[SWLUG] Failed Raid 1

[Justin Mitchell]

On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 10:48 +0000, Hugh Saunders wrote:
> My Parents have windows[1] installed on a RAID 1 (mirror)  volume.
> The raid controller is built into the motherboard and presents the two
> disks as a single volume to the operating system.

Youll probably find that it isnt hardware raid at all, many motherboards
have some simplistic raid-assist hardware but that all the real work is
done in the driver.

> So, my parents are ordering two new sata disks and I will be going up
> there(Surrey) to do data recovery.

i do hope they arent an identical pair.
you really want to buy each disk from a different manufacturer where
possible, this reduces the risk of simultaneous failures due to design
defects.

> Questions:
> 1. Is a disk that is half of a Raid 1 volume, the same as a standalone disk?
>  - Ie does it have the same mbr, partition table, file system etc, or
> does it have RAID specific markings?

depends on the raid implimentation, it may have added special markers,
but itll probably just look like a normal disk.


> 2. Should I attempt recovery using individual disks or through the
> mirrored raid volume?

you didnt say anything about how they had 'failed'
was it just a couple of read/write errors or have they totally died.

but backup the data off whichever disk still works and hasnt corrupted/lost it.



> 3. Any other tools, techniques or tips that might help?
dmraid probably for the pseudo raid controller.