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So, a legacy server of mine was using a PERC (5, if I am not wrong) with Raid 0 and he went down with 2 failed disks. We forced the disks back online but the filesystem is a mess.

Is there any program (like testdisk) that can scan the raid in search of lost data so we can try and get something back? The filesystem is NTFS.

No, no backup for this data.

EDIT: Believe me I agree with every 'raid 0 no backup craziness' comment you all did, but the context is way more complex than that and it was an accepted risk, 1 more week and it would not have happened, but that is the nature of risk analysis, accepted risks and Murphy. We are sending the disks to a data recovery company to see what can be done.

coredump
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  • What exactly are you seeing on the disks? – DanBig Aug 18 '10 at 14:00
  • I see directories, but trying to list then gives me IO Error (on Linux) or they are just empty when using windows to see. – coredump Aug 18 '10 at 15:34
  • Pull an image from the disks (WITHOUT WRITING TO THEM!) before you send them off; then you can fiddle with it while the recovery company works on it. You may get faster/cheaper results, or at least you'll have something to cool your nerves with. – Joris Aug 21 '10 at 20:32
  • It was the first thing I did after the crash, really :) – coredump Aug 21 '10 at 21:20

3 Answers3

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You can try Raid Reconstructor. I've seen somebody else on here have good luck with this.

Also, if you're seeing some stuff on the drive, try Get Data Back (from the same people). This will scan corrupt NTFS partitions attempting to recover files. It works much like testdisk, but preserves filenames and structure when possible.

I hope your friend considers this a wake-up call. I'm shocked how many systems there are with no TESTED backups.

Jason Berg
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  • The thought of having a RAID0 fail on a server, and not having backups, and attempting recovery on my own makes me shiver. – DanBig Aug 18 '10 at 14:46
  • I've had some minor success with RAID Reconstructor in the past after a failed controller. – Doug Luxem Aug 18 '10 at 14:57
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RAID0 is not a proper RAID, it's basically striping of data across disks to get faster read and write speed. It offers absolutely no protection against disk failures. As far as I know, you can write the data off. Plus: RAID (on whatever level) is not a replacement for backups.

Sorry for the bad news.

wolfgangsz
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You are most likely lost. You will probably have to go to a data recovery company to get anything off of those drives.

DanBig
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