More than one drive must be selected?

[activenets]

I have bought iRecover Pro and installed the software. I have a failed Raid 5 array. Drives 0 and 3 are ok, but drive 1 has failed (I stopped it from rebuilding at boot up) and has been disabled and drive 2 has multiple punctures. I moved this array to drives 4-7 respectively and installed a new RAID 10 array in drives 0-3 with a new Windows 2008 Server OS. The iRecover is installed on the new OS.

When starting iRecover, it asks for the drives to scan and it sees the RAID 10 array, the RAID 5 array (in a degraded state) and my jump drive. If I only select the RAID 5 I am prompter to select more than one drive. The program sees the RAID 5 array as one 1.4 GB drive not four 500 GB drives. If I check the jump drive and the RAID 5 the program will run, but I am not finding the missing file I need. What am I doing incorrectly? Or does the degraded array cause a problem in the recovery process. I only need on 60GB Exchange Email database but I cannnot find it. Can anyone help? 

[Tom]

The iRecover RAID recovery procedure is meant for broken RAIDs. So, a RAID that has fallen apart into its separate disks. That does not seem to be the case with you, your RAIDs still appear to be in one piece.
If you need to recover data from the RAID and at the moment the RAID is not accessible AND the RAID rebuild can not be completed, you could decide to break the RAID apart and let iRecover scan the individual disks.

Please note: if more than 1 drive in a RAID 5 is missing, recovery (and for that matter, rebuilding) is not possible.

[activenets]

The problem I see is that if I force Drive 1 into an active state, it attempts to rebuild immediately. Then drive 2 fails due to the punctures, so then two of the four drives are in a failed state. With Drive 1 not enabled the RAID shows a degrades state. Files appear to be present but not all are accessible. I tried to copy the file I need from Windows, but it locks the system everytime. It is likely that the file I need is accessing clusters where that file is located. Should I force Drive 1 into an active state?

Also, I have run iRecover twice now. Each time it almost finishes the scanning process showing Disk 1 Dell PERC6/i, the USB Flash Drive and Parity Disk 0, iRecover just vanishes! The program is installed on the good RAID 10 arrray not the bad RAID 5. What is happening?

[activenets]

I guess I can force the failed Drive onlinne and see if the data can be recovered that way. I know it will cause two drives to fail, but I hope your program can read them.

[Joep]

Hello,

- To recover a broken RAID 5 array using iRecover (or any other RAID recovery utility) we need ALL or all minus one disk. We need access to the separate disks.

- Two out of 4 disks disabled/damaged/etc. means we (iRecover) can not recover data from the array.

- A rebuild using the RAID controller with disks in the wrong order ruins chances for recovery. In your case a rebuild is likely to do more harm than good.

[activenets]

Should iRecover be able to do the recover with the array in degraded 1.4GB vs 500MB array mode?

[Tom]

I'm not sure I understand what that means. We've explained what iRecover needs and what it can do, it's really pretty clear; there's no margin for error in what we've said. I don't know what else to say, except to re-read our comments.

[activenets]

Unfortunately, the iRecover is Not working. I downloaded and ran version 6 and it crashed after scanning the drive every time. I unloaded ver 6 and installed ver 5.2 and it completed the scan, but it would not find the data. Even after re-enabling the failed frive, it saw the RAID as one large 1.4 GB drive instead of the original RAID capacity and would not repair the punctures on drive 2. How do I return the software for a refund?

[Tom]

You're doing it wrong, but after what we've said so far it seems this isn't going to work out well. Send an email (support@diydatarecovery.nl) and include the order ID, refer to this thread and we'll take care of the refund.

[activenets]

Please explain what I am doing wrong? The ver 6 program would not run. So I used an older version that did at least attempt to complete. I made sure all drives were enabled but that did not help. I am not sure what you mean by break apart the drives as the setup reads them as one in a "degraded" state (as it calls it).

[Tom]

I repeat: to perform a RAID recovery with iRecover, the program needs access to the individual (former) RAID disks. AND, if more than 1 disk is missing from the RAID5 set, a recovery is not possible. These two rules explain why things are not going well on your end. I can't be more clear on this.

I've received your refund request but can't find the order number (typo?). I've replied but was halted by your spam detection system. Losing patience here. I need the original order confirmation email to do the refund so please send me that email.

[activenets]

sent

[activenets]

Do you send an email confirming the refund?

[Tom]

Sorry for the delay, the refund has been submitted.