Re: RAID5 on broken RocketRaid 1640 - data format?

[Michael Evans <mjevans1983@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 11:55 AM, Kristleifur Daðason
<kristleifur@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> A good pal of mine once had a 4x400GB RAID5 array running on a
> RocketRaid 1640 controller. The controller broke, and due to
> complexity and his understandable lack of RAID expertise, the drives
> are sitting in a drawer. I want to try to help.
>
> Do you excellent list dwellers know what data format the 1640 uses on
> the disks? Is there any Linux RAID tool that can work with the data
> off the disks?
>
> In case it's relevant, the system was running Windows, and there was a
> single NTFS filesystem over the array. I'm pretty sure the array was
> created on the BIOS side.
>
> Many thanks!
> -- Kristleifur
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>

Load the drives in to a computer as spare drives, DO NOT WRITE TO THEM
(make sure your OS doesn't try to automount either).

Try mdadm --examine on the raw devices and any partitions you can see.

If mdadm recognizes the meta-data format there is a very good chance
the array can be brought online, try to do that in read-only mode
(read the mdadm manual).

Examine the result, it may contain partitions or a filesystem that can
be mounted via something like ntfs-3g.  If you get that far I
recommend running a CHECK on the array (Before making it read/write)
and validating that there are no errors.  If you get errors you /may/
want to make a backup of the entire device.

I know that old drives from a 4-port hardware raid card I used one
time kept showing meta-data (in the syslog) unknown/not recognized,
but I don't believe it was a highpoint 1640.  There have also been
improvements since then.
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html