Wierd result from testdisk

How to use TestDisk to recover lost partition
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Spookyashell
Posts: 5
Joined: 07 Jul 2014, 08:49

Wierd result from testdisk

#1 Post by Spookyashell »

So after my bios update 2 of my 4 raid 5 set came up as non members, used Testdisk to "fix" it. It was my E drive for storage.

My steps:

1. set bios back to raid
2. removed the 2 remaining member disks from array in controller
3. remade array identical to original and controller said normal.
4. booted to windows, E drive missing as expected, disk manager said uninitialized
5. started testdisk and did quicksearch, it started at 74% done, 270k clusters of 360k, no partition found
6. depper scan, found partition within 10 sec, checked files where there, ok.
7. Write
8. reboot, all fine, volume is there, files are there.

Now here is the thing. RST says 3 of the disks are fine, but one missing. I can still access the files and copy them over to a USB drive. And they work on both the USB I copied to and the source broken raid set. Can you use parity files on the fly? Thought you had to rebuild before the volume was accessable when one disk failed in raid 5. I haven't rebooted again, so I don't know if all disks are still fine in raid controller bios, but they were when I booted up after testdisk.

Is RST messing with me? Or whats going on?
Can't complain, saved my files. But any idea whats going on here?

Image

Spookyashell
Posts: 5
Joined: 07 Jul 2014, 08:49

Re: Wierd result from testdisk

#2 Post by Spookyashell »

hmm, picture got cut when attaching to forum.
Here is the full pic

http://i62.tinypic.com/wl8voi.jpg

Spookyashell
Posts: 5
Joined: 07 Jul 2014, 08:49

Re: Wierd result from testdisk

#3 Post by Spookyashell »

Update. This is strange. Now 2 of the disks are missing. And I see all the files I copied are gone from the USB aswell. Folders are empty on the USB, they were there after I copied them.

The USB disk comes up "full" though. The space has been take on the disk, but the files are not there. I re-ran testdisk and have access to the files on the raidset again.

How can I get the space back on my USB without formating it?

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remy
Posts: 457
Joined: 25 Mar 2012, 10:21
Location: Strasbourg, France.
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Re: Wierd result from testdisk

#4 Post by remy »

Your raid probably becomes wrong because 2 of your disk have defaults. Are that disks Seagate ?
If yes, what happened is :
2 disk missing, raid down
raid recreated, testdisk, partition rewrote: OK
1 disk encountered error : out of raid, raid 5 continue working
1 other disk (even more stressed because of access to parity blocks) encountered errors : 2 disks out, raid down…

When a seagate drive has to many smart errors (sectors unable to be reallocated, marked as pending) each time it has a new error the disk will disappear until next reboot.

Spookyashell
Posts: 5
Joined: 07 Jul 2014, 08:49

Re: Wierd result from testdisk

#5 Post by Spookyashell »

They are Samsung disks. And there is nothing wrong with the disks itself. I found out why the second disk went missing. That was a powercable thing. switched to another powercable and it was back up. Why the first disk diasapeared from raid I don't know. It was always fine in controller.

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remy
Posts: 457
Joined: 25 Mar 2012, 10:21
Location: Strasbourg, France.
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Re: Wierd result from testdisk

#6 Post by remy »

- Samsung disks : befor or after Seagate have bought Samsung ? Model number begins with ST... ?
- To diagnose your Raid, do you have a gnu/linux installed or ability to launch a computer with a live cd/usb ?

Spookyashell
Posts: 5
Joined: 07 Jul 2014, 08:49

Re: Wierd result from testdisk

#7 Post by Spookyashell »

HD103UJ is the modelname.
I think I have located the problem as a faulthy RAM DIMM. So wierd that my system was rock stable before I updated the BIOS. And acting psyco after the BIOS update, but since I couldn't find any reports online about the BIOS being unstable I didn't think that could be the problem.

After a memtest86 run I got tons of memory errors, identified the borked dimm, removed it and system has been rock stable again. It kept breaking the raidset over and over again until I removed the faulty DIMM. Now everything is fine again. But I'm down to 12GB :(
Can a biosupdate break DIMM's? or is it just a coinsidence that it broke just after or during update?

Thanks for the help everyone. This one is solved.
Fantastic program BTW, I have to donate.

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