Lost RAID 5 Configuration

[jdms]

Hi. Like others in this forum, I lost my RAID configuration when my BIOS was reset from a power outage and it initially booted in AHCI mode instead of RAID mode. Since only one of the 3 drives from the array was recognized as a member disk and the other 2 were marked as non-RAID disks, I reset all drives to non-RAID and recreated the RAID 5 array. Unfortunately, the one thing I don't recall is what stripe size I used previously (I used 64K this time). When I run testdisk, I get a message that the disk seems too small. I don't know if this could be an indication that I chose the wrong stripe size when recreating the array.

My system is using a Gigabyte motherboard with an Intel Core i7-3770K processor and an on-board Intel RAID controller. Connected to the RAID controller is a 30GB mSATA SSD drive used as a cache device and 3 Seagate 3TB drives configured as a single 6TB RAID 5 volume (boot/OS volume). Since the incident, I have not reconfigured the SSD as a cache device, so it is just sitting uninitialized/unused. The Spyrus drive that shows up in the screenshot is a 64GB Windows To Go flash drive that I'm currently running Windows 8 from in order to attempt the RAID recovery.

Device Manager

Device Manager

Device Manager.png (66.25 KiB) Viewed 4529 times

I've run the Windows 64-bit version of TestDisk, but I'm not sure exactly how to interpret the results. Can anyone help me figure out what to do next? And perhaps verify if maybe I've chosen the wrong stripe size when recreating my RAID 5 volume?

TestDisk Output

testdisk-20140525.zip

TestDisk Output

(177.5 KiB) Downloaded 315 times

Old Diskpart output showing former disk layout

Code: Select all

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.3.9600

Copyright (C) 1999-2013 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: MININT-92KH8JN

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online         5589 GB  1024 KB        *
  Disk 1    Online          931 GB      0 B        *
  Disk 2    Online           14 GB      0 B         
  Disk 3    No Media           0 B      0 B         

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

Intel Raid 5 Volume
Disk ID: {94B069A5-6304-4615-A4D0-4156D8C034EC}
Type   : RAID
Status : Online
Path   : 0
Target : 1
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1F02)#RAID(P00T01L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only  : No
Boot Disk  : No
Pagefile Disk  : No
Hibernation File Disk  : No
Crashdump Disk  : No
Clustered Disk  : No

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 1     C                NTFS   Partition   5588 GB  Healthy            
  Volume 2         Recovery     NTFS   Partition    300 MB  Healthy    Hidden  
  Volume 3                      FAT32  Partition     99 MB  Healthy    Hidden  

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     G                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media           
  Volume 1     C                NTFS   Partition   5588 GB  Healthy            
  Volume 2         Recovery     NTFS   Partition    300 MB  Healthy    Hidden  
  Volume 3                      FAT32  Partition     99 MB  Healthy    Hidden  
  Volume 4     D   Backup       NTFS   Partition    931 GB  Healthy            
  Volume 5     E                NTFS   Removable     14 GB  Healthy            
  Volume 6     F                       Removable       0 B  No Media           

Volume 1 is the selected volume.

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
* Disk 0    Online         5589 GB  1024 KB        *

Read-only              : No
Hidden                 : No
No Default Drive Letter: No
Shadow Copy            : No
Offline                : No
BitLocker Encrypted    : No
Installable            : Yes

Volume Capacity        : 5588 GB
Volume Free Space      : 3836 GB

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

Intel Raid 5 Volume
Disk ID: {94B069A5-6304-4615-A4D0-4156D8C034EC}
Type   : RAID
Status : Online
Path   : 0
Target : 1
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1F02)#RAID(P00T01L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only  : No
Boot Disk  : No
Pagefile Disk  : No
Hibernation File Disk  : No
Crashdump Disk  : No
Clustered Disk  : No

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 1     C                NTFS   Partition   5588 GB  Healthy            
  Volume 2         Recovery     NTFS   Partition    300 MB  Healthy    Hidden  
  Volume 3                      FAT32  Partition     99 MB  Healthy    Hidden  

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Recovery           300 MB  1024 KB
  Partition 2    System              99 MB   301 MB
  Partition 3    Reserved           128 MB   400 MB
  Partition 4    Primary           5588 GB   528 MB

Partition 2 is now the selected partition.

Partition 2
Type    : c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b
Hidden  : Yes
Required: No
Attrib  : 0X8000000000000000
Offset in Bytes: 315621376

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
* Volume 3                      FAT32  Partition     99 MB  Healthy    Hidden  

[jdms]

Any suggestions? I'd really like to be able to use my computer again, and I really don't want to lose everything I had before, but I have no idea what to do next. I'm afraid to write a new boot sector without understanding the message about the drive seeming too small. Can anyone please help?

[jdms]

I'm still looking for some assistance to try to fix my partition tables and boot sector. These drives contain about 2.5-3TB of information I would really like not to lose. Christophe or Fiona, can either of you suggest what I should try next? I've been through the step by step guide and I'm not sure what to do about the "harddisk seems too small" error message.

Thanks!

[jdms]

After doing a quick search, it found 2 partitions of the correct size but starting and ending at different locations. I was able to list files for one of them but not for the other, so I tried making the first one (the one where I could list the files) a primary partition. However, when I went to write the partition, I received a write error. What would cause a write error in this situation? Am I doing something wrong?

[jdms]

Well, first I want to say a HUGE THANKS to the team here for creating this tool. I was able to successfully copy most of my content off the failed drives and move them to another drive on another machine until I can rebuild my system from scratch and copy it all back over. A few things seem to be corrupt, but it's definitely the minority and I think I have backups of that content somewhere anyway. The main things I really wanted to save seem to be intact.

So, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

Now with that said, (just to satisfy my own curiosity) I'd still love to know more about the issue I was seeing related to writing the partition information. I did the quick analysis, which indicated there was one partition that could not be recovered. But then when I continued, I saw all the correct partitions except there were two MS DATA partitions listed with different starting and ending locations (same overall size). One of them was unreadable, so I ignored that, but the other I was able to list and copy files from. So I added the "good" partition to the selected list and tried to write. However, every time I tried that, it gave an error "Can't write". Any ideas what would cause this? Anything I could have done differently?

Thanks, again.

[Fiona]

it gave an error "Can't write". Any ideas what would cause this?

Antivirus can cause such problems and should be disabled.
Also I recommend testdisk 32bit.
Info from downloadpage related to the 64bit-version:
Windows 64-bit Use only on systems lacking WoW64 as some features are missing.
WoW64 is a 32bit emulator, so that you can execute 32bit-programs.
On UEFI, it would be worth a try to disable secure boot.

Fiona