How to move my RAID 0 HDDs to check for failure

[chotai]

I think my hard drive failed the other day (Not the computer I'm using to write this.). When I turned on the computer I wouldn't to get to choose my OS (dual boot Vista/7) i just had a blinking cursor in the top left hand side of the screen. Then it had some code and said 'Error 15: File not found" then it took me to a red screen telling me to run with or withour RILS Loader (I dont think the letters are actually right but something along those lines) but eithehr option i choose just takes me back to the blinking cursor screen. I don't know if this is a hard drive fail or not so i want to test but i'm running with 2 1TB harddrives in RAID 0 and I don't have a computer in my house that supports RAID.

Can someone tell me what my problem is and what i can do to fix it I'm kind of worried about my computer.

Sorry about the long story but Thank You

 

[sub mesa]

Could you run "Check Disc Contents" when you boot from the cd? That should check whether your cd contains errors. In that case, please burn it again.

 

[chotai]

Well, I actually had this problem before and re-burned the disk about 3 times without getting different results. I don't think the .iso is the problem since I'm getting it from the Ubuntu website but I can't seem to find out what's wrong. But the USB works just fine for some reason.

 

[sub mesa]

Okay well, you should be able to do this with Ubuntu on a USB-stick too. Though i'm uncertain why that works in your case and not the cd.

Either way, can you set the disks to AHCI and see if Ubuntu recognises them? The dmesg | grep GiB command should work for that. It should see your USB stick + two RAID0 disks.

 

[chotai]

Using the "dmesg | grep GiB" (without quotes) command only detected the USB drive that it was running from.

 

[sub mesa]

Can you tell how you connected your RAID drives?

What transfer mode is set in the BIOS? (AHCI/RAID/IDE/SATA one of those)

Are the disks detected by the BIOS power-on self test? That's the screen just after you power on the machine.

It appears your disks are not detected, please make sure you connected them properly.

 

[chotai]

My mother actually needs the computer in a few minutes and since when you restart all of your data gets erased I will have to do this by memory.

Transfer Mode: At the moment AHCI but I set it to RAID before the HDD crash happened
After I power up my PC I get the XFX logo then I get a Nvidia RAID controller menu which syas

Stripe RAID array 1.8T Status: Healthy
(long name for my DVD drive) Status: Healthy

So yes, the disks show up in my BIOS and they do show up as a RAID array.

 

[sub mesa]

Well that's wrong. You need to use AHCI which disabled RAID. Does your motherboard have multiple controllers? Are you _SURE_ RAID is disabled in the BIOS and AHCI is set? Triple check this, because it must be set wrong in your BIOS. That's why Ubuntu can't see your drives.

 

[chotai]

Ok I've double and triple checked I did all the BIOS settings right and both disks show up in the BIOS

Transfer Mode: AHCI
AHCI DID for Linux: Enabled
Boot: USB 2.0 Disk
Boot Ubuntu with "Try without changing computer"
Applications>Accessories>Terminal
dmesg | grep GiB

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ dmesg | grep GiB
[ 63.772527] sd 8:0:0:0: [sda] 3915776 512-byte logical blocks: (2.00 GB/1.86 GiB)
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

I don't know what to do from here.

 

[sub mesa]

Your only option would be to use another computer; with NORMAL serial ATA port. Then repeat what you did and you should get a /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc device; your RAID disks.

If you don't have access to any other computer, you may also try recovery with RAID reconstructor and similar windows utilities. The Ubuntu recovery method is the easiest with nothing to do really; but it appears Ubuntu does not detect your disks. Why that is; i'm unsure. I would try it on another computer; both BIOS and Ubuntu should detect your disks.

 

[chotai]

Ok so apparently one of the computers that I thought didn't have SATA did. So I'm again booting from the USB and this time my HDDs show up! It even separated out my different partitions. So now what? Do I just do a drag and drop maneuver into my external HDDs? Or is it more complicated than that.

And I must say once more, thank you for being so patient with me thus far. I'm pretty sure a lot of people would have lost patience with me at about 5 messages. You don't realize how happy I am now that I can see my data again. This has really been one of the longest weeks of my life. So once more Thank You!

 

[chotai]

So if I'm just looking to recover my data, not worrying about my installed programs, I can just drag and drop it right? I don't mind re-installing everything.

 

[sub mesa]

Alright, so now your two HDDs are detected? What did you change, why were they not detected before?

Could you send me the output of earlier commands?

dmesg | grep GiB
ls -l /dev/md*

If the /dev/md0 device exists, all you need to do is click Places, click Home. Then in the new window that appears, you should see ".... GB Filesystem" on the left side. Click those and see if your data is accessible now. If you can see your data, you can copy it over from the network.

But first you need to confirm Ubuntu can detect your disks and create a RAID array for them. If Ubuntu can see your disks, but doesn't create the RAID; there is damage on your disks and you need to execute commands manually. In that case, send me the output of above commands, and also execute this:

# do not send output of following command
sudo apt-get install mdadm

# send output of following command
mdadm --detail /dev/md0

 

[chotai]

I used another computer. The SATA ports were kind of hidden so I didn't know they were there

Here is the output for "dmesg | grep GiB"
The Bolded ones are my external HDDs

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ dmesg | grep GiB
[ 2.471613] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] 1953525168 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB)
[ 2.475744] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 1953525168 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB)
[ 7.784074] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] 3915776 512-byte logical blocks: (2.00 GB/1.86 GiB)
[ 3717.825255] sd 10:0:0:0: [sde] 488397168 512-byte logical blocks: (250 GB/232 GiB)
[ 3813.390860] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdf] 1952151552 512-byte logical blocks: (999 GB/930 GiB)
[ 3818.084063] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdg] 1465149168 512-byte logical blocks: (750 GB/698 GiB)
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

I can see my HDDs as 2 file systems in Places. I checked and all of my data is accessible. It actually even split up my 2 partitions for me.

 

[chotai]

But when I tried to install mdadm I got this

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install mdadm
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
postfix
Suggested packages:
procmail postfix-mysql postfix-pgsql postfix-ldap postfix-pcre sasl2-bin
resolvconf postfix-cdb
The following NEW packages will be installed:
mdadm postfix
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
E: Could not get lock /var/cache/apt/archives/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the download directory
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

 

[chotai]

I got two or three files and transfered tham from my RAID HDDs to a laptop to see if the files still worked and they did. So I'm going on ahead and copying my data onto my external HDDs and rebuilding my RAID array and re-installing Windows.

I will post back if something goes wrong in that process

 

[sub mesa]

Alright sounds like it works now! I'm not sure why the mdadm thing didn't work; but frankly you don't need it if you can already access your data right now.

Just copy it over to some windows filesystem or computer over the network, then you should be done and can reformat/repartition/re-RAID your two 1TB disks.

 

[chotai]

Great news! I got all of my data transfered (it took 4 days but oh well), re RAID-ed my drives and re-installed Windows and everything is working great. I will make sure to have total backup now.

And I can not stress enough how much I need to thank you. I am pretty sure if I asked anyone, once they saw that I had more than one or two problems they would have just left. You were very patient with me and made sure I had it working until the end so for that I must say Thank You.

 

[sub mesa]

Hey ChoTai,

Sorry i'm late with my response. Still, i would like to say thanks to your kind remark.
Wish you the best of luck!

- sub