RAID Array no longer showing in windows server 2008 r2 after restoring back

[SirEvan]

Well, I've gone and screwed something up big time. I was messing with Active directory, went to uninstall it, but it screwed up my profiles. (see thread here:http://www.neowin.ne...ad-via-dcpromo/) I went and restored a full image of my windows drive (using windows server backup), but when the backup finished restoring, I now no longer have My Raid Array showing in windows!!! (this is BAD)

The array is populated, the drivers show loaded, but windows only shows the array (E drive, as RAW) Before I had a D drive, which was the actual array (16TB Raid-5 array (12.7TB usable). Megariad manager shows the controller is good, the virtual drive is good, and nothing has been changed or deleted, so why won't windows show the actual volume? this is pretty bad news as it contains the VM that run my email, websites, as well as backups of all my photography work. I don't have a spare system to move the card to to see if it comes online.

Since this was a straight restore, how come this isn't working?

I appreciate any assistance you guys can provide!

The controller is a perc 6/i, and the array is formated as GPT

[articuno1au]

At this point all I can say is do nothing until such a time as you are CERTAIN of how to proceed.

Rather obvious advice, but needed to be said.

Unfortunately I don't really have anything to add that is of any benefit to you.

Do you have backups of the RAID array?

[SirEvan]

At this point all I can say is do nothing until such a time as you are CERTAIN of how to proceed.

Rather obvious advice, but needed to be said.

Unfortunately I don't really have anything to add that is of any benefit to you.

Thanks. I've put the controller in a Read only state, until I can get it working. Oddly enough, I had the same issue when I was trying to recover my profile in the thread mentioned. If I tried to point the Os at the old Administrator profile, I couldn't see the array, but if i used the ones it created new...it worked. I tried creating a new profile, and even deleting the old ones, but this is not woorking now. I know it has to some how be tied to the image, as the array has not been touched. I'm thinking about trying to drag my desktop out and plug the raid controller into that to see if it sees it (win 7)

Just what I need at 1:47AM =(

[SirEvan]

At this point all I can say is do nothing until such a time as you are CERTAIN of how to proceed.

Rather obvious advice, but needed to be said.

Unfortunately I don't really have anything to add that is of any benefit to you.

Do you have backups of the RAID array?

I do not, well some of it I do, but 95% of it I do not.

Also,

the drive is a dynamic volume.

Further, The array has always been listed twice...once as "D", which was the actual volume, and once as "E:" which was "unformated" It's almost as if the drive letter just didn't show up now. but I don't know how this could happen, since the only thing restored was the C: drive (Boot ONLY). I double, triple, and Quadrupple checked to make sure.)

Kinda wish I had just left alone after getting it to somewhat work (with new accounts) created.

FML Hopefully someone knows what the issue is.

[SirEvan]

Do you have backups of the RAID array?

Sadly, it's hard to keep backups of 12TB of images/Video/Documents, as well as VMs. I was about to purchase all new drives to create a second array in a month or two to keep a mirror, but couldn't afford it at this time. I'm pretty confident the array is not broken though

more info: Between the backup, and today, NOTHING has changed, except for an addition of a VM to my array for spamassassin, and a few emails being added. nothing as far as drive settings or anything like that, or user accounts has changed. Both the controller and the entire box are on battery backups as well.

2:08AM: I think I might know what the problem was. Just noticed that the DVD rom i used to boot the 2k8r2 dvd was mapped to D....might be drive letter conflict. will check

2:41AM: nope wasn't it. You know what makes this more frustrating...the entire array is truecrypted =( Wait may maybe thats it...I had an issue with that once before

[articuno1au]

If I may suggest, sleeping would be the best thing you could do right now.

Given you don't have backups, a single slip up could cost you enormously.

I know it's going to be hard to sleep, but better to sleep and recover your data than keep trying and possibly ass it up >.<

I'd also suggest contacting Budman. He might be more help than I on this one.

[Miuku.]

Most likely reason: your partition table has become corrupt.

Good news: You can most likely recover it with a program like Testdisk ( http://www.cgsecurit...g/wiki/TestDisk )

Suggestion: Get enough storage somewhere to recover data from the drive before you try to repair the partition table itself permanently.

I ran into something similar a while back when helping out a friend and his broken NTFS (which was even worse, since it was Striped drives) and was able to recover the damaged set-up with it. Remember to read the documentation carefully before you do anything.

Bud might have some insight too or other tools to suggest.

[SirEvan]

FU%K YES! It was true crypt. Remounted the volume and it showed right up. I'm thinking that by restoring back to the old C volume, something in TC got out of sync, and it wasn't automounting anymore. YES! thanks for the help. Time to get a mirror of this array SOON.

I've been looking into drive prices, but they're still so damn high. I bought my 8x 2TB drives for 69$ each...that was only around 500$. now 2TB drives are like 120 each, would cost me almost double to backup. I may end up getting 4x 4TB drives though so that they take up less space, and keep them in a seperate enclosure that is only powered on for mirroring... I seriously thought I was about to loose the last 10 years of my work... =(

Thanks again for the help...need to start my email and web servers back up and then I'm off to bed, just to wake up in 5 hours for work :-/

Should've left the AD playing to the VM's I was using before... lesson learned.

[articuno1au]

Glad you got it worked out man.

I was going to say use a VM next time, but I figured that was completely unhelpful :p