the 66 Danno has) and verify this. FWIW get 2 controllers to test, I learned from working on Compaq servers if a controller fails in the field, chances are it's replacement will as well in short order.
Six sigma my Bass Ale.
I am absolutely paranoid about losing data- been there, done that.
The only thing that has saved my butt is that I will do a complete filecopy to a HDD dedicated to be nothing more than a tertiary file backup. All files I need and want are copied onto a supplimental HDD that hangs from cables until I'm done with the backup, then it comes out of the box- back into an anti-stat bag, and put away for another 2 weeks. If ALL my drives fail, I can setup my OS and copy it back. Disaster recovery is then attained.
My .02 is now on controller hardware failure with the additional info provided.
FWIW Paul- I meant no harm if I seemed affrontive on your selection of storage methodology- I just know from years of field NOC experience that all raids are different- I get calls and work on NOS's with arcane stoarge setups which would have never been my choice in the setup.
Oh the war stories I could share.. about a SCO Unix box running Token Ring- the original guy who set it up had died and nobody would touch it.
Yes, I have seen 2 of 3 HDD's fail in Raid5 at once and shred and scatter data blocks onto bad sectors- It was a Dell Poweredge- Great server, Damn Quantum HDD's.
I love a challenge.
I have my preferences for NOS setup for fault tolerance and disaster recovery to eliminate these problems- and also guarantee they have to call me to get it fixed as well.
Peace out- Chris
06-24-2004, 09:45 AM
#36
Burning Brakes
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Originally posted by Chris_924s
Oh the war stories I could share.. about a SCO Unix box running Token Ring- the original guy who set it up had died and nobody would touch it.
Yes, I have seen 2 of 3 HDD's fail in Raid5 at once and shred and scatter data blocks onto bad sectors- It was a Dell Poweredge- Great server, Damn Quantum HDD's.
Oh the war stories I could share.. about a SCO Unix box running Token Ring- the original guy who set it up had died and nobody would touch it.
Yes, I have seen 2 of 3 HDD's fail in Raid5 at once and shred and scatter data blocks onto bad sectors- It was a Dell Poweredge- Great server, Damn Quantum HDD's.
I think I am going to have nightmares for a week... wait, I am not a consultant anymore. YEEEEEHAAAAAA!!
One environment, all the time and it's MINE, ALL MINE!!!!
06-24-2004, 03:09 PM
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I had a similar problem just recently...motherboard and CPU went up in smoke on my digital audio workstation, and all data from about 35 songs worth of material from 4 sessions over a year was in limbo on a fasttrack 100 controller in RAID0 with 2 60 gig drives (and I didn't have a back up of the recent mixes, which had over 100 hours into them). Instead of trying to fix the old DAW with a new motherboard and CPU, I just took all of the goodies (m-audio delta 1010 card, hard drives) over to my drummer's athlon 64 which, as it was, had a Fasttrack 133 controller built onto the motherboard. A fresh install of XP on the system drive, along with the proper drivers, and all the data on my RAID was accessible again. I have a pile of 20 DVD+R's that I have to back this stuff up on...maybe I should do that before we get too far into our final recording project.
Just letting you know that some of us have BTDT, and a bad master boot record shouldn't inhibit the ability of a fresh install of XP or 2000 to access your data, which you should immediately back up when you get access to it (as I should have). Best of luck, and let us know how it turns out.
Just letting you know that some of us have BTDT, and a bad master boot record shouldn't inhibit the ability of a fresh install of XP or 2000 to access your data, which you should immediately back up when you get access to it (as I should have). Best of luck, and let us know how it turns out.
06-24-2004, 03:27 PM
#38
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I didn't read your last post. If you can get the RAID to partially boot before getting a BSOD related to volume mounting, you can try this. Install another hard drive that is already formatted to FAT32. Boot from the windows XP CD, press F6 when it is loading, and insert the floppy for 2000/XP fresh installation that came with your RAID controller (you can d/l this off of the promise site if you don't have it handy). On the "welcome to setup" screen, you are given the option to use the recovery console by pressing r...do this. From the recovery console, after logging in with the administrator password, you should be able to perform many functions, including mounting the new hard drive, from the console (it is very DOS like)...I don't remember the commands off hand, but a search for "recovery console" in google should get you a good start. After mounting the new hard drive, commands like copy and xcopy should work and allow you, as long as you have an idea of what directories your data is stored in, to transfer you family pictures, pirated media, etc. over to your new hard drive. After you are confident that you have your data, wipe the RAID and start from scratch, and keep up on your backups. HTH,
06-24-2004, 04:59 PM
#39
Race Director
Rich, how about DVD-RAM for backups? Holds 9.4gb per disc and you have random access read/write/erase on a per-file basis just like a hard-drive (no formatting overhead). 
I use it for video all the time and I can capture a video to it as I'm simultaneously compressing a previously saved video to an AVI file. 
I use it for video all the time and I can capture a video to it as I'm simultaneously compressing a previously saved video to an AVI file.
06-24-2004, 06:44 PM
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Originally posted by Danno
Rich, how about DVD-RAM for backups? Holds 9.4gb per disc and you have random access read/write/erase on a per-file basis just like a hard-drive (no formatting overhead). I use it for video all the time and I can capture a video to it as I'm simultaneously compressing a previously saved video to an AVI file.
Rich, how about DVD-RAM for backups? Holds 9.4gb per disc and you have random access read/write/erase on a per-file basis just like a hard-drive (no formatting overhead).
I use it for video all the time and I can capture a video to it as I'm simultaneously compressing a previously saved video to an AVI file.
06-24-2004, 08:39 PM
#41
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Update--
I purchased a 250gb hd, which is perfect since my raid is 2x120 or 240gb. I tried ghost to copy everything over. First time it froze. I unplug the new hd to test if that is the problem, since it wasnt formatted or partitioned. run again, with no destination disk, ghost runs, and gives me an error of bad blocks on the raid drive, do I want to cancel, ignore, or do a sector copy. Awesome, I would choose the sector copy. Restart with the 250gb new hd plugged in. Ghost freezes right after I select the raid. Wait, nothing. Restart, freezes. Repeat 20 times, nothing, with different combinations of hds plugged in. Always freezes if I select the raid, but always works it I select something other than the raid. ARRRGHHH. I was ALMOST there.
Right when I select the raid in ghost, it gives me an error, something like "ntfs dump file not cleared. Restart NT and try again". WTF is that? I know it thinks XP is NT, no problem there. Is this causing the freeze? Damnit, I had it that second time, but the new hd wasnt plugged in. Why me?
I look around, and find this program called Novastar instant recovery. It actually loads its own os, a linux kernel, to work from. Once its booted, you can do a clone, or recovery, right from this linux kernel. Holy crap, this is exactly what I need. Im starting to get happy. Plug everything in, give it a go. hmm, the raid isnt there. Do a little reading. NO RAID SUPPORT. Arrrrghghghghhhh. Starting to think about doing a little russian roulette.
Does anyone know of a really nice cloning software? Something that will copy as much info as it can get to, bad blocks, partitions, everything, be damned? I know there are files on there, I can see them upon load up, but at NO OTHER TIME with no other software do files appear.
I would LOVE to borrow a fasttrak100, or 66 should work, just slower, right?
Final word--Im thinking maybe I got some bad blocks right where the mbr is kept. This would explain my not being able to copy over the corrupted mbr with the XP recovery that I tried previously (with fixboot, and chkdsk /p and /r). What can I do to skip the mbr and access these files? Why is my disk not accessible from a windows envirionment? Is there any kind of program similar to novastor that is out there, something with its own kernel in which to copy from?
Thank you guys, sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooo much. I really really appreciate all of your help.
I purchased a 250gb hd, which is perfect since my raid is 2x120 or 240gb. I tried ghost to copy everything over. First time it froze. I unplug the new hd to test if that is the problem, since it wasnt formatted or partitioned. run again, with no destination disk, ghost runs, and gives me an error of bad blocks on the raid drive, do I want to cancel, ignore, or do a sector copy. Awesome, I would choose the sector copy. Restart with the 250gb new hd plugged in. Ghost freezes right after I select the raid. Wait, nothing. Restart, freezes. Repeat 20 times, nothing, with different combinations of hds plugged in. Always freezes if I select the raid, but always works it I select something other than the raid. ARRRGHHH. I was ALMOST there.
Right when I select the raid in ghost, it gives me an error, something like "ntfs dump file not cleared. Restart NT and try again". WTF is that? I know it thinks XP is NT, no problem there. Is this causing the freeze? Damnit, I had it that second time, but the new hd wasnt plugged in. Why me?
I look around, and find this program called Novastar instant recovery. It actually loads its own os, a linux kernel, to work from. Once its booted, you can do a clone, or recovery, right from this linux kernel. Holy crap, this is exactly what I need. Im starting to get happy. Plug everything in, give it a go. hmm, the raid isnt there. Do a little reading. NO RAID SUPPORT. Arrrrghghghghhhh. Starting to think about doing a little russian roulette.
Does anyone know of a really nice cloning software? Something that will copy as much info as it can get to, bad blocks, partitions, everything, be damned? I know there are files on there, I can see them upon load up, but at NO OTHER TIME with no other software do files appear.
I would LOVE to borrow a fasttrak100, or 66 should work, just slower, right?
Final word--Im thinking maybe I got some bad blocks right where the mbr is kept. This would explain my not being able to copy over the corrupted mbr with the XP recovery that I tried previously (with fixboot, and chkdsk /p and /r). What can I do to skip the mbr and access these files? Why is my disk not accessible from a windows envirionment? Is there any kind of program similar to novastor that is out there, something with its own kernel in which to copy from?
Thank you guys, sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooo much. I really really appreciate all of your help.
06-24-2004, 11:32 PM
#42
Race Director
"I was always warry of the DVD-RAM's because that standard has been revised at least 2 times and wasn't backwards compatible."
Well, when the DVD-RAM 2.6gb standard got extended to the 5.2gb one, the newer drives could still read the older 2.6gb disc. Just that the older drives obviously can't read the newer higher-capacity discs. I got my DVD-RAM drive over a year ago and have archived over 100 CDs onto a handful of DVD-RAM discs. Pretty nifty. If you're going to network your laptop to your desktop machine, the HandyBackup program is pretty simple to use. It'll let you archive a network drive onto any media you want, a HD, CD-RPM, DVD and it'll span as many discs as necessary with compression. So you can archive all those music files onto 2-3 DVD-RAMs disks and that's it.
" Right when I select the raid in ghost, it gives me an error, something like "ntfs dump file not cleared. Restart NT and try again". WTF is that? I know it thinks XP is NT, no problem there. Is this causing the freeze?"
WinXP could use either the Fat32, NTFS-4 or NFTS-5 filesystem on the hard-drive. Appears that Ghost is trying to read the drive using file system calls. But there may be problems with your MBR, partition-tables, boot-record or MFT. I suspect Ghost is trying to read the partition-table to figure out what the geometry of the drive is in order to copy. So whatever error is crashing your XP boot is also crashing your Ghost.
"Once its booted, you can do a clone, or recovery, right from this linux kernel. Holy crap, this is exactly what I need. Im starting to get happy. Plug everything in, give it a go. hmm, the raid isnt there. "
This is why I suspect it's the Fastrak100 card. It's a low-level hardware that stripes the two drives together and to all higher-level OS stuff above firmware, the card appears just like an IDE-controller with a single large hard-drive attached.
Actually, if you're running Linux boot-disc, you might need to recompile the kernel on there to use the Linux ATA-100 drivers:Linux Now Supports Ultra ATA/100
" Does anyone know of a really nice cloning software? Something that will copy as much info as it can get to, bad blocks, partitions, everything, be damned?"
Here's some stuft to try out. The demo versions will at least let you know if the software can find your data. Others are shareware & freeware:
Lexun DrvClonerXP
Zero Assumption Recovery
http://<u>http://www.quetek.com/prod...File Scavenger
Active Partition software
HD Workbench 1
Handy Recovery
Restorer 2000
If you know the geometry of your drives, and if you had simple single partition, it wouldn't be that tough to re-create the MBR from scratch with the proper partition table. PowerQuest (maker of PartitionMagic) has a freeware (I think) program as part of their package called PartEdit that lets you manually edit the partition table.
"I would LOVE to borrow a fasttrak100, or 66 should work, just slower, right?"
Theoretically yes, but in reality not likely. The speed-limit is based upon the mechanical abilities of the drive you're using. I started out with the original Fasttrak33 controller with two 40gb Maxtor drives. Pretty good performance with close to double the single-drive throughput speeds at about 25MB/sec sequential writes and 20MB/sec sequential reads.
Then I upgraded to the Fasttrak66 and figured it would be even faster. Nope, same old speeds because the drives couldn't physically spin or move their heads any faster. Dumped those drives and went with two IBM 75GXP drives and wow! Now we're talking speed! Sustained throughputs of around 45MB/s writes and 40MB/s reads. So if I had these IBM drives earlier, yes, going from the Fasttrak33 to Fasttrak66 would give an improvement in speed, but not with the slower Maxtor drives.
Going up from the Fasttrak66 to Fasttrak100 probably won't be any different. Although if I was to stripe 4 IBM 75GXP drives, I might be in the 80MB/s speed range, in which case the Fasttrak100 would indeed be faster than the 66. Which drives are you using?
Email me your address <danno@thevine.net> and I'll send out a Fasttrak66 card for you to try out.
Well, when the DVD-RAM 2.6gb standard got extended to the 5.2gb one, the newer drives could still read the older 2.6gb disc. Just that the older drives obviously can't read the newer higher-capacity discs. I got my DVD-RAM drive over a year ago and have archived over 100 CDs onto a handful of DVD-RAM discs. Pretty nifty. If you're going to network your laptop to your desktop machine, the HandyBackup program is pretty simple to use. It'll let you archive a network drive onto any media you want, a HD, CD-RPM, DVD and it'll span as many discs as necessary with compression. So you can archive all those music files onto 2-3 DVD-RAMs disks and that's it.
" Right when I select the raid in ghost, it gives me an error, something like "ntfs dump file not cleared. Restart NT and try again". WTF is that? I know it thinks XP is NT, no problem there. Is this causing the freeze?"
WinXP could use either the Fat32, NTFS-4 or NFTS-5 filesystem on the hard-drive. Appears that Ghost is trying to read the drive using file system calls. But there may be problems with your MBR, partition-tables, boot-record or MFT. I suspect Ghost is trying to read the partition-table to figure out what the geometry of the drive is in order to copy. So whatever error is crashing your XP boot is also crashing your Ghost.
"Once its booted, you can do a clone, or recovery, right from this linux kernel. Holy crap, this is exactly what I need. Im starting to get happy. Plug everything in, give it a go. hmm, the raid isnt there. "
This is why I suspect it's the Fastrak100 card. It's a low-level hardware that stripes the two drives together and to all higher-level OS stuff above firmware, the card appears just like an IDE-controller with a single large hard-drive attached.
Actually, if you're running Linux boot-disc, you might need to recompile the kernel on there to use the Linux ATA-100 drivers:Linux Now Supports Ultra ATA/100
" Does anyone know of a really nice cloning software? Something that will copy as much info as it can get to, bad blocks, partitions, everything, be damned?"
Here's some stuft to try out. The demo versions will at least let you know if the software can find your data. Others are shareware & freeware:
Lexun DrvClonerXP
Zero Assumption Recovery
http://<u>http://www.quetek.com/prod...File Scavenger
Active Partition software
HD Workbench 1
Handy Recovery
Restorer 2000
If you know the geometry of your drives, and if you had simple single partition, it wouldn't be that tough to re-create the MBR from scratch with the proper partition table. PowerQuest (maker of PartitionMagic) has a freeware (I think) program as part of their package called PartEdit that lets you manually edit the partition table.
"I would LOVE to borrow a fasttrak100, or 66 should work, just slower, right?"
Theoretically yes, but in reality not likely. The speed-limit is based upon the mechanical abilities of the drive you're using. I started out with the original Fasttrak33 controller with two 40gb Maxtor drives. Pretty good performance with close to double the single-drive throughput speeds at about 25MB/sec sequential writes and 20MB/sec sequential reads.
Then I upgraded to the Fasttrak66 and figured it would be even faster. Nope, same old speeds because the drives couldn't physically spin or move their heads any faster. Dumped those drives and went with two IBM 75GXP drives and wow! Now we're talking speed! Sustained throughputs of around 45MB/s writes and 40MB/s reads. So if I had these IBM drives earlier, yes, going from the Fasttrak33 to Fasttrak66 would give an improvement in speed, but not with the slower Maxtor drives.
Going up from the Fasttrak66 to Fasttrak100 probably won't be any different. Although if I was to stripe 4 IBM 75GXP drives, I might be in the 80MB/s speed range, in which case the Fasttrak100 would indeed be faster than the 66. Which drives are you using?
Email me your address <danno@thevine.net> and I'll send out a Fasttrak66 card for you to try out.
06-25-2004, 03:34 PM
#43
Instructor
Im a computer technition ...I could probably recover all your information. If you were in CT i would tell you to come by where i work and i would do it but youre far and shipping HDs is a scary idea.
Ok if you havent tried ..install an operating system on the new hard drive. Then after that install one of the old HDs as slave. You should be able to access some of the files. If not you need a data recovery program. I have some here that will recognize pictures, videos and other common documents and restore them but other files are iffy.
It really just soundsl ike the MBR is damaged and it probably has some more bad sectors ...sounds easy to me.
Ok if you havent tried ..install an operating system on the new hard drive. Then after that install one of the old HDs as slave. You should be able to access some of the files. If not you need a data recovery program. I have some here that will recognize pictures, videos and other common documents and restore them but other files are iffy.
It really just soundsl ike the MBR is damaged and it probably has some more bad sectors ...sounds easy to me.
06-25-2004, 04:26 PM
#45
Instructor
Ugh ..didnt read that ..that makes it a lot more difficult. Why cant he install an OS on that 250 gig then install that raid array then install a program to recover the information? Sounds like it would work.
Ugh man ..why couldnt you have mirrored it to prevent all this?
Ugh man ..why couldnt you have mirrored it to prevent all this?