Reconstructing RAID 5 Set

[hughesco]

The system is FreeNAS 0.7.1 running on FreeBSD 7.2. This is installed on a seperate HD (non-RAID) and the system comes up.

The RAID 5 (main NAS storage) is 3 1.5TB drives running on a Highpoint Rocket RAID 2320.  I believe the partition type is GPT and the file system is UFS.

I had a bad hard drive in the RAID set but I was unable to run Seatools on the drives in that set because they are attatched to the RAID card.  First I disconnected the drives one at a time and connected them to the main board so I could figure out which drive was bad.  Found it, got it replaced and reconnected all the drives to the RAID card. 

When I initially added the 3rd drive back into the set I was unable to initiate the rebuild process and the RAID card management software kept reading the new drive as offline even though I initialized the one drive.  The RAID 5 was still visible to the RAID bios yet listed as critical.  I simply could not get the 3rd drive to rebuild into the original set.  At the same time, when I booted into FreeNAS the dregraded RAID storage was not visible to the system.  I though this was due to the fact they had been disconnected and then reconnected to the card. 

After reading some forums on the issue of the new drive not being seen I, the suggestion was and what I did was delete the RAID set and create a new set.  Upon creation the 3rd drive was now seen and the set was created, when offered, I did not initialize this set just created it.

Now FreeNAS sees the RAID set and recognizes it to the point I can add it as a managed volume.  There seems to be an error when mounting it through the interface although the command line seems to think something is mounted.  I see an old directory although no files list in it.

Currently the RAID management software indicates it is rebuilding.  I'm not 100% if this is rebuilding the new drive back into the set or if this is building a new RAID set as if it never existed.  Not sure if it is rebuilding my data or destroying it by rebuilding a fresh foundation.

By reading your site I think I may benefit from DiskPatch to rebuild the MPT and the partition table and then iRecover to rebuild the RAID 5.

I'm not sure where to even start.  Once the rebuilding is complete, I'll have a better idea of just how messed up this is.

Thanks.

[Joep]

Hello,

No, I am afraid we can't help you with this, you are working with partition types / file systems that DiskPatch does not detect.