Help saving data on NTFS disk (Raid) in Ubuntu

[jakster66]

Hi there,

I am trying to access data that is on a Raid 5 array in Ubuntu... There are 4 installed disks (250gig disks) - 3 of which are setup as a Raid 5 array (the 4th is active but unused). These show up as one large drive (498gig).

I have had an issue with the drive where it is no longer allowing Windows to boot - I receive a disk read error on boot (so the OS does not load, obviously!) - what happened was basically I unplugged then replugged in one of the disks which affected the array... I physically reconnected everything as it was, I then had to 'reactivate' the disk in the Raid BIOS... at that point the array seemed OK, was the right size, etc (and was listed as "Optimal" in the Raid BIOS) however, the problem with the disk read error persists.

I have started the machine using Ubuntu v9.10 from a CD (non-destructive mode) and it shows a disk of the right size (ie: on the desktop and in Nautilus it says "498gig Filesystem" ). However, in Nautilus, the disk appears empty with no folders or files on it (even with hidden files shown).... If I view 'Information" for the disk it shows 67gig used space and 399gig free space (which is correct). Also, if I view the disk in Gparted, it shows a disk with about 67gig of used space and 399 free space on a 464gig disk (with 8gig unallocated).

One more thing.... when I try the command 'sudo dmraid -tay' it says that there is no raid disk (there are in fact, no drives plugged into IDE or SATA slots - all disk are plugged into the RAID controller card).

Anyway, at this stage, I just want to copy the data to a single hard disk if possible and move on.

Can anyone please advise on what I could try at this point. Hopefully, the data is not lost!

Thanks in advance for any help.

Cheers,
Jack.

[impert]

Hi, and welcome,

Hopefully, the data is not lost!

Probably not. If you can't see it, it's most likely because the disc isn't mounted. You need to create a directory, with any name you fancy:

sudo mkdir /mnt/fred

If you don't know the filesystem type:

sudo fdisk -l

will list all your drives and partitions, with the fs type. (That's a little 'ell', not 'one'.)

Then do

sudo mount -t <FSTYPE> /dev/sdXY /mnt/fred

Put the file system type in place of <FSTYPE>, and change XY to the correct partition.

Your data should now show up in Nautilus, and you can copy it using cp, rsync, or whatever.

[jakster66]

Thank you for the response...

I have tried to mount the disk as you suggested but the files are still not visible.... The filesystem is NTFS (shows as HPFS/NTFS using fdisk -l)...

Anyway, as I posted earlier, the disk is labeled "498gig Filesystem" in Nautilus, but only displays as 399gig free space (However, the disk info shows a disk size of 474gig with 67gig used and 399gig free space - the correct info).

I suspect it could be a problem with the Raid setup - however, I thought Linux had inbuilt Raid support and should be able to deal with this issue? Unfortunately, I am not very experienced with Linux....

I have checked the boot messages (using dmesg), and have pasted an extract below (just in case it helps!).

Thanks again for your assistance...


[ 3.462894] e1000: eth1: e1000_probe: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection
[ 3.557592] scsi[2]: scanning scsi channel 1 [virtual] for logical drives
[ 3.557818] scsi 2:1:0:0: Direct-Access MegaRAID LD 0 RAID5 474G 814B PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[ 3.562015] sd 2:1:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
[ 3.564586] sd 2:1:0:0: [sda] 972652544 512-byte logical blocks: (497 GB/463 GiB)
[ 3.564620] sd 2:1:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[ 3.564626] sd 2:1:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
[ 3.564648] sd 2:1:0:0: [sda] Asking for cache data failed
[ 3.564653] sd 2:1:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 3.564852] sd 2:1:0:0: [sda] Asking for cache data failed
[ 3.564857] sd 2:1:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 3.564864] sda: sda1
[ 3.566370] sd 2:1:0:0: [sda] Asking for cache data failed
[ 3.566377] sd 2:1:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 3.566383] sd 2:1:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
[ 4.154621] xor: automatically using best checksumming function: pIII_sse
[ 4.172508] pIII_sse : 4553.000 MB/sec
[ 4.172512] xor: using function: pIII_sse (4553.000 MB/sec)
[ 4.175740] device-mapper: dm-raid45: initialized v0.2594b
[ 5.973074] ISO 9660 Extensions: Microsoft Joliet Level 3
[ 6.005776] ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A
[ 6.251316] aufs 2-standalone.tree-30-20090727
[ 6.488548] squashfs: version 4.0 (2009/01/31) Phillip Lougher
[ 63.985098] udev: starting version 147
[ 66.749628] intel_rng: FWH not detected