RAID 0 First Timer: Need Tips

[bmac93]

Hello,

I work for a business that just moved to a 2012 Server. Long story short, we had networked drives that employees had years of pictures on, this is the only place he had them. They were two 2TB drives setup in RAID 0. He NEEDS the pictures back off of here, so we are trying to weigh out the options. I am IT here but have not had any hands-on experience with RAIDS. So can someone give me some pointers here on the RAID card I would need to purchase and how to configure it once installed? Any tips are appreciated! Thanks!

 

[ss202sl]

What happened to the original raid? Is it accessible? Are you just moving it to a new share?

I would not use raid 0 for your business data(there's no hardware redundancy). Either use raid5 or Raid 1, and then get a backup solution, and make sure you have a policy to run backups regularly, and keep at least 1 recent copy of the backups off-site.

 

[Spectre694]

What is the OS on your server and how big will your final array need to be. Honestly though especially if it is going to be >4tb you are going to want to stay away from RAID 5/6 (rebuilds are a nightmare/crapshoot for large arrays) and just use more drives in a RAID 10 array etc.

 

[Saberus]

If the RAID 0 was broken and a new array created on the drives, you're likely hosed. There is a slim chance that you could restore the RAID 0 array and retrieve the data if absolutely nothing's been written to the drives since the RAID was broken, though it's more likely you'll need a recovery service that's going to be stupidly expensive.

It might have to serve as a hard lesson for keeping backups, and never using RAID 0 for anything you can't afford to lose.

 

[boosted1g]

As stated RAID 0 is the worst raid for business.


Quick breakdown:
Raid 0 Stripped: makes 2 drives one big drive - double the speed, but if one drive dies you loose all data because the bits for each file is split across both drives.
Raid 1 Mirrored: make an exact duplicate of a hard drive. Good for redundancy, horrible backup solution because the same corruption/deletion will happen on both drives
Raid 5/6 Parity: Combines multiple drives into one large volume for speed, calculates a parity value that can be used to calculate the lost data in case one drive dies. Raid 5 uses 1 drive for parity (so protected against 1 lost drive), Raid 6 uses 2 as often rebuilding an array will damage another drive.
Raid 10 (1/0): mix of raid 1 and 0. If you have 4 drives then you have a mirrored copy of the 2 drives in raid 0.


Raid 0 is advised for OS/system if you then have another drive or raid array (raid 5 or 6) that has backups of that Raid 0 drive on it.

 

[bmac93]

What happened to the original raid? Is it accessible? Are you just moving it to a new share?

I would not use raid 0 for your business data(there's no hardware redundancy). Either use raid5 or Raid 1, and then get a backup solution, and make sure you have a policy to run backups regularly, and keep at least 1 recent copy of the backups off-site.

We no longer use RAID 0. Its gone. We now have RAID 5 with backup policies in place. But when we moved the server over, we have these two drives that are no longer accessible by us at least unless we put it into one of our machines with a RAID card.

 

[bmac93]

If the RAID 0 was broken and a new array created on the drives, you're likely hosed. There is a slim chance that you could restore the RAID 0 array and retrieve the data if absolutely nothing's been written to the drives since the RAID was broken, though it's more likely you'll need a recovery service that's going to be stupidly expensive.

It might have to serve as a hard lesson for keeping backups, and never using RAID 0 for anything you can't afford to lose.

I am not sure HOW the RAID was broken, if that makes sense? We outsourced our server install to a company that we have dealt with in the past. We were unaware that a user had been storing years worth of pictures on here. We no logner have a RAID 0 setup, it is not RAID 5. I have a quote from a HDD Recovery facility. CBL. They quoted somewhere in the $1,000 range to retrieve data off of the drives. If they are unable to do then it is no cost. It was my understanding though that i should be able to setup a new RAID 0 config on a PC, put these hard drives in and be able to access them as normal. Am i wrong?

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Reassemble the RAID 0 just long enough to remove any data you want, and be done with it. I would recommend going back to the original card, in case moving to a different RAID card is going to yield different parameters for the RAID configuration. What you don't want is the new RAID card not recognizing the old RAID and attempting to make you a nice new RAID, destroying old data. You need to get the data out of the RAID system before decommissioning it.

 

[ss202sl]

I would put a raid card in one of your machines(I'm assuming you've done this), and then copy the data over to the new server.

 

[Spectre694]

If the RAID 0 was broken and a new array created on the drives, you're likely hosed. There is a slim chance that you could restore the RAID 0 array and retrieve the data if absolutely nothing's been written to the drives since the RAID was broken, though it's more likely you'll need a recovery service that's going to be stupidly expensive.

It might have to serve as a hard lesson for keeping backups, and never using RAID 0 for anything you can't afford to lose.

I am not sure HOW the RAID was broken, if that makes sense? We outsourced our server install to a company that we have dealt with in the past. We were unaware that a user had been storing years worth of pictures on here. We no logner have a RAID 0 setup, it is not RAID 5. I have a quote from a HDD Recovery facility. CBL. They quoted somewhere in the $1,000 range to retrieve data off of the drives. If they are unable to do then it is no cost. It was my understanding though that i should be able to setup a new RAID 0 config on a PC, put these hard drives in and be able to access them as normal. Am i wrong?

Depends on how the original array was created and if anything has been written to it since. If it was a hardware RAID the the original RAID card (by model) should still be able to read it. Different RAID cards might be able to read it but it just depends on the cards and you will have to try it. Software RAID your best bet is to use the original OS to read it.

 

[boosted1g]

As others have stated, if you have the original raid card you should be able to hook them back up and access the raid 0.
If you don't have the card or if it has been reconfigured I would strongly advise getting another one of those cards and configuring the card for Raid 0.