sslug-teknik team mailing list archive

[Jan Gundtofte-Bruun <jan@xxxxxx>]

Kære liste,
jeg har brug for en ekspert udi linux software raid og/eller at låne
en desktop pc med sata-controller og Windows-installation (håber ikke
det er et fy-ord på denne liste).

Jeg skriver til Jer fordi jeg håber I er, eller kender, en 'guru' som kan hjælpe
mig. Jeg har vedhæftet den beskrivelse som jeg har sendt til et par
recovery-services, men deres priser er (som forventeligt) skyhøje så jeg
ville lige ud og stemme dørklokker inden jeg griber til den helt store pung.

Kan I hjælpe så er det fænomenalt, ellers er det bare trist.

Se endvidere "PCLinuxOS Forum: Help me recreate my Raid data"
http://tinyurl.com/yjboh88

Tak for Jeres tid.


Jan Gundtofte-Bruun

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Subject: Recovery of (probably partially formatted) raid-1 ?

Hello,
I've made a mistake, which means I would like to know if this is
something you can resolve (and a price estimate, if possible). It's
not urgent, but it is important to me.

I have two drives (750Gb Western Digital WD7500AACS sata) that used to
be an ext3 volume mirrored using Linux software raid. I fear they are
partially formatted. The volume contained about 50Gb of digital photos
in jpg format that I desperately want to recover, and about 200Gb of
music in flac format that would be nice-but-not-critical to have
recovered (it'd be a lot of work, but I could re-rip almost
everything). The drives are less than a year old, and the usage
pattern has been fairly static (because they were used only for photos
and music).

My workstation has one system&data ata drive plus two identical (sata)
drives that I had configured as a mirror. Due to some issues I had to
reinstall my OS, which left me with a fully working installation
except for the raid volume. I knew I was heading for trouble, so I
tried to work carefully. I experimented with "mdadm --assemble" which
is supposed to assemble raid arrays from pre-existing components, and
also the "Manage Disk Partitions" tool that comes with PCLinuxOS, but
I could not figure out how to build a new raid volume from existing
data; that is, without formatting.

Well, I ended up at a dialog saying, "Format: Do you wish to check for
bad blocks? [Yes/No]" -- there was no cancel button! I yanked the
power, and rebooted. As I logged in, I could see (from GKrellm) that
one disk was busy reading, and the other was busy writing! I again
yanked the power, and unplugged the disks. I have no idea how much
data has been read/written/formatted over, but the total time from
boot to power-off may have been as much as two minutes.

[Addition:]
I don't actuallly know if it's formatting, or merely re-mirroring
whatever data is on the first drive, but I don't want to take risk
anything more.

The best offer I've had so far is a $700 remote recovery, which
requires me to share (via VNC) a Windows-based pc with additional hard
drive space. I don't have a Windows pc with a sata controller, so I'm
a bit stuck.
[/Addition]

I am located in Denmark, and would rather not send the drives across
the Atlantic if I can help it, but it is difficult to find recovery
services in my local Yellow Pages! I sincerely hope you can help me,
or will be able to recommend me somewhere else.

Thank you.


Jan Gundtofte-Bruun
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