Raid 5 Missing?

[wayne2ooo8]

Hello, I have (3) 2TB drives ran in RAID 5 that seems to have this disappeared in windows 7 this morning. I believe the RAID is controlled through my motherboard (ASUS Crosshair V Formula Z), using AMD RaidXpert utility. This utility shows all physical drives status as 'functional', S.M.A.R.T. Status 'Healthy' and the logical drive status as 'functional' with all 3 physical drives assigned to it. RaidXpert event log shows no recent logs (last one 20 days ago). Windows disk manager shows the array as unallocated, not initialized.

No windows updates have been installed, only thing that was changed was new version of mozilla firefox installed yesterday (which I used the array after installation anyways). I have done a system restore to last week to no avail. Is there any way to get windows to see the array again without losing data? See attached images

https://ibb.co/jZvNa6 Disk Manager
https://ibb.co/d7Mvv6 Logical Drive View
https://ibb.co/giDm2m Physical Drive View
https://ibb.co/ewyav6 First Drive
https://ibb.co/ep1vv6 Second Drive
https://ibb.co/eyM62m Third Drive

 

[erpsaa]

wayne2ooo8,

I apologize upfront and I know you will not want to hear this, but Software or BIOS RAID is not dependable. Your creativity aside, you seem to have mounted a CDFS, which I've never seen done with striped parity RAID-5, but moving on.

I'll do a quick search for you, and come back with a recommendation to eliminate your problems permanently, but I have a few questions first.

1. Please confirm that C:\ drive has only your OS and is an SSD.
2. What do you intend to do with the unused (allocated) 2nd 4TB Drive.
3. Either you or that AMD App assigned port numbers vs. identifying the SATA ports, it's not that important, but just in case can you tell me the total number of SATA3 and SATA2 ports you have available?
4. Lastly, how many open PCIe3 slots?

BTW, my memory was jogged and thinking back, I do remember one person who did something similar to you, but in UNIX, not Windows. I did not want to suggest to you this is very likely a Win 7 conflict, since this does nothing to solve your problem--it could be MANY.

Anyway, it was something like this:

Dir to mount the file, i dunno, let's say, “mkdir cdfiles” at the prompt. then mount the CD-ROM to the folder, maybe:mount-CDFS-R/raid-5/cdrom/cdrom1/cdfiles.

 

[wayne2ooo8]

Erpsaa,

Thanks for replying

1. Correct; drive C:\ is a SSD containing my OS
2. This '2nd 4TB drive' is actually my Raid array that i can no longer access in windows.
-in my Raid 5 array, I have (3) 2TB disks which amounts to the 3.7TB you see as Disk 2 - (unallocated/not initialized)
3. The total amount of SATA III ports I have is 6, however numbers 1-4 and 5-6 are controlled by separate controllers I believe.
- https://ibb.co/e5i6nm on ports 1-4 (raid) i have 3 in use for my raid 5 array. on ports 5-6 (ide) both are in use for SSD's.
4. This mobo has PCIe2 and I have a x16 and a x8 available

 

[erpsaa]

Hi Wayne,

I looked around and what I was going to suggest cost too much, at least I think. It's PCIe3, it would have future-proofed you, but PCIe2 with those three HDD's, off the cuff, my guess is your storage speed would go up by 4x. The question is, do you want to rid yourself of these software RAID issues for good. If my suggestion is not for you now, then I would strongly suggest using the software RAID you have to create one single virtual C:\ drive.

Anyway, have you ever considered a real HW PCEe RAID Controller? Have a look at this link:

https://www.amazon.com/SAS9260-8I-Raid-8PORT-sata-512MB/dp/B002IT4YG2/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1511038639&sr=1-3&keywords=LSI+megaraid

I know you're not using 8 drives, but the price is right, so what does it matter. The way these are setup, because they have onboard SAS ports, is with a SATA spreader. Each 4 SATA cables plug into the one SAS port and you're covered. You're no longer using the on-board storage ports.

Before I go any further, have a quick look and if you wish to stay as is, I will give you my suggestion, but you will need to backup that software RAID array every day, you don't want to lose everything because of a stupid Windows update.

Also, I have the SAS to SATA cables lying around the shop I can send you, I was about to throw a bunch away, not because they do not work, but RAID SAS Cables and SATA cables can turn into a mountain, you know how many they stick in a motherboard box.

 

[USAFRet]

Unfortunately, my sig picture is very relevant here.------------------->

 

[wayne2ooo8]

Unfortunately, my sig picture is very relevant here.------------------->

Unfortunately I was under the assumption that raid was pretty foolproof and eliminated the need for backups *smh*

Erpsaa,

Thanks for the help, at this time i'm more focused on trying to recover the current partition (if even possible). I will however consider your suggestions for the future

 

[USAFRet]

Unfortunately, my sig picture is very relevant here.------------------->

Unfortunately I was under the assumption that raid was pretty foolproof and eliminated the need for backups *smh*

RAID, in any type, is absolutely NOT a backup.
It serves one purpose...to let the system carry on in the event of a physical drive fail, until you can fix the issue and replace the drive.

It does absolutely nothing for the far more common types of data loss. Accidental deletion, virus, other corruption.
Or when/if the RAID controller (hardware, software, Windows, whatever) goes south....

A RAID array just means all that happens on multiple physical drives at once.

In this case, what should have happened is...
"Oh crap, the RAID lost its mind. The drives are OK. Let me rebuild the RAID array, and then recover my actual data from the backup."

Data recovery should be your goal, not recovering a specific partition.

 

[S Haran]

Disk 2 your RAID volume is reporting as unallocated. The solution may be as simple as running Testdisk from CGsecurity. It will search for a lost partition or missing filesystem.

Even though SMART reports healthy you might want to verify that.

If needed there is RAID data recovery software you can try. Some popular choices are R-Studio / UFSexplorer / DMDE.

If you get stuck or need more help I do a lot of Windows RAID recovery work using Linux tools and methods and I am happy to assist remotely.

 

[wayne2ooo8]

Disk 2 your RAID volume is reporting as unallocated. The solution may be as simple as running Testdisk from CGsecurity. It will search for a lost partition or missing filesystem.

Even though SMART reports healthy you might want to verify that.

If needed there is RAID data recovery software you can try. Some popular choices are R-Studio / UFSexplorer / DMDE.

If you get stuck or need more help I do a lot of Windows RAID recovery work using Linux tools and methods and I am happy to assist remotely.

Hmm weird, i ran testdisk and it finds two partitions, the main one I can see all my files
http://prntscr.com/hcldvl

 

[USAFRet]

In this case, I strongly suggest you copy your critical data off to some other drive.
Then worry about, or completely undo, that troublesome RAID array.

 

[S Haran]

Follow USAFRet's advice and copy your data. Then you could try to write the partition layout discovered by Testdisk back onto the RAID5 and if successful everything should be back to normal for you.