RAID 5 (5x1TB) scanning SLOWLY

[fluffyx]

Hello!

I'm trying to recover data from a RAID 5 array where two of the drives failed.

I got a 100% block copy image (using command line utility `ddrescue`, imaging onto a new drive) of one of the bad drives, and the other bad drive doesn't seem "too bad". I've connected four of the original drives along with the fifth newly imaged drive to iRecover. It sounds like all the data should be there to be recovered.

The volume was formatted as HFS+ (Mac OS X Extended, Journaled), so I don't think iRecover is going to show any filenames. I have a couple questions:

 • Despite being a non-Windows filesystem, can iRecover make an image of the recovered volume?
 • This is running SLOWLY! After about 8 hours, it's only at the 1% mark. Every now and then, progress is made on the green & blue graph (almost all is green; there's only one small blue segment). How likely is it that we're going to need to wait days for it to get to 100%? How likely is it that it'll finish early?
 • How likely is it that iRecover can't recover data in a situation like this?
 • Any tips to speed it up?

Thanks so much!

[Tom]

iRecover does not support MAC file systems, whether they be on RAID or not. Recovery is unlikely.

Imaging will work; an image is a binary representation of a disk, so what is on the disk does not matter.

In general: more than one disk failing means the RAID can not be recovered. You managed to include all drives, including suspect drives (if I understand correctly). That is probably not the best way; it would be better to include the 4 good disks and leave the one suspect disk out. Still, all this is moot in your case, as HFS is not supported.

[fluffyx]

Thanks so much for the speedy reply.

If it would help, I could disconnect the known bad drive and leave the "assumed good" drives connected… but when I tried this at first, it progressed at the same lethargic pace.

Just to clarify, you're saying that because iRecover can't understand the partition format, it won't be able to make a bit-for-bit image of the recovered partition, and is 100% useless for unsupported partition formats? If this is the case, is there an HFS-friendly tool you'd recommend?

[Tom]

Imaging will work, but analysis of the disks/images with iRecover won't work.

I am not familiar with Mac recovery tools, so I can't really help you there.

[Joep]

you could try reclaime: http://www.reclaime.com/