Apparent total loss of all Raid 1 data from both drives`

[Robin Laing]

Robert Karge wrote:
> Robin,
> 
> Thanks for the reply.
> 
> The rebuilt array, MD0, df shows only 1% used.
> 
> These disks are not included in LVM.
> 
> Bob Karge
> 
> On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 12:36 PM, Robin Laing 
> <Robin.Laing at drdc-rddc.gc.ca <mailto:Robin.Laing at drdc-rddc.gc.ca>> wrote:
> 
>     Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> 
>         On Thu, Mar 05, 2009 at 10:26:57 -0500,
>          Robert Karge <rkargeconsulting at gmail.com
>         <mailto:rkargeconsulting at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>             Any help would be very much appreciated.  I have reloaded
>             F10 (on the boot
>             drive) but both drives from the original Raid 1 still appear
>             to be totally
>             empty.
> 
>             It is paradoxical how much the total loss of years of work
>             and data teaches
>             about better backup functionality.
> 
> 
>         It is unlikely that you have really lost all of the data based
>         on what you
>         said you did. You do want to be careful about what you do now so
>         that you
>         don't make things worse while trying to fix things.
>         The rescue disk suggestion is probably the way to start.
>         If you are going to try to do something dangerous, you may want
>         to consider
>         pulling one of the disks. This has its own set of risks though
>         and you would
>         want to make sure if you got things back, that you back stuff up
>         before
>         trying to add the disk back into the raid array.
> 
> 
>     I will agree with this. statement.
> 
>     With a 500GB drive, I would use this as a work disk.  I would do an
>     install that doesn't look at the RAID drives.  I would actually
>     disconnect them.
> 
>     Now you said that you rebuilt the RAID.  After to did a rebuild, did
>     you have the same LVM settings?  I ask  this because I had a real
>     nightmare with LVM and a RAID 1 some time ago.  I refuse to use LVM now.
> 
>     How much data is on the rebuilt array?  What does df give you?
> 
>     If worse comes to worse, you can use forensic tools to scan your
>     drives for data.  I had to do this with my problem.  I put the one
>     drive into a USB port and mounted it read only to scan the drive.
> 
>     The worse thing you can do is panic and rush.  It took me almost a
>     week to recover some data after I forgot to back it up when I did a
>     full system redesign and rebuild.
> 
>     Good luck.
> 
>     -- 
>     Robin Laing
> 

Okay, this is not the best sign.  It shows that your inodes have been 
reset and possibly your partition tables as well.

This doesn't mean your data is lost though.

As I said earlier, look at tools like foremost and other recovery tools.

Here are some links to get you started.

http://linuxshellaccount.blogspot.com/2008/08/recovering-deleted-files-by-inode.html
http://blog.lxpages.com/2007/06/21/linux-file-recovery/
http://linux.sys-con.com/node/117909/print
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/05/12/2330200.shtml
http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/disaster_recovery/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208403254

Take your time to work on this.

This is an interesting read
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/245
-- 
Robin Laing