RAID 5 data recovery quotation needed

[dogphish]

Can anyone help me with a quote on RAID 5 data recovery? I've gotten a quote from a few of the established companies and all ask for a diagnostic fee (about R4 000) and then a recovery fee (up to R12 000, dependant on diagnosis). This is all personal data (photo's and mp3's and the like) so I am not able to cough up corporate rates to get the data back.

I have a four disk (250gb each) SATA RAID 5 array, all disks spin up and have power. One of the disks is not being detected in the raid array. I've successfully made full images of three of the disks, the fourth disk cannot read all the way through to make an image.

If any part timer can help I'd be greatly appreciative. I'm in Stellenbosch and am willing to pay up to R3000 for a successful recovery.

 

[jem]

Check out R-Studio, it supports raid recovery and will cost you a crapload less than any 'pro' recovery. - link http://www.r-studio.com/

The only time pro recovery is worth it is if the drives are physically buggered, like if it's not spinning up or the interface card is damaged.

It recovers disks that aren't visible in windows even, used it many times with crashed hdd's.

p.s. and it will cost a boatload less than 3k, $79

 

[Nod]

With RAID 5 you should be able to rebuild the array by replacing the faulty disk, unless you have lost your RAID config too?
Have a look at this: http://runtime.org/raid.htm
The Price is $99, which is less than the R3000 you're willing to pay. Might need the same size disk/RAID to recover to though.

 

[RSkeens]

Rebuild the RAID array or use a Linux recovery distro (depending on your technical ability). That is free and if you can use them properly, are better than most commercial software.

 

[masticore]

You have a RAID5 array and you've lost one disk and you can't get to your data ?! The whole point of RAID5 (and others with parity) is that you CAN lose a drive and still have access to your data. I can only guess that either something else besides the one bad disk has happened, or you were running a stripe (RAID0) across the drives.

 

[dogphish]

Check out R-Studio, it supports raid recovery and will cost you a crapload less than any 'pro' recovery. - link http://www.r-studio.com/

The only time pro recovery is worth it is if the drives are physically buggered, like if it's not spinning up or the interface card is damaged.

It recovers disks that aren't visible in windows even, used it many times with crashed hdd's.

p.s. and it will cost a boatload less than 3k, $79

I've given R-studio as well as Runtime a go a while ago, but neither seem to be able to give reasonable data. I can get partial directory structure but that's it. Neither seem to find the settings that work for my array and I can't remember how I configured the array it was so long ago.

 

[dogphish]

You have a RAID5 array and you've lost one disk and you can't get to your data ?! The whole point of RAID5 (and others with parity) is that you CAN lose a drive and still have access to your data. I can only guess that either something else besides the one bad disk has happened, or you were running a stripe (RAID0) across the drives.

The problem is that one disk is gone, plus one disk is not being detected in the array that is configured in the controller. If I create a new array on the controller it detects all disks, but if I then commit that array to the controller it will wipe my other settings, and I assume that will be worse than just getting the array rebuilt by someone who actually knows what they are doing.