Highpoint HPT370 recovery

[BOFH]

It's humiliating to have to ask, but a problem shared is a problem doubled.

My venerable filesewer has snuffed it. I've tried it with both CPUs (it's a VP6), memory modules swapped in and out, checked for blown caps, you name it. It has a SCSI card but that was swapped out (i.e., chucked on the floor), so a goat sacrifice is not required.

This was a Windows machine running XP Pro with a few partitions running from a 300 on the IDE side and two 160s set up as JBOD on the Highpoint circuits. The 300 is fine, and I can mount it.

The 160s will not mount (in a USB enclosure)l. They were not set to stripe (in which case I'd expect to be stuffed), but in JBOD, wouldn't they have kept each file on each discrete disk?

Were this the case, which software can I use to grab the data? I can remember one from years ago which would trawl through and reveal the start and endpoints of files on a Windows system, but I have disremembered it. ISTR that they were NTFS.

I am grateful for any suggestions.

BOFH

[Bushfiva]

Software like GetDataBack may do it for you. Available as a free demo, so you know if it will work before paying. When my RAID system died an ugly death, I moved all the drives to a test system, and used a Ukrainian software recovery tool, the name of which I can't remember.

Since you're using JBOD and the drives are presumably OK, you should be able to recover everything.

[Saab Dastard]

Was the Highpoint an add-in card? Could you install it in another PC and connect the disks? Even temporarily, without proper mounting brackets? As long as you can get the power & data cables attached, and the drivers loaded...

SD

[BOFH]

Hi Saab,

sadly, HPT370 is embedded (one of the reasons I bought a VP6, apart from dual processors).

Worked really well for a while (before it was a file server) on RAID 0.

So unfortunately no manual reversion. Biggest pi$$er is that my desktop won't take the full-length SCSI card plus the tape drive.:ugh: I appreciate your suggestion, though. Thank you.

Bushfiva
I have set the dogs loose with GetDataBack. Thank you for the recommendation - it's not quite doing it for my JBOD yet but looks rather good on a t@ed drive belonging to a friend of mine.
BOFH

[hellsbrink]

TBH, it depends on what "stuffed" the machine.

If the PSU had "a moment", then a power surge would stuff an HD and nothing would be recoverble. I've seen one drive failure take out another drive. I've even had the "joys" of a copyright protection wipe out winders, a DVD burner, an IDE card and a hard disk. You have to face the fact that it might be a paperweight.

Bushfiva's idea of "getdataback" is a good one, I've recovered drives and memory cards from cameras using that. Trust me, it's worth paying for. The only othe options I can think of is sticking the offending drive into another PC and seeing what happens, or booting from a Dos floppy and seeing if that recognises the disk.

Otherwise you'll have to send it to the professional people and the will charge you around as much as your children cost in a month.

[Bushfiva]

it's not quite doing it for my JBOD yet

OK, I just found that the one that worked for me was UFS Explorer Pro. Again, available as try-before-you-buy. It recovered all the data from a 4-drive RAID when only 3 drives were available for recovery.