First time user, need help - strange results?

[ewhite]

Hi,

I just purchased the full single user version, but I am not seeing what I expect to. First, the setup:

Computer with (two) striped (RAID0) 2-disk arrays. System board crashed, when new board was re-installed the primary volume became unrecognized by windows (BIOS still indicated it was valid, however). Windows saw these disks as two seperate volumes, one marked primary, one marked "unpartioned space".

The second array was completely unaffected, and is fine.

So in board BIOS I deleted the primary array and recreated it exactly as it was previously. I then installed Vista on the 2nd array, and downloaded and ran ZAR. I have done nothing else to the primary array, in windows, bios, or anywhere else.

Now when I run ZAR I have a couple of uninteresting (but valid) directories which show up properly and recoverable, but mostly I have a very long list of "LostFiles###", and a long list of entries under "LostDirs". Virtually all of the files shown under "LostFiles" are indicated in red, and a small test recovery run failed to recover these. SOME of these "LostFiles" trees show valid (green) files however.

What is my best course of action here? Do I need to hunt through the many "LostFiles" trees to try to find files I am interested in? Shouldn't the tree view show the actual original directory tree?

Thanks in advance.

[Alexey V. Gubin]

You have created the array in place where the original one was. So ZAR now sees your two disks (members or original array #1) as a single device. Is this correct?

Generally, if RAID failure is involved, the best course of action is to split the array back to the two drives, so that ZAR can access the drives separately, and then have ZAR rebuild the array. Although you mentioned specifically that you recreated array exactly as it was before, the symptoms you describe suggest the array is assembled incorrectly.

So, you go to the RAID controller settings and write down whatever is set in there. Then, you break the whatever array you now have and configure the controller so the disks are accessible independently. Start the machine, do not delete/create any volumes in Windows. Run ZAR in RAID recovery mode as described in http://www.z-a-recovery.com/raid-recovery-tutorial.htm. See if this produces better results.

[ewhite]

Thanks Alexey, seems I a little closer, but still not there.

First, as background, this is (2) WD 186GB hard drives that were originally striped in a 372GB volume (RAID0).

I removed the array in BOIS, so now they appear as two independent 186 GB HDDs. I chose the option to recontruct raid then recover, which showed up as ID 0101 & 0102. Oddly after the initial analysis it came up as follows:

ID---------Filesystem Type---Offset-----Size------Origin
04000000---Unknown (73)-----0MB ----47360MB---MBR/Primary
04000001---Unknown (D4)---40992MB----0B-------MBR/Primary

So I chose to Define Volume, and selected "There was only one volume on disk...", which defined it (apparently properly?) as follows:

ID---------Filesystem Type---Offset-----Size------Origin
04000300---Unknown----------0MB------372GB----MBR/Primary

However, the results still are not what I am looking for - it seems a little more of the data is there, but only slightly - most is still "LostFiles####" & "LostDirs", with a LOT of unrecoverable files, and a few recoverable.

Any ideas? I'm a bit lost here, I can't understand why the normal filestructure isn't showing up :(

TIA.

[ewhite]

Still nothing. Anyone have any ideas?? The data has got to be there, I just can't get to it - any data available to me so far is useless :(.

Alexey? Anyone? Please?

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Oh, I missed that somehow.
Could you please open the log file, C:\Program Files\ZAR\logfile.txt and search it for "BuildSwitchList" (without quotes). I'd like to see what is following that line, up to and including array parameters - these start with "Virtual RAID settings changed for Virtual RAID #0" and end with "Loading RAID ID transform". So basically I'd like you to copy & paste here all the text between "BuildSwitchList" and "Loading RAID ID transform".

[ewhite]

Hi Alexey,

Here you go. I've run ZAR several times, and it looks like it appends the log file each time? (my log file is HUGE). So I have included each instance of what you requested. Please let me know what you think, or if I can provide you with any additional info. Thanks for your help.

Vote RAID stripe size: 128; Count=6031 ; separation 37.1%
Purged a total of 51958 known false positives (stripe size mismatched)
Remaining 15069 records
Vote Start offset: 0; Count=8794 ; separation 28.8%
RCRD/RSTR bias @379
RAID: Test RAID0
Vote RAID starting disk: 258; Count=5438 ; separation 38.0%
Vote Next disk for 0102: 257; Count=8960 ; separation 100.0%
Vote Next disk for 0101: 258; Count=5730 ; separation 100.0%
RAID loop closed
Final nonzero RAID layout scores
RAID0 (Stripe set):75.04
Virtual RAID settings changed for Virtual RAID #0
-------------------------------------
Volume information for ID 00000000
Origin : Reconstructed RAID
Partition type : Unknown
Capacity : 372 GB
Number of sectors : 781443936
RAID type : RAID0 (Stripe set)
Stripe size : 128
Rotation parameters: 0 / 0
Member 00 : 390721968 sectors at LBA 0 on device 0102
Member 01 : 390721968 sectors at LBA 0 on device 0101

__________________________________________________ ________________________

Vote RAID stripe size: 128; Count=6021 ; separation 36.4%
Purged a total of 51701 known false positives (stripe size mismatched)
Remaining 15004 records
Vote Start offset: 0; Count=8737 ; separation 28.4%
RCRD/RSTR bias @338
RAID: Test RAID0
Vote RAID starting disk: 258; Count=5371 ; separation 36.5%
Vote Next disk for 0102: 257; Count=9004 ; separation 100.0%
Vote Next disk for 0101: 258; Count=5662 ; separation 100.0%
RAID loop closed
Final nonzero RAID layout scores
RAID0 (Stripe set):74.76
Virtual RAID settings changed for Virtual RAID #0
-------------------------------------
Volume information for ID 00000000
Origin : Reconstructed RAID
Partition type : Unknown
Capacity : 372 GB
Number of sectors : 781443936
RAID type : RAID0 (Stripe set)
Stripe size : 128
Rotation parameters: 0 / 0
Member 00 : 390721968 sectors at LBA 0 on device 0102
Member 01 : 390721968 sectors at LBA 0 on device 0101

__________________________________________________ ________________________

Vote RAID stripe size: 128; Count=6207 ; separation 39.0%
Purged a total of 52450 known false positives (stripe size mismatched)
Remaining 15327 records
Vote Start offset: 0; Count=8892 ; separation 27.9%
RCRD/RSTR bias @434
RAID: Test RAID0
Vote RAID starting disk: 258; Count=5503 ; separation 38.4%
Vote Next disk for 0102: 257; Count=9096 ; separation 100.0%
Vote Next disk for 0101: 258; Count=5797 ; separation 100.0%
RAID loop closed
Final nonzero RAID layout scores
RAID0 (Stripe set):75.26
Virtual RAID settings changed for Virtual RAID #0
-------------------------------------
Volume information for ID 00000000
Origin : Reconstructed RAID
Partition type : Unknown
Capacity : 372 GB
Number of sectors : 781443936
RAID type : RAID0 (Stripe set)
Stripe size : 128
Rotation parameters: 0 / 0
Member 00 : 390721968 sectors at LBA 0 on device 0102
Member 01 : 390721968 sectors at LBA 0 on device 0101

__________________________________________________ ________________________

Vote RAID stripe size: 128; Count=6315 ; separation 39.6%
Purged a total of 52425 known false positives (stripe size mismatched)
Remaining 15423 records
Vote Start offset: 0; Count=8991 ; separation 28.7%
RCRD/RSTR bias @457
RAID: Test RAID0
Vote RAID starting disk: 258; Count=5500 ; separation 38.3%
Vote Next disk for 0102: 257; Count=9171 ; separation 100.0%
Vote Next disk for 0101: 258; Count=5795 ; separation 100.0%
RAID loop closed
Final nonzero RAID layout scores
RAID0 (Stripe set):75.34
Virtual RAID settings changed for Virtual RAID #0
-------------------------------------
Volume information for ID 00000000
Origin : Reconstructed RAID
Partition type : Unknown
Capacity : 372 GB
Number of sectors : 781443936
RAID type : RAID0 (Stripe set)
Stripe size : 128
Rotation parameters: 0 / 0
Member 00 : 390721968 sectors at LBA 0 on device 0102
Member 01 : 390721968 sectors at LBA 0 on device 0101

__________________________________________________ ________________________

Vote RAID stripe size: 128; Count=6212 ; separation 38.9%
Purged a total of 51699 known false positives (stripe size mismatched)
Remaining 15191 records
Vote Start offset: 0; Count=8907 ; separation 29.7%
RCRD/RSTR bias @395
RAID: Test RAID0
Vote RAID starting disk: 258; Count=5406 ; separation 37.7%
Vote Next disk for 0102: 257; Count=9097 ; separation 100.0%
Vote Next disk for 0101: 258; Count=5699 ; separation 100.0%
RAID loop closed
Final nonzero RAID layout scores
RAID0 (Stripe set):75.27
Virtual RAID settings changed for Virtual RAID #0
-------------------------------------
Volume information for ID 00000000
Origin : Reconstructed RAID
Partition type : Unknown
Capacity : 372 GB
Number of sectors : 781443936
RAID type : RAID0 (Stripe set)
Stripe size : 128
Rotation parameters: 0 / 0
Member 00 : 390721968 sectors at LBA 0 on device 0102
Member 01 : 390721968 sectors at LBA 0 on device 0101

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Delete log file (so we start with blank one).
Start ZAR, click "Advanced Configuration", then under "RAID" clear "RCRD bias" option. Click OK to close configuration and retry same as previously.
Then, post the log excerpt same as above.
The problem is that for a known good array should have a score of about 100. This is from my test run -
Final nonzero RAID layout scores
RAID0 (Stripe set):100.00
With your data the results of separate runs are pretty much consistent at about 75%. Most likely causes being

massive damage (probably beyond any practical repair)
some very specific case of filesystem corruption (which we eliminate by running with RCRD bias off)
the disks do not belong to the same array

[ewhite]

Hi Alexy,

Here you go:

Vote RAID stripe size: 128; Count=5949 ; separation 36.5%
Purged a total of 52466 known false positives (stripe size mismatched)
Remaining 15095 records
Vote Start offset: 0; Count=8824 ; separation 29.1%
RAID: Test RAID0
Vote RAID starting disk: 258; Count=5773 ; separation 41.6%
Vote Next disk for 0102: 257; Count=9030 ; separation 100.0%
Vote Next disk for 0101: 258; Count=6065 ; separation 100.0%
RAID loop closed
Final nonzero RAID layout scores
RAID0 (Stripe set):75.72
Virtual RAID settings changed for Virtual RAID #0
-------------------------------------
Volume information for ID 00000000
Origin : Reconstructed RAID
Partition type : Unknown
Capacity : 372 GB
Number of sectors : 781443936
RAID type : RAID0 (Stripe set)
Stripe size : 128
Rotation parameters: 0 / 0
Member 00 : 390721968 sectors at LBA 0 on device 0102
Member 01 : 390721968 sectors at LBA 0 on device 0101

[Alexey V. Gubin]

This or that way, it is not going to work. Something must be wrong with the array, worse than just splitting it in halves. I do not think we can fix it. Please send me a private message with your order number so I can arrange the refund.