RAID-6 fail - what are my options? :(

Image it. At worst, you've just doubled the amount of drives you have as well as the storage space. At best, the images will save all the remaining data when you botch it...again.

Good luck.
 
my .02 (been in your position before) eat the cost and go pro with a reputable recovery service. most will not charge you unless they can successfully extract data.
 
I would eat the cost if I could afford it but I definitely definitely can't. That's why I didn't have backup in the first place.
 
mwroobel said:
With the luck you have had so far, the absolute last thing you need now is any member drive failing. Make the images as soon as you can so you have them. You can then try and recover data but like you have heard, no one knows what condition the filesystem is in and if it is recoverable at all at this point. Since you don't plan on going with a professional recovery service at this point you have nothing to lose (as long as you have images you can go back to).
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As usual mwroobel knows wtf he speaks. Grab a copy of R-Studio and make an uncompressed image of every single disk before going any further. Important that it be uncompressed. If the "lifetime worth of files" is of value to you then you'll buy the extra disks to save the image dumps on. Get a few 3TB drives, they're cheap right now. After that I can put you in touch with someone that can analyze the images remotely and see if it can be surgically reconstructed.

dulcificum said:
What is the issue with using USB enclosures just to image the drives?
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Because the USB controller in the enclosure is a translation layer and slows down the process, when you're in "data recovery mode" you don't screw around - the goal is getting the disks in question imaged ASAP in anticipation of possibility they degrade further at any moment. No offense, stop arguing and connect each disk to motherboard SATA and dump those disks to uncompressed images.
 
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I'm not gonna lie, if this is stuff like movies, music, anime and warez you are best to just call it lost right now.

There is going to be no easy or cheap way to get it back.

Now if it was priceless stuff like the only copies of some huge program you wrote, or some photo of your great great grandparents you were restoring from negatives, or some research project where loosing it might cost you $200K in lost time... Then i would just hold the drives, save up money and go with a pro service.

This USB idea is going to be horribly slow, each drive will take one day or more simply to image. God forbid you are going to try to rebuild the array which might take a week or more per try.

Realistically trying to recover the data is gonna cost you a ton in getting new drives to write the images to PLUS all the lost time and tying up your PC in trying homebrew recovery.
 
Get an LSI based HBA like the IBM M1015 for $75 on ebay + $15 or so for SFF8087 to SATA/SAS forward break out cables.
 
Much as I hate to say it, any other cheaper options (especially ones that can use my massive pile of spare SATA cables)?
 
While there are cheaper options, LSI SAS2008 based controllers (like the M1015) are a good thing to keep for a potential future fileserver or to sell at almost no loss at ebay again. That said, I have a Adaptec 1430SA controller in one of my boxes (I need a very short controller that did not require much cooling) which works well under Linux. I wouldn't have bought that controller over an LSI based one if it wasn't for the specific hardware requirements.
 
Thanks :)

Will all LSI SAS2008 controllers fit in my case (Lian Li Q07)?

Or do I need to look out for particular models?
 
Contacting a pro recovery service would bring you three useful pieces of information for free :

1/Is it even possible to recover anything?
2/If yes, what can they recover? This way you could at least get a directory/file list.
3/How much the recovery would cost? Because if the hdds are physically healthy it will be probably way cheaper than some hardware recovery, with all the drive opening and platter recovery.
 
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