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Felly
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Joined: 28 Sep 2004
Posts: 34
Location: Belgium

PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 7:31 pm    Post subject: SCSI data recovery Reply with quote

Somebody gave me three IBM DNES-309170 harddisks that came from a IBM NetFinity 5500 server. These are SCSI drives and hot-pluggable. The server and the RAID controller are fried and the server was collecting dust in a basement. But, he would love to have some of his data back.

I tried to connect one disk at a time to my Ultra 10 through a 80-68 pins converter (power from inside case, scsi cable to back of case). It's not pretty but the machine recognizes the disks:

Disk /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc: 9100 MB, 9100369920 bytes
254 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1110 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16002 * 512 = 8193024 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 * 1 524 4192492+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part2 525 2221 13577697 5 Extended
/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part5 ? 39375 63628 194054155+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Unfortunatly, I am not able to mount ANY partition. NTFS and VFAT support is compiled as modules and loaded correctly.

If I try to look at the other drives, I get a similar layout except that the last (biggest) partition is of an unknown type.

I don't know that much about RAID or SCSI so I'm a bit stuck at the moment.

The only thing I want to do is to mount the disks and try to read the data back. How do I proceed from here ?
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adaptr
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Joined: 06 Oct 2002
Posts: 6730
Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands

PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 8:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If those drives were configured as a hardware array, then the only conceivable way to recover any data from them would be to attach them to the exact same model of RAID controller that they were on, and configure that in the exact same way that the old system had running.

You first need to know how the drives were used.

Using Linux software RAID will most likely fail completely- every RAID solution uses its own methods for creating arrays.
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>>> emerge (3 of 7) mcse/70-293 to /
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Felly
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Joined: 28 Sep 2004
Posts: 34
Location: Belgium

PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 9:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you for your reply.

Can somebody recommend some good online hardware shops for computer components like this ? Shipping to Europe should be possible :P

I don't like eBay that much :(
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adaptr
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Joined: 06 Oct 2002
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Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands

PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 9:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The problem is that the RAID config of the old controller is by far the most important datum to know.
To get this out you will need to get at least as far as into its BIOS.

When you have that data you can start by trying to re-create the array in any way possible, only buying additional hardware when all else fails.

The very first thing I would do is make exact (dd) copies of each of these disks and work from those.

Note that you need either a hotswap cage or converters to get the drives connected at all.
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Essential tools: gentoolkit eix profuse screen
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Felly
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Joined: 28 Sep 2004
Posts: 34
Location: Belgium

PostPosted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 2:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, I figured that out after your first reply :D I'm sorry if my english misguided you on this :oops:

Anyway, I contacted him again and I'm gonna pick up the server this week. Hopefully, I'll be able to get into the BIOS to read all the information I need. The thing is, he didn't know what exactly was wrong with the machine. He doesn't know much about computers and the server was kinda pushed onto him by greedy consultants. One time they told him that the disks broke down, the other time they told him that the controller was fried. And that happened a few years ago too so he doesn't know it exactly anymore :P

With the last post, I was only trying to anticipate a perhaps needed purchase of a new controller :P

Anyway, I already made backups with dd. But what do you mean exactly with 'work from those' ?

Thank you for being a part in this learning expierence :D
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