[SOLVED] Raid 1 corrupted after power failure

[Ratman43]

Hello all, this is my first time posting on the Tom's Hardware forums seeing as I am having trouble getting my mirror raid setup in an old Windows 7 computer back up and running.

After having turned on this PC for the first time in nearly a decade (I changed the power supply and other failed/dubious components), it was telling me to rebuild my Raid drives in software at boot. It's an Asus P5K motherboard with the onboard JMB363 Raid controller and I had started the rebuild through the chip's software after booting into the OS but then the power went out.

Attempting to boot only leads to windows giving me a file system corruption error, pointing to files in system 32 and recommending I use my Windows 7 disc to run media recovery. I then rebuilt the drives through the BIOS with no luck, tried booting off each drive individually with no luck, then after solving the mirror conflict caused by replugging both and attempting to rebuild it told me ''Raid rebuild failed, reboot and try again'' at 97% completion. Currently trying to rebuild again before attempting to do windows recovery.

Here are my concerns:
1. How would this work in a Raid 1 situation?
Would Windows recovery identify both disks as separate or as one Raid whole like it should?
Would it fix the system files on both disks? Or only one?
What are the chances it makes things even worse?
2. Did I mess anything up so far?
Did my initial rebuild put the corrupt system files on both disks, or would they have been corrupt anyways?
3. If I'm not able to recover the operating system, how would I get my files off the drives?
This was the whole point of me messing with this old computer again seeing as plugging the drives into my current PC won't read them since they're configured for Raid mirroring.
4. How would windows recovery work on a Raid 0?
Since everything would be striped, how would windows know what to fix?

Thanks in advance for the help and replies, please let me know if there is any information I left out.

 

[Ratman43]

Update: second rebuild failed at 97% again, BIOS does detect the RDD as a single boot device so I assume windows recovery will do the same.
Will try and find my windows 7 cd when I get back home, is there any way to make a bootable windows 7 recovery USB like in windows 10 without doing it through the operating system?

 

[SkyNetRising]

1. How would this work in a Raid 1 situation?
2. How would windows recovery work on a Raid 0?

So - do you have RAID 1 or RAID 0 ?
Didn't quite get it from your info.

With RAID 0 and one drive failing, all your data is lost. There's no recovering it.

 

[Ratman43]

So - do you have RAID 1 or RAID 0 ?
Didn't quite get it from your info.

With RAID 0 and one drive failing, all your data is lost. There's no recovering it.

I'm running Raid 1, just wanted to know how it would work for 0 as well although I'd never consider running 0.

 

[USAFRet]

I'm running Raid 1, just wanted to know how it would work for 0 as well although I'd never consider running 0.

The normal way to recover from any RAID fail is...

Power off.
Replace the failing device. Drive or controller.
Rebuild the RAID array.
Recover your data from the backup you made before this happened.


With a RAID 0 and a dead or corrupted drive, there is no 'windows recovery'.

 

[Ratman43]

The normal way to recover from any RAID fail is...

Power off.
Replace the failing device. Drive or controller.
Rebuild the RAID array.
Recover your data from the backup you made before this happened.


With a RAID 0 and a dead or corrupted drive, there is no 'windows recovery'.

Problem I’m having is the raid controller doesn’t detect either drive as failed, and neither drive will boot when tried separately. As for backups I don’t know if there are any backups on the drives and if they’re there then I don’t know how I can access them without booting.
I’m wondering if windows recovery will work for my RAID 1 mirror set up since only the system files seem to be corrupt, the rest of the data should be intact.

 

[USAFRet]

Problem I’m having is the raid controller doesn’t detect either drive as failed, and neither drive will boot when tried separately. As for backups I don’t know if there are any backups on the drives and if they’re there then I don’t know how I can access them without booting.
I’m wondering if windows recovery will work for my RAID 1 mirror set up since only the system files seem to be corrupt, the rest of the data should be intact.

"backups" are placed on other drives and locations.
Does no good if it is on the same drive or array that failed.

 

[DSzymborski]

Nor is having your boot drive in RAID a remotely good idea. Or, really, RAID at all except in very specific professional use cases.

How important is the data you're trying to recover? Are there no proper backups of this data? If the data is highly valuable, I'd be inclined to bring the whole PC to a specialist and see if they can sort it out. This is going to be messy and the chances of success are not high.

 

[USAFRet]

As for backups I don’t know if there are any backups on the drives and if they’re there then I don’t know how I can access them without booting.

Then...there aren't.

Is this a home or work system?

 

[Ratman43]

Nor is having your boot drive in RAID a remotely good idea. Or, really, RAID at all except in very specific professional use cases.

How important is the data you're trying to recover? Are there no proper backups of this data? If the data is highly valuable, I'd be inclined to bring the whole PC to a specialist and see if they can sort it out. This is going to be messy and the chances of success are not high.

Family pictures and tax reports type of stuff, I get that RAID isnt the best idea but I didn't know that 10 years ago.
It being my boot device should technically mean that all the boot data is identical on both drives since its a mirror correct?
So if I were to pull out one drive, use windows recovery to fix the second drive, and then reinstall the first drive and rebuild it with the data from the second, it should fix everything?

 

[little_me]

I had experiences with RAID 1 years ago.
good side:
it can survive random things like rolling over sata cable with office chair (why sata cable was outside the case and that long? don't ask, I have no excuse)
bad side:
anything goes wrong, both disk contents are corrupted.

This is likely what happened with your setup.
Your best bet is to put one disk aside (disconnect it) clean/format and reinstall windows on the other disk (or 3rd one) as standalone disk and THEN connect second disk and copy/test what you copy over to be working.
DO NOT TRY TO REBUILD, if worst happens, it wipes wrong disk, if best, it corrupts both again.
there is no real backup or speed benefits with RAID1
If you want to rebuild the RAID1, copy all data you want to keep somewhere else to safety, then wipe both disks and start from beginning with them being completely empty and in raid1 from get-go.

only good side compared to all other RAID setups with RAID1 is that both drives are completely usable as stand alone and wont need RAID setup to be read, you plug either disk to another or any computer and plain copy data out of it.
Provided said data is intact.

Why I stopped using RAID1 is.. said corruption issues breaking contents of both disks, two separate times, so the benefits are slim on RAID1, I would recommend running them as separate disks and use macrium reflect (free) with scheduled backups running from one disk to other.

then you might have one level of backup in place.

 

[Ratman43]

I had experiences with RAID 1 years ago.
good side:
it can survive random things like rolling over sata cable with office chair (why sata cable was outside the case and that long? don't ask, I have no excuse)
bad side:
anything goes wrong, both disk contents are corrupted.

This is likely what happened with your setup.
Your best bet is to put one disk aside (disconnect it) clean/format and reinstall windows on the other disk (or 3rd one) as standalone disk and THEN connect second disk and copy/test what you copy over to be working.
DO NOT TRY TO REBUILD, if worst happens, it wipes wrong disk, if best, it corrupts both again.
there is no real backup or speed benefits with RAID1
If you want to rebuild the RAID1, copy all data you want to keep somewhere else to safety, then wipe both disks and start from beginning with them being completely empty and in raid1 from get-go.

only good side compared to all other RAID setups with RAID1 is that both drives are completely usable as stand alone and wont need RAID setup to be read, you plug either disk to another or any computer and plain copy data out of it.
Provided said data is intact.

Why I stopped using RAID1 is.. said corruption issues breaking contents of both disks, two separate times, so the benefits are slim on RAID1, I would recommend running them as separate disks and use macrium reflect (free) with scheduled backups running from one disk to other.

then you might have one level of backup in place.

Thanks for the reply, first thing I had tried before ever turning on the PC and before anything was corrupted was pulling the drives out and trying to read them with my current PC running windows 10. When I did this I wasn't able to see any of the files though which is what led me to putting them back in to the old PC and turning it on, soon after the power outage happened and corrupted the data.
Can RAID drives have their data taken off by just connecting them up through USB? Or is it just my hard drive connector that was bad? It still read the drive just it appeared empty besides an 800mb system partition.

 

[Ratman43]

Thanks for the reply, first thing I had tried before ever turning on the PC and before anything was corrupted was pulling the drives out and trying to read them with my current PC running windows 10. When I did this I wasn't able to see any of the files though which is what led me to putting them back in to the old PC and turning it on, soon after the power outage happened and corrupted the data.
Can RAID drives have their data taken off by just connecting them up through USB? Or is it just my hard drive connector that was bad? It still read the drive just it appeared empty besides an 800mb system partition.

I can try pulling the drives out and reading them in another computer again and seeing what it shows now that they're corrupt. Maybe they'd show properly if connected to a linux build?

 

[little_me]

if RAID1 drive appears empty, I fear that the partition data was/is gone.
RAID1 is just mirroring, bit for bit, both drives should normally be identical and readable on any other computer as single disks just fine. Through USB adapter or straight with SATA connector.

Data recovery applications might be able to read some parts of the data but.... I've had no personal experience with them.
Data recovery companies usually have more tools and/or know-how but they also charge for that.

Sadly, I suspect that the numerous rebuild attempts may have overwritten disks a few times making data recovery hard or near impossible though.

 

[Ratman43]

if RAID1 drive appears empty, I fear that the partition data was/is gone.
RAID1 is just mirroring, bit for bit, both drives should normally be identical and readable on any other computer as single disks just fine. Through USB adapter or straight with SATA connector.

Data recovery applications might be able to read some parts of the data but.... I've had no personal experience with them.
Data recovery companies usually have more tools and/or know-how but they also charge for that.

Sadly, I suspect that the numerous rebuild attempts may have overwritten disks a few times making data recovery hard or near impossible though.

Yeah I'm worried that the rebuilds may have scrapped my chances at fixing the disks, I'll try pulling them out and reading them in another PC and post the results.
Its weird that they showed up as empty even when they were working though. They both just showed up as an 800mb partition and the rest being empty, but when they were running together there was a whole operating system and all the files.

 

[USAFRet]

If you take one or the other drive, and connect it to some other system as a secondary drive (Not booting from it), what does it show?

 

[Ratman43]

If you take one or the other drive, and connect it to some other system as a secondary drive (Not booting from it), what does it show?

Will test when I get home in 3 hours, signing off for now and would like to thank everyone for their replies so far.

 

[Ratman43]

A

If you take one or the other drive, and connect it to some other system as a secondary drive (Not booting from it), what does it show?

Alright I got home much later than expected, it immediately asks me to format the drive twice and when I look at it in file manager this is what it shows:

 

[USAFRet]

So, the 1TB Disk 2?

What happens with the other drive?

 

[Ratman43]

If you take one or the other drive, and connect it to some other system as a secondary drive (Not booting from it), what does it show?

Here's the other of the two disks in crystal disk, I'll go back and check the first one again.

 

[Ratman43]

So, the 1TB Disk 2?

What happens with the other drive?

And here is disk 2 in disk utility: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/892828517383942215/993665105491402852/unknown.png

 

[Ratman43]

So, the 1TB Disk 2?

What happens with the other drive?

Ok I might be on to something here
Look at the results of disk 1 in crystal disk:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/892828517383942215/993665942770954371/unknown.png

 

[Ratman43]

So should I remove the drive giving me a caution warning and try to use windows recovery to fix the 0xc000014c error I get on boot?

 

[Ratman43]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/892828517383942215/993667675995783188/unknown.png

Here is a better picture showing the errors.
Its telling me caution on C5 and C6, I assume this is why the rebuild keeps failing at 97%.

 

[USAFRet]

On to something?
Like a potential drive fail?