bkpaul
28th July 2001, 06:47 PM
Hi Folks,
This information was taken from the highpoint section of Paul Howlands excellent KT7 FAQ site (http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kt7/kt7faq.htm), I know it works because I had cause to need to use it, I managed to get ALL my data back :D
All files mentioned are also available from Paul Howlands site.
The Highpoint Controller is reporting a broken stripe set. How can I fix it?
Many thanks to Yasin Abbas (YaZ) for this solution - the solution is all his: I've just altered the wording here and there! In his case, he accidentally broke the stripe configuration by connecting the Secondary striped hard disk in a different IDE configuration. Upon booting the Highpoint Controller declared the stripe broken. Even after placing the hard disks back into their old configuration the to fHighpoint controller continued to say that the stripe was broken. The first hard disk was indicated as a broken stripe Array#0; the second was indicated as HDD1 (standalone). The following solution has worked for him on two occasions, but is quite involved. Here goes.
Ensure disks are correctly installed. Place the hard disks into the configuration you want, making sure that they both remained in the same orientation. By orientation we mean that the first hard drive in the broken stripe remains as the first hard drive in the "to be fixed" stripe regardless of where it is on the IDE channel and the second hard disk in the stripe remains as the second hard disk in the "to be fixed" stripe, regardless of where it is on the IDE channel.
Delete broken stripeset and create a new stripeset. Now enter the Highpoint BIOS and set up your stripe again, by deleting the old broken one and starting again from scratch. The BIOS will tell you that it will erase your drives, don't worry, let it do so. You have nothing to lose - your data is currently inaccessible anyway!
Analyse the partitions using testdisk. Once it has created the new stripe set, boot into DOS. You now require testdisk (Yasin used version 3.4) - an excellent program written by Christophe Grenier available from his site at
http://www.esiea.fr/public_html/Christophe.GRENIER/ or on the downloads page. Run testdisk and you will be presented with a list of logical hard disks, the CHS values and the size. Usually your stripe set will be shown as "Enhanced BIOS mode". Select the stripe set that you created and choose to "Analyse" the partitions.
MBR new stripe set. Sometimes stripe corruption will remove the Master Boot Record (MBR) and testdisk will give you an error. To replace the MBR run: fdisk /MBR or better still use bootpart (Version 2.20) another highly recommended freeware utility by Gilles Vollant to replace the MBR. Documentation on how to do this is provided with bootpart.
Use testdisk to recreate the partitions. Upon completion of the analysis if your original stripe set wasn't too garbled you'll be presented with a list of your old partitions and their various values and types. You can't do anything with this list, just select your only option "Quit". The next screen shows you the list of partitions, structures and their types. In this list you are able to set-up each available partition as one of 5 different types: Primary bootable, Primary, Logical, Extended or even deleted. At this point try to make sure you set things up as they were before. This screen may not appear on very badly damaged stripe sets. After doing this select "Ok". The next screen allows you to arrange partition ordering. The usual order is Primary bootable = 1, Extended = 2, etc (assuming you have no other primary partitions or any other type, so this may differ in your case). Right and left selects different orders, up and down different partitions. I don't think the ordering actually matters too much as long as each partition is ordered consecutively (1,2,3 . . .) and no partitions have the same order (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, . . . but I haven't tested this myself!). After doing this select "Ok". This is the crucial stage, the point where; if you've set things up correctly you should get access to your data. A list is shown with the modifications. Your only two options are "Quit" and "Write". At this point in time if you think you have chosen your previous ordering and other values correctly, then select "Write". Otherwise choose to "Quit" and restart the procedures again.
Copy accessible data to another drive. Upon writing the partitions hopefully you can access your data. Usually your partition tables are still garbled. YOU MUST COPY ALL YOUR DATA OFF OF THE STRIPE SET AND REPARTITION YOUR HARD DISK. Although your data is now accessible, your disk is still in a very bad state and cannot be relied on!! The partition tables are only given "best" values and not "actual" values. However, now that you can access your data you have the chance to backup your essentials (or everything) and rebuild you RAID array from the beginning.
Rebuild RAID array and restore data. Once you have accessed all your data and copied everything off of the broken stripe set you can safely erase your hard disks and start from scratch, create your RAID-0 array again and then create your partitions. (Yasin recommends Partition Magic for this, or you could use FDISK, or freeware solutions such as FreeDOS FDISK or Ranish Partition Manager.
This information was taken from the highpoint section of Paul Howlands excellent KT7 FAQ site (http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kt7/kt7faq.htm), I know it works because I had cause to need to use it, I managed to get ALL my data back :D
All files mentioned are also available from Paul Howlands site.
The Highpoint Controller is reporting a broken stripe set. How can I fix it?
Many thanks to Yasin Abbas (YaZ) for this solution - the solution is all his: I've just altered the wording here and there! In his case, he accidentally broke the stripe configuration by connecting the Secondary striped hard disk in a different IDE configuration. Upon booting the Highpoint Controller declared the stripe broken. Even after placing the hard disks back into their old configuration the to fHighpoint controller continued to say that the stripe was broken. The first hard disk was indicated as a broken stripe Array#0; the second was indicated as HDD1 (standalone). The following solution has worked for him on two occasions, but is quite involved. Here goes.
Ensure disks are correctly installed. Place the hard disks into the configuration you want, making sure that they both remained in the same orientation. By orientation we mean that the first hard drive in the broken stripe remains as the first hard drive in the "to be fixed" stripe regardless of where it is on the IDE channel and the second hard disk in the stripe remains as the second hard disk in the "to be fixed" stripe, regardless of where it is on the IDE channel.
Delete broken stripeset and create a new stripeset. Now enter the Highpoint BIOS and set up your stripe again, by deleting the old broken one and starting again from scratch. The BIOS will tell you that it will erase your drives, don't worry, let it do so. You have nothing to lose - your data is currently inaccessible anyway!
Analyse the partitions using testdisk. Once it has created the new stripe set, boot into DOS. You now require testdisk (Yasin used version 3.4) - an excellent program written by Christophe Grenier available from his site at
http://www.esiea.fr/public_html/Christophe.GRENIER/ or on the downloads page. Run testdisk and you will be presented with a list of logical hard disks, the CHS values and the size. Usually your stripe set will be shown as "Enhanced BIOS mode". Select the stripe set that you created and choose to "Analyse" the partitions.
MBR new stripe set. Sometimes stripe corruption will remove the Master Boot Record (MBR) and testdisk will give you an error. To replace the MBR run: fdisk /MBR or better still use bootpart (Version 2.20) another highly recommended freeware utility by Gilles Vollant to replace the MBR. Documentation on how to do this is provided with bootpart.
Use testdisk to recreate the partitions. Upon completion of the analysis if your original stripe set wasn't too garbled you'll be presented with a list of your old partitions and their various values and types. You can't do anything with this list, just select your only option "Quit". The next screen shows you the list of partitions, structures and their types. In this list you are able to set-up each available partition as one of 5 different types: Primary bootable, Primary, Logical, Extended or even deleted. At this point try to make sure you set things up as they were before. This screen may not appear on very badly damaged stripe sets. After doing this select "Ok". The next screen allows you to arrange partition ordering. The usual order is Primary bootable = 1, Extended = 2, etc (assuming you have no other primary partitions or any other type, so this may differ in your case). Right and left selects different orders, up and down different partitions. I don't think the ordering actually matters too much as long as each partition is ordered consecutively (1,2,3 . . .) and no partitions have the same order (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, . . . but I haven't tested this myself!). After doing this select "Ok". This is the crucial stage, the point where; if you've set things up correctly you should get access to your data. A list is shown with the modifications. Your only two options are "Quit" and "Write". At this point in time if you think you have chosen your previous ordering and other values correctly, then select "Write". Otherwise choose to "Quit" and restart the procedures again.
Copy accessible data to another drive. Upon writing the partitions hopefully you can access your data. Usually your partition tables are still garbled. YOU MUST COPY ALL YOUR DATA OFF OF THE STRIPE SET AND REPARTITION YOUR HARD DISK. Although your data is now accessible, your disk is still in a very bad state and cannot be relied on!! The partition tables are only given "best" values and not "actual" values. However, now that you can access your data you have the chance to backup your essentials (or everything) and rebuild you RAID array from the beginning.
Rebuild RAID array and restore data. Once you have accessed all your data and copied everything off of the broken stripe set you can safely erase your hard disks and start from scratch, create your RAID-0 array again and then create your partitions. (Yasin recommends Partition Magic for this, or you could use FDISK, or freeware solutions such as FreeDOS FDISK or Ranish Partition Manager.