Help Raid backup drives have no data on them!

[O and A]

help! I came in this morning ant nocited that the backup hard drives we have in a dual firewire case were not mounted. I mounted them and saw taht the drives are empty.

It is set up as a mirror raid in disk utility
its two 320 gb hard drives

the raid device has not lost its name but when i click on info for each drivei in disk utlity it tells me 0 files on each drive. when i click on the raid icon same thing.

when i click on raid device in disk utility and go to raid tab it says degraded. what does this mean?

Also did I lose my files? What can i do to recover them?

10.4.1 1.5gb ram powermac g5 dual 2ghz rev b.



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[Eniregnat]

I work with RAID drives, but I havn't used the RAID feature in OSX.

If you click on OPTIONS, does it give you the ability to rebuild the RAID?

Usualy when I see that one of my RAIDs is degraded, it is because a drive has fallen out of the RAID. For my NASs this is usualy due to a problem with on of the drives.

 

[Eniregnat]

Technically all the data should be on either of the drives, as you have mirrored the data. If worse comes to worse, any drive utility that can scavenge data should be able to find your information.

Also, when you mount the drives separately, what shows up?

I wish that I could help you more.

 

[Eniregnat]

You have me on the edge of my seat. So did you fix the problem, and if so, how?

 

[O and A]

You have me on the edge of my seat. So did you fix the problem, and if so, how?

I have not fixed the problem.

Disk Utility doesn't find any problems on any of the drives or any data missing.

Clicking on options gives me all o ptions that are faded. I am logged in as administrator.

How else can i salvage the data from either drive?

 

[Eniregnat]

TechTools Pro should be able to scavange the data off the drives. The Mirrored RAIDs are exsact copies of each other. I think that this would be a RAID
I would also shoot something to Apple.

Apple Doc on RAID repair Edit: diffrent than below!

I relize that this is very important. You might look at the unix/linx forums for a solution.

Look here for a general FAQ about failed OSX RAIDS with a RAID support program called ChrisMac.- Might help?

I also found this application that might help

From Hyper Jeff links- Licence info for SoftRAID and other RAID applications

 

[Eniregnat]

Apple How To Rebuild a RAID Mirror

• 1. Open the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/).
  
• Note: If you are started up from CD, you may open the Terminal by choosing it from the File menu. Also note that you should not precede any commands with "sudo" if you have gone into single-user mode.
  
• 2. Type: sudo diskutil checkRAID
  
• 3. Press Return.
  ...

[Read the original article]

Foud by searching Apple Support.
http://search.info.apple.com/?search=Go&lr=lang_en&kword=&q=RAID failed

 

[O and A]

Thanks for all your help i'm going to check out all these options when I'm at the office later.

I'll keep you posted.

 

[Eniregnat]

Any resolution?
Any thoughts from other members?

 

[infonico]

That works great !

My mirror is repaired now.

open terminal
%diskutil checkRAID
%diskutil repairMirror disk1 disk2 //where disk1 containing all data and disk2 the newest drive
Then, the mirror should be reparing itself, during the rebuilding procedure (very long) you can check it's status using %diskutil checkRAID

Thank you Eniregnat, im going to be a man-page reader.

 

[Eniregnat]

Rebuilding any RAID takes time. I am glad to know how to do it now. Be wary, it might be that your system is having problems. A drive dropping out a firewire array may be for any of the following reasons:

• Drop in power to a drive (I have seen this with older inexpensive firewire boxes).
• Faulty cable or temporarily detached cable
• Interference due to shielding problem- not likely
• Failure of drive interface board (Also likely in a DIY box, not likely if the board uses the oxford chipset)
• Failure of the drive (likely- run diagnostics)
• Random Sunspot Driven Gremlins- may or may not happen again. The most damnable kind of problem to trouble shoot.

Your most critical data should always be backed up on some sort of robust easy to access media, like a CD or DVD.

This is how to contact Apple about OSX.
Tell them to add easy RAID repair to the DiskUtility.

[Edit]- I just did.

 

[Mechcozmo]

My mirror is repaired now.

open terminal
%diskutil checkRAID
%diskutil repairMirror disk1 disk2 //where disk1 containing all data and disk2 the newest drive
Then, the mirror should be reparing itself, during the rebuilding procedure (very long) you can check it's status using %diskutil checkRAID

Thank you Eniregnat, im going to be a man-page reader.

Use info pages. They are easier to navigate. "info diskutil" and then press "h" will let you read up on how to navigate info pages.

And it is good to hear that you got your data back!
Have you considered making a RAID 5 array? Linkety
It may give you better data redundancy if your current setup is headed 6 feet below.

 

[O and A]

see the problem i have is that the drives are empty according to the disk utility. I fear that i'll just be rebuilding an a mirror of a blank disk and thus making it even harder to reccover any data on any of hte drives.

 

[Eniregnat]

Look, if you can wait I will try to reproduce this kind of failure on a nother simular drive structure. I will create a Mirror RAID using 2 simular drives. I will remove the drives and then erase one of them. I will then attempt to rebuild the drives.

It read as though the rebuild process is intrensicly safe. Hopefuly infonico will respond. Perhaps you should PM him.

Again, I am only responding because I have rebuilt the RAIDs I work with a number of times, not because I am an OSX RAID expert.

Good luck, and I will post something tomarrow.