Recover data from 1 disk after broken raid 5

Question

in a bit of an emergency. I am taking control of some servers that someone else had setup. One of them has crashed and it was critical. Here is what I found:

The server (Dell r710) was operating with one hard disk, when checking the RAID configuration, to my surprise it was setup on RAID 5, which as far as I know, it can't be. What can I do to attempt to recover the files?

I've had an idea of reconfiguring the RAID controller to RAID 0 and not initializing the disk. Would that be good?

Was the drive connected to the Raid controller or just connected to an onboard sata port? — Drifter104, Jun 16 '15 at 22:33

EEAA · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-16T21:27:06.667

3

What can I do to attempt to recover the files?

Stop what you are doing. Power off the server. Remove the hard drives and ship them off to a professional data recovery shop. Period, full stop.

You haven't a clue how exactly it was configured before, and anything more you do to it will cause further issues.

I've had an idea of reconfiguring the RAID controller to RAID 0 and not initializing the disk. Would that be good?

No. Heck no. Don't even consider it.

edited Jun 16 '15 at 21:27

answered Jun 16 '15 at 21:23

EEAA

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Not just "the drive" but _all the drives_ in the array. – Michael Hampton Jun 16 '15 at 21:26
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I would recommend cloning the contents before sending the disk(s) anywhere. – kasperd Jun 16 '15 at 21:26
Yep, clone the disks using `dd` or equivalent. – EEAA Jun 16 '15 at 21:27
Ok! I will consider that as an option. As a note, the odd thing here is that it was operating with a single drive on RAID 5. I've got but one drive to ship off to a data recovery company. – rjricardottco Jun 16 '15 at 21:43

Recover data from 1 disk after broken raid 5

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