[SOLVED] Raid 1 corrupted after power failure

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Jul 4, 2022
34
1
35
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.
 
Solution
The problem is that your USB enclosure is configured with a sector size of 4096 bytes. This makes the drive look 8 times larger than it is.

You need a 512 byte enclosure. You can still use the 4KB enclosure to recover your data, though.

To recover your data to another drive, navigate to your desired folder, r-click it and select Recover ...

The free version of DMDE will recover up to 4000 files from any one folder per run.
Jul 4, 2022
34
1
35
On to something?
Like a potential drive fail?
Yeah it seems like drive 1 is on its last legs.
Drive 2 seems to be fine, starting up the system with only it installed gives me a degraded raid drive warning in the bios and this error when it attempts to boot:
https://media.discordapp.net/attach...57720551424/IMG_9374.jpg?width=497&height=663

I dont know why the images won't embed properly, maybe if I used a proper imagehosting website instead of just sending them on discord haha
 
Jul 4, 2022
34
1
35
Having only one of a RAID 1 will display 'degraded RAID array'.
But it should still be readable.
Alright perfect, I assume windows recovery should have a pretty good shot at fixing it then.
Before I try messing with that though, you had talked about cloning the disk right?
How can I do that if plugging it in to another computer has it fail to read properly? Wouldn't it just try to clone the 800mb partition it detects and nothing else?
Or maybe the program would be able to read it better than windows disk utility could.
And if I were to clone it before <Mod Edit> with it further, would the cloned image be a full terabyte in size?
 
Last edited by a moderator:

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Alright perfect, I assume windows recovery should have a pretty good shot at fixing it then.
Before I try messing with that though, you had talked about cloning the disk right?
How can I do that if plugging it in to another computer has it fail to read properly? Wouldn't it just try to clone the 800mb partition it detects and nothing else?
Or maybe the program would be able to read it better than windows disk utility could.
And if I were to clone it before <Mod Edit> with it further, would the cloned image be a full terabyte in size?
A "clone" would be the entire physical drive.

Leave "windows recovery" out of this.

So far though....not looking good.
A non-failed single member of a RAID 1 should be fully readable.
As that does not seem to be the case here, not sure how to proceed.
 
Jul 4, 2022
34
1
35
A "clone" would be the entire physical drive.

Leave "windows recovery" out of this.

So far though....not looking good.
A non-failed single member of a RAID 1 should be fully readable.
As that does not seem to be the case here, not sure how to proceed.
I think its only partially readable due to the fact its using on board FakeRAID, I've heard of some mirror raid setups not being able to be read due to oddly specific hardware used when creating the RAID.
I might try reading it through a linux distro or a gparted live cd and seeing if that gets better results.
 
Jul 4, 2022
34
1
35
Can you see your partition in DMDE? There should be no need to scan the drive.

https://dmde.com/

The C5 and C6 SMART attributes appear to be reporting 1 physical error (1 physical sector = 8 logical sectors).
Hey it looks like my files are fine after all!
Thanks a bunch man, it seems everything is still there, here's a few screenshots:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/892828517383942215/993727697807233044/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/892828517383942215/993729021915451496/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/892828517383942215/993729136700969171/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/892828517383942215/993729220180197386/unknown.png

This was taken off the drive without the errors.
There seems to be a folder labeled backup but unfortunately its empty.
I dug up my old windows 7 ultimate CD, I think I'll pull as much as I can using DMDE and then try and fix the boot issues with the CD.
 
Jul 4, 2022
34
1
35
Hey it looks like my files are fine after all!
Thanks a bunch man, it seems everything is still there, here's a few screenshots:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/892828517383942215/993727697807233044/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/892828517383942215/993729021915451496/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/892828517383942215/993729136700969171/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/892828517383942215/993729220180197386/unknown.png

This was taken off the drive without the errors.
There seems to be a folder labeled backup but unfortunately its empty.
I dug up my old windows 7 ultimate CD, I think I'll pull as much as I can using DMDE and then try and fix the boot issues with the CD.

I'm not sure what the error in the first screenshot means, nor am I entirely sure how to work the program.
 
The problem is that your USB enclosure is configured with a sector size of 4096 bytes. This makes the drive look 8 times larger than it is.

You need a 512 byte enclosure. You can still use the 4KB enclosure to recover your data, though.

To recover your data to another drive, navigate to your desired folder, r-click it and select Recover ...

The free version of DMDE will recover up to 4000 files from any one folder per run.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Ratman43
Solution
Jul 4, 2022
34
1
35
Have tried pulling a few pictures to test,
The problem is that your USB enclosure is configured with a sector size of 4096 bytes. This makes the drive look 8 times larger than it is.

You need a 512 byte enclosure.
Is this also why windows isn't able to recognize it properly?
Never realized it got that technical I've just had this USB to sata connector sitting around for years.
Have tried pulling a few image and video files off the drive as a test, they won't read properly, is this also related to the connector?
 
Jul 4, 2022
34
1
35
Have tried pulling a few pictures to test,

Is this also why windows isn't able to recognize it properly?
Never realized it got that technical I've just had this USB to sata connector sitting around for years.
Have tried pulling a few image and video files off the drive as a test, they won't read properly, is this also related to the connector?
Alright I just read this write up on sector size: https://www.klennet.com/notes/2018-04-14-usb-and-sector-size.aspx
So in theory if I go out and buy an enclosure that DOESN'T convert 512 to 4096 like you said, it will be able to read the entire contents of the disk just fine as it should have done in the first place?
 
Jul 4, 2022
34
1
35
Alright I just read this write up on sector size: https://www.klennet.com/notes/2018-04-14-usb-and-sector-size.aspx
So in theory if I go out and buy an enclosure that DOESN'T convert 512 to 4096 like you said, it will be able to read the entire contents of the disk just fine as it should have done in the first place?
Or if I were to just connect a bootable drive/live CD/connect the drive internally to my PC instead of with the adapter, then all the files would be read fine?
Sorry in advance for asking so many questions that I could probably just figure out by experimenting myself.
 
Jul 4, 2022
34
1
35
To circumvent the 4KB sector size issue, you can connect the drive to a SATA port inside your PC. However, I expect that the files will still be corrupted.
Yeah none of the files I pull off the drive seem to be working, does this mean all my data is lost despite it still technically being there?
 
Jul 4, 2022
34
1
35
Hey, we're in the same time zone.
Man its gonna be a long night copying all these files over, part of me has been fixated on running a windows recovery on the drive, not that those have ever worked well for me in the past just would be nice if the only problem was a few corrupt system files.
 
Jul 4, 2022
34
1
35
The standard version of DMDE should allow you to recover the entire $Root in one go. Otherwise you are limited to a maximum of 4000 files from any one folder per run.
Yeah I was probably doing it wrong, trying to select multiple folders instead of just the one folder with all the folders inside it
It was telling me something about only one panel per transfer, I’m gonna sleep on it for today and grab everything tomorrow before trying a recovery.
Thanks for all the help, it’s greatly appreciated.
 
The cardinal rule of data recovery is never write to the drive that you're trying to recover. Avoid CHKDSK, as this will make problems much worse. Microsoft is more concerned about the consistency of the file system rather than the integrity of your data, so files may be lost or damaged by such repair attempts.

Good luck.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ratman43

DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
Man its gonna be a long night copying all these files over, part of me has been fixated on running a windows recovery on the drive, not that those have ever worked well for me in the past just would be nice if the only problem was a few corrupt system files.

This is not a task for which Windows recovery is at all suited for, unless the idea is to make nothing recoverable so that you can wipe the hard drive with a clear conscience.
 
Jul 4, 2022
34
1
35
The cardinal rule of data recovery is never write to the drive that you're trying to recover. Avoid CHKDSK, as this will make problems much worse. Microsoft is more concerned about the consistency of the file system rather than the integrity of your data, so files may be lost or damaged by such repair attempts.

Good luck.
Was able to plug the drive in to my main PC today after opening it up, all the files read perfectly and I copied everything I needed! 😁
After that I put it back in to the old PC and tried seeing if windows recovery would even detect the OS, which it didn’t, probably since I had the bios set to RAID and not IDE mode.
Should I just wipe the drive and reinstall windows now, or is there a way to run an sfc scannow if the drive isn’t being booted from?
Either way it doesn’t really matter, I got all my files and as long as I don’t physically damage the drive I don’t really care what happens to it.