Hard Drive Failed in RAID 0 Array - HELP!!

Hey Guys

I have had a HUGE problem a couple of weeks ago and have been trying to sort it out ever since.

I have been using a NAS Enclosure with 2 x 500GB Maxtor DiamondMax22 drives fitted and configured in a RAID 0 array in the EXT 3 filesystem to make 1TB (1000GB) of storage space.

I have only had it a few months, and one of the drives has now stopped working. I know it is only one drive because when I took both the drives out of the NAS and plugged them individually into another computer, one was not being detected in BIOS at all, but rather making the computer "hang" for a while while it tried to detect "something" that was connected and then would continue past the boot-up screen without showing the connected hard drive.

I did hvae some luck/progress; I took the controller/motherboard/circuit board off from the good hard drive and connected it to the faulty drive to see whether or not it is detected in BIOS and viola it showed up!

I have tried using Seagate's seatools to detect the faulty drive in windows as well as try the recent firmware upgrade that they released this week but that only detected the drive and showed me the model number, it failed when trying to upgrade the firmware.

Can anyone give me advice as to how i could get my precious files and data back?

I have downloaded Norton Ghost, could I be able to connect the good controller to the faulty drive and ghost over the drive contents to somewhere safe or to a donor drive?

They are both SATA and are still under warranty with Seagate, but I need to get data off first.

Please please please help me guys as it is like the end of the world for me at the mo.

The drive model numbers are: STM3500320AS - if anyone could even get me a replacement controller, that may jsut do the trick and give me access to my files so that I can back them up and NEVER use RAID 0 ever again - i've learnt my lesson.

Thanks in advance

 

It seems to be a failure for that particular brand/model of HD from an earlier firmware update.
The new update was supposed to make some of the earlier bricked versions workable again .
I think it may just be a corrupted firmware update not a controller issue ( However ..I am wrong about a lot of stuff ,just ask my gf ...LOL)

As far as data recovery you can throw something like BackTrack at it and if its recoverable software wise it will get it 97% of the time.. Make sure to reinstall the correct controller and then if it does not work try a new /different controller.

http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack.html

 

Hey mate, lol im not gonna question if ur right or wrong! hehe

okay, yes there was something wrong with the MX15 firmware which is why they released the new one. I wish it did make my bricked drive work tho. I never did anything to make it fail, im just so dumb i never thought i should look at data redundancy just in case the worse happens.

i got some good news, someone is sending me their new drive of the same model number to try the controller so that i have both drives working and connected.

if that fails, then i will have a look at backtrack. gonna look at it now.

i gotta make sure that these programs are read only and will read part of raid arrays or at least even work with arrays.

thanks for replying

 

Hey peeps. Been trying so hard but have had no luck.

Okay let me explain, maybe someone could help me:

3 Drives now: Bad one, Good one and Messa's (a friend who gave his 500Gb drive to help - same company, just slightly diff model) one.

Took controller from good one and stuck it on bad one. WHen i turn the comp on, it hangs at bios boot up screen and gives me clicky noises rom the drive. While im waiting, i press DEL to go to BIOS menu. It doesnt detect the drive, so i press reset button on computer and then it detects the drive right away. In windows, it shows in device manager but not in the Acronis TrueImage 2009 program.

On the other hand, when the controller from the good drive is on its original drive, then it shows up in windows device manager and in Acronis TrueImage 2009 properly.

So im guessing that the controller has to be "paired" to the disk.

I have tried firmware update on the faulty drive's controller but that crashes:

What could I be doing wrong?

Im gonna try the controller from Messa's drive on my faulty drive again (last time it didnt show up in BIOS, can't remember if it showed up in windows. If shows up in windows, im sure it will not show up in the software. The agent from Acronis claimed that if windows can see it in the device manager, then it will show up in the software. That isnt the case. That was the same claim from Runtime that it will show up in RAID Reconstructor if it shows up in windows.

Sorry for going on and on.

-------------------------------

Update:

When i connected both original drives with their controllers to the computer, BOTH were not detectable in Windows.

Only the good one was detectable in BIOS.

Messa's controller threw up errors in RAID Reconstructor because it couldnt read the drive properly.

Messa's controller didn't show up in Acronis TrueImage when attached to my faulty drive.

Man im back at square one again!!

 

you may want to contact seagate, i think they were doing free recovery for their faulty drives?

are you saying that this didn't work? since it's raid and not a drive by itself can you at least get an image off of it if you do it this way?

 

Already been in contact with them. They are not helpful. Only free firmware upgrade. Data recovery is not their responsibility

 

BIG UPDATE: RAID Reconstructor shows my faulty drive as being 2,048GB in size. Maybe that's where it has messed up.... I have got that same size reading when i had messa's controller connected as well as the controller from the good drive

 

Have you had any luck recovering data?

 

Nope Chuck.

Although, the seller has been in contact and is willing to send me 2 new drives upfront provided I give him deposit. i have requested for the same drives he sent, but he doesn't have them right now.

I am going to try some more configurations today. My faulty drive s showing up in RAID Reconstructor as 2048GB, so at least it is showing up in the software even if it has a "foreign" controller connected.

I think I will try and order the same model number online this week, use it and return it before it becomes a discontinued model, with the rate technology moves forward, im guessing that isn't too far!!

You got any ideas or tips for me?

 

Okay another update:

Tried the controller from the good drive on the faulty one and the controller from messa's drive on the good drive and....

BOTH of them showed up as 2048GB, so that is good news so far because it shows me that the prob lies with my faulty controller.

BOTH of the disks are visible in RAID reconstructor altho the software is having errors reading sectors when I try to analyse the disks to find the correct parameters.

Progress, but this means foreign controllers will not work. i have to unbrick the original controller.

 

Hey Guys

I am much wiser to the problem now and I think I have the solution. But let me just first explain what I have been up to and what I found out:

I have been trying to use a software called RAID Reconstructor to try and analyse different parameters that the raid could have been using (Start sector and block size). But that was fruitless. It just wasn't reading any sector and nothing was happening.

So i tried to do firmware update on the faulty drive & controller. To do this, I have to disconnect ALL other drives and just connect the faulty one, pop in a CD and let the ocmputer boot from CD. When the firmware update screen came up, when I tried to scan for any drives, i got the result that no drives were found!!

Now when I had no drive attached at all and tried to run the firmware update and scanned for disks, it would return me 0 devices found right away, but when I had the faulty drive connected, it would take a while and scan 2 different buses and then let me know that 0 devices were found.

If i ran the firmware update without any disks connected, then the update would fail and say that there was no device connected to update, STM3500320AS was expected.

AND

When I ran it with my drive connected, it would do the same thing and return the same message.

So what did that tell me......?


That my drive is just nto communicating with the computer AT ALL but is porweing up and spinning.




So my solutions are:

1) Get some help to run some flux and with a hot air gun, just fix up all the joints because there must be a break in the connections or in the circuitry

OR

2) Get a same model drive from the net, and with some help, transfer over the "chips" to a working circuit board because the circuit board might be the prob.

I believe that both of these options are the only right ones because the drive seems to be paired with its controller (i.e. the controller's chips have the correct dirive details stored within them and any other controller's details are foreign).



I only have these two options, when I try to run RAID Reconstructor with another drive's controller attached to my faulty drive, then it shows up as 2048 GB in size meaning that it isn't going to be able to find the right sectors using that controller.

Also, in the firmware update, if i just connect the controller without having it attached to the rest of the drive, it is still the same prob. Also, when i turn on the computer with controller on its own attached, then its the same thing.


I believe that the disk/drive details are stored on the chips (see attached pics) and as such, these are vital in my progression.


Let me know what you think.