[Sussex] Recovering from RAID 5

[Desmond Armstrong]

  On 07/11/10 12:22, John Crowhurst wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have a customer that has a backup machine that was configured with RAID
> 1 (for /boot) and RAID 5 partitions (the rest of the system). I was called
> to replace one of its 4 250GB drives and after replacement it appears a
> second drive failed before I could introduce the drive to the array.
>
> The machine boots and then immediately panics because it can only see 2 of
> its 4 drives for the RAID 5 array.
>
> I think the previous admin didn't have much in the way of a budget from
> the company and they reclaimed old desktop machines as servers and spent
> their money on drives.
>
> Is there any way to recover the data on these drives. The drive I took out
> wasn't even spinning and wasn't recognised in the BIOS as a drive.

Very difficult if it is not spinning.
When I have had this problem I have connected the drive with a longish 
lead so that I can give it a hard twist. Surprisingly this has actually 
worked for me on occasion. If you can get it spinning then work fast to 
recover the data as you may not be so lucky again.
Good Luck!

As regards not recognizing it in BIOS then this is certainly a benefit 
of hot pluggable SATA so it may be that you should think about SATA 
adapters. SATA/IDE and SATA/USB adapters are readily available.

> The replacement machine will be 2x1TB drives in RAID 1.