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Archive 2013 · HELP! Both Raid Drives "not readable"

pjny
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · HELP! Both Raid Drives "not readable"

Hi,

I have a Newertech Guardian Maxiumus with 2x2TB drives in a RAID 1 on Macbook Pro 2011 13" running 10.8.4. I turned on the drive tonight and got the dreaded "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." I saw the "rebuild" light blink but the drive indicators did not go red to indicate which drive was dead.

I tried Disk Utility but couldn't see the drives.

I removed the drives and put them in a Black X USB docking station but the same error showed up.

I purchased Disk Warrior but DW doesn't even see the drive.

I finally ran Data Rescue from Prosoft and it has sees the drive in quickscan mode and allowing me to copy files file by file/folder by tolder to a secondary 2 TB drive.

Unfortunately it is going to take about 40 hours and I'm just wondering how Data Rescue is working and DW does not even see the drive.

Do you know if there is any way to get DW to see the drive and get back the data faster?

Do you know what causes this error? Could it be the Newertech Drive? I have the drive in a Sentry Fire safe and I was moving it earlier tonight on the ground. I hope that didn't cause any static buildup. Or maybe the Newertech drive sucks and caused an electric spike.

I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this.

Apr 02, 2013 at 12:32 AM

WAYCOOL
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · HELP! Both Raid Drives "not readable"

Its probably easier to restore from your back up.

Apr 02, 2013 at 04:56 AM

pjny
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · HELP! Both Raid Drives "not readable"

I used Data Rescue 3 and it worked. I purchased Diskwarrior 4.4 and wasted a ton of money and it
failed miserably.

WAYCOOL wrote:
Its probably easier to restore from your back up.

Apr 04, 2013 at 01:40 AM

WAYCOOL
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · HELP! Both Raid Drives "not readable"

Congratulations, time for a real backup so you won't have to go through with this nightmare again. Now you know RAID is not a backup, at least you still have your data.

Apr 04, 2013 at 10:52 AM

Mr Mouse
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · HELP! Both Raid Drives "not readable"

Also using RAID 1 the disk are just mirror copies of each other IMO that just slows thing down some. I think you would be better off using RAID 0 stripe data across the drives for better performance and implement some backup procedures. RAID 5 or RAID 10 if you want performance and reliability but you need more disks.. I'm thinking about using SSD and not using RAID so if an SSD fails file don't fail because of stripping only one SDD needs to be replaced and restored.

Apr 04, 2013 at 11:17 AM

15Bit
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · HELP! Both Raid Drives "not readable"

Mr Mouse wrote:
Also using RAID 1 the disk are just mirror copies of each other IMO that just slows thing down some.

It shouldn't if it is implemented properly. Writes should be the same speed as for a single disk and reads should be near double speed. RAID 0 should be faster for writes as well, as you say.

For best performance I would prefer SSD's also

Apr 04, 2013 at 11:39 AM

pjny
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · HELP! Both Raid Drives "not readable"

I have two backups for the RAID so I didn't lose to much because I also keep latest stuff on the two SSD's in my laptop. I was just blindsided because I wasn't expecting two drives to fail. I think it must be the enclosure. I only turn on the RAID when I need to transfer files. I also make I eject each time. The RAID is also powered with a surge protector so I don't think it was a voltage spike. I think it might just be the Newertech RAID.

Any suggestions on a reliable RAID enclosure for two drives?

Thanks.

WAYCOOL wrote:
Congratulations, time for a real backup so you won't have to go through with this nightmare again. Now you know RAID is not a backup, at least you still have your data.

Apr 04, 2013 at 03:02 PM

mhayes5254
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · HELP! Both Raid Drives "not readable"

From your description, it does not sound like RAID is what you want. You seem to be using it for backup and RAID has little value for that application.

Apr 04, 2013 at 09:54 PM

Alan321
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · HELP! Both Raid Drives "not readable"

pjny wrote:
I was just blindsided because I wasn't expecting two drives to fail. I think it must be the enclosure.

Shit happens.... but sometimes you get diarrhoea

I once had failures involving a mainboard RAID controller and perhaps other components but diagnosing it was a nightmare. Several drives and backups were corrupted beyond recovery and even a Norton Ghost backup to optical discs was unreadable. It went on for two weeks and ended when I spat the dummy by trashing the whole computer and buying a laptop.

Lesson 1: Nothing reliable is certain to keep on working.

Lesson 2: Multiple simultaneous faults can never be ruled out - even unrelated faults.

- Alan

Apr 05, 2013 at 07:26 AM

JBPhotog
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · HELP! Both Raid Drives "not readable"

Check the warranty options, it may be a dead controller card which should be covered by the 3 year warranty.

I'm a bit of a belt and suspenders guy and always have 2 backups of my data. I often think people get lazy about the back up process and choose RAID as the only option. There are some really good drive copy apps that can be scheduled for hands off back up. So an external drive enclosure that can store a couple of drives yet keep them separate so copies can be written to each of them takes the RAID failure equation off the table. Also, drive failure percentages go up for each drive added to a RAID array.

Apr 05, 2013 at 11:58 AM

15Bit
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · HELP! Both Raid Drives "not readable"

This is an interesting case - many of us here use RAID-based disk technologies, but how many of us actually understand the underlying technology. How many really know what happens when a drive fails?

First up, any kind of read or write glitch will cause a RAID to drop a drive or enter "degraded" mode. This might be an actual fault with a drive, or it might be that the RAID was powered down whilst data was reading or writing to the array. In any case, if the system believes that the data on different drives in the array is not coherent, the array will automatically be "degraded" until such time as a full rebuild has occurred. During the rebuild all data on the array is checked to be coherent, with the contents of the drive that incurred a failure being checked against those drives known to be good. This is a sensitive time for the array, as another failure during rebuild can leave the array not knowing which (if any) of the drives holds "good" data against which the others can be rebuilt. I'm going to hazard a guess that this is what has happened to the OP - it is mentioned that the array is powered up only when needed, so it is likely that on it's last use the array was shutdown whilst trying to recover from an error (possibly even caused by its previous shutdown), thus leaving it in an indeterminate state.

Because it was a RAID 1, all the data still resided on each drive and so all that was needed to get it off was some software that could read the container format for the RAID partition on the drive and willfully ignore the "degraded" filesystem flag. The OP is lucky he had a RAID 1, as any other RAID level would not offer this possibility.

Luckily this story has a happy ending. However it could easily not have. To the OP (and anyone else who similarly misunderstands RAID), though RAID arrays offer performance and data security benefits (as well as the ability to make several smaller drives into a bigger virtual drive), RAID is primarily an UPTIME solution: it is intended as a way to keep data available in the event of hardware (i.e. disk) failure. It follows from the acronym: "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks". Accordingly, RAID arrays are not intended to be turned on and off according to need. They should be left turned on. If they are shut down, it is important that they are done so properly to ensure coherency of the array. You cannot treat a RAID array like a big USB stick if you want it to work properly...

Apr 05, 2013 at 12:47 PM


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