RAID 1 Problems

[spartacus321]

Long story short... 2 SCSI drives in a raid 1 configuration, Windows no longer boots despite many efforts to repair, but it seems the file system has become corrupted.

Is it possible for me to remove 1 of the 2 drives physically and place it into another machine and be able to view the drive contents to copy data off (using either windows explorer or a data recover utility since the file system is messed up)?

Theoretically both drives should have an exact copy of each other, so Im thinking if i place it in another PC I should be able to see the contents, without losing all my data.

Any thoughts would be welcome.

 

[tomt4535]

I believe if the other computer you want to put them in has the same controller, it should be ok. But if you cant get into windows, the same data is on both drives, so Im guessing that both drives have the corrupted windows. Im not positive though.

 

[harobikes333]

Possible... I don't know.... not sure if the format would be correct.

Best of luck my friend!

 

[spartacus321]

Unfortunately this scenario really sucks since the people had this server as their DC with exchange running on it also, which is really not a good idea. On top of that... you guessed it... no backups!

I'm just really scared to try removing one of the drives and putting it in another PC right now for fear of losing all the data on it.

I've settled for rebuilding the box with new user accounts etc. But my main problem is getting that email backed up off those failing drives... wish it was cut and dry but with MS nothing ever seems to be!

 

[Captante]

The problem is that you need to make sure you have a compatible SCSI controller in the machine you move the HD into to attempt to recover the data ... if you do I'd say the odds are pretty good that you'll get at least some of their data back provided the corruption isn't too severe.

I suggest that you remove one of the drives from the original system & either replace it with a new one or rebuild the box short-term using a single drive so they are at least up & running, then try the recovery.

 

[spartacus321]

I ended up putting an IDE drive into the server, and installing win2k3 server on it. I was then able to see the corrupted mirrored scsi drives in windows explorer, but their C: partition was totally inaccessible and the D: was not much better.

I had some file recovery software which I'm currently running, and it's seeing some of the stuff, so keeping my fingers crossed I can get at least the exchange email/settings off onto another drive.

I'm gonna throw away those old scsi drives after and put in some new ones, no more mirroring, I think i'll look at something a bit more robust and definitely make sure that the client learns how important backups are!