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RAID 1 Failures and Data Recovery


I am using a Dell PowerEdge 1950, using 2 SCSI hard drives which are connected into a RAID 1 array. This array serves as the main data storage point for the company, and so it has a lot of files on the drives which are not found anywhere else. The Windows Server OS was installed on these drives originally, but is now being reported as corrupt by the computer. This means that the Windows Server operating system would not boot up. I am trying to recover everything I can from the array before I reload the OS, but when I try to take out data from one of the hard drives, I get a message saying that the computer cannot find the drive. It can see the array, and both drives in the array when I am not trying to recover the data, the computer seems to be losing the connection during the data transfer.


I am trying to recover data from some drives set up in a RAID 1 array inside an Intel server system. I can start this process off ok, and get into the BIOS on the computer. However, this is where the problems start, because instead of allowing me to view the drives in the RAID 1 configuration, I am instead being asked if I want to set up a RAID in the array. I am being offered a pair of options, which are Intel RST, or ESRT2. I don’t know either of these terms. If I bypass the BIOS options, and go straight into Windows, I can see the array, with both drives already named as RAID 1, but as soon as I try to open one of the files on the drives, the computer says that the source is invalid, and won’t open any data at all.