RAID5 on broken RocketRaid 1640 - data format?

RAID5 on broken RocketRaid 1640 - data format?

[Kristleifur Daðason]

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

Re: RAID5 on broken RocketRaid 1640 - data format?

[Michael Evans]

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
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>

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.
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