complete format recover with no os files found

[osoviejo]

I have a 2.2tb array (six 500gb drives in a RAID 5) with one 2.0tb partition (the maximum allowed by Windows). The remaining 200gb is just unused.

A drive failed in the array (which had about 1tb of files on it at the time). I replaced it, rebuilt the array (apparently successfully), but got a disk read error on trying to boot Windows. I don't know why. I deleted the array, and rebuilt it as a 4-disk RAID 5 with 2 hotspares, and installed Windows.

Then someone suggested your product. So I deleted the array again, and rebuilt it as it was originally, then installed Windows and then the application.

My first try I used the Complete Format Recover option but selected the drive letter rather than the physical drive (sector search) since there was only one partition and the leftover disk space from the array was unusable. This search yielded about 50,000 (mostly corrupted) files. However, no OS files were found, and there was no file structure rebuilt (the OS file counter never even appeared in the progress dialog). The only file types found were the default ones selected.

How should I proceed? Would I have a better chance of finding OS files with a physical drive search instead? If no OS files are found with either a drive letter or physical drive search, will I have to do an explicit search for the file types I'm interested in (text files, for example, which are not part of the default list of types)? If it matters, the Windows installed in all cases was/is Server 2008.

Lastly, since RMF can detect when a file is corrupted in the previewer, is there a way to hide those files from the list? With 50,000 anonymous files to sort through, such an ability would be a huge help.

[GDH]

Hi,

The current version of Recover My Files, 3.98 (xxx) does not specifically support raid recovery.

We will be releasing Recover My Files Version 4 this year, which has raid support in it. However, it sounds like that have been a large number of changes to the disks, so I don't even think that a raid recovery program would be able to rebuild the raid at this point.

In a RAID 5 setup, large files can be stripped over multiple drives. E.g. the file header and the first part of the file could be on physical disk 1, and the second half of the file, including the footer, can reside on physical disk 2.

Recover My Files runs a search for header and footer. This is why you are getting so many corrupt files, because it locates the header on disk 1, but cannot locate the footer on the the same disk, so it just gives the recovered file a default size.

You will most likely only be able to find an preview the smaller files which are not stripped during the raid storage process.

[osoviejo]

That's fine, I understand that. The stripe size of the array is 256k, so I'll have many thousands of files with a good chance to land on a single disk. My questions are:

1) Do I need to amend my search to include only the file types I'm interested in recovering? Is there any advantage to searching for the default types if those results are of no interest, since apparently no file system rebuild is possible?

2) Is there any way to filter the results so that those files shown as corrupt in the previewer aren't displayed in the list?

3) Can you recommend a RAID-capable solution I can use until yours is ready?

Thanks.

[GDH]

The best search for you to run is a "Complete File Search". If you see the drive as a drive letter, then you can try searching the drive letter as this will default to a "cluster" level search and be relatively fast. The only problem with this is that it is possible that in the changes to the drive the old "cluster boundaries" have changed so not the deleted files are offset and are not recovered.

Try this search, and if you don't start getting files back, then run it again on the physical drive, which defaults to a sector scan.

The first part of this search looks at the Master File Table for deleted files - you will only have a new MFT for your drive so this is of no use to you but should not take long. The second part of this search is where it seeks the header and footer of the file types you selected. These files are returned as "Recovered_FileType_x".

I have not really tested any of the tools that claim to be good at raid recovery so its hard to recommend any. The best bet is to search google and give a few a try.