How to Recover Data from a RAID 50 HP P410 Smart Array Controller. Guide for beginners

A beginner’s guide to recovering data from hardware RAID 50, which is built on an HP P410 controller. We will also tell you how to assemble such a RAID, replace a faulty media, and what to do if the HP P410 controller stops working.

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By itself, RAID 5 is one of the most reliable types of arrays, at the same time, its performance is not at such a high level. But, if we combine several such groups, we get RAID 50, which shows a high level of performance. And also higher efficiency of using the “space” of a RAID array in comparison with the usual fifth type.

In terms of performance, the RAID50 will approach the tenth type of arrays, but its reliability will still be less than that of the tenth. This type maintains one hundred percent performance even after the failure of one media in each group. In this article I will show you step-by-step instructions on creating such arrays, replacing broken disks and how to recover accidentally deleted information from them.

How to assemble a RAID50 in the BIOS of the controller and using the program

You will need at least six disks to build a RAID50. The HP P410 controller allows you to assemble a disk array using BIOS and a special utility.

To get into the BIOS of the controller during boot, after initializing the device, press the F8 key.

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Further, if all the media are empty and did not belong to other arrays, open the Create Logical Drive item. If RAID has already been assembled from these drives, it must be removed first, since the controller may not display them during the building process.

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To do this, move down to the Delete Logical Drive item, to open it, press Enter. Here, using the up / down navigation keys, select the media we do not need and delete them – F8, as well as F3 to confirm. After saving the configuration, press Enter.

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Now we go directly to the process of creating a RAID 50. Go to the Create Logical Drive item – mark all drives from which we will assemble our future array with a space.

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Press the Tab key to go to the next section of the settings, set the checkbox opposite the desired type, choose from how many groups it will consist of, in the case of two, since I have only 6 disks. After setting all the settings, press Enter, after which information, size, type and so on will be displayed.

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To confirm the configuration write press F8 and Enter to continue. To view information about the array, open View logical Drive, if everything is correct, press the Esc key to exit the settings menu and further boot.

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Then you just need to go into disk management and mark it by assigning a letter to it and selecting the file system.

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Collecting an Array Using the HP Array Configuration Utility

In order to assemble an array from a loaded operating system, use the HP Array Configuration Utility or HPE Smart Storage Administrator, which can be downloaded from the official website of the controller manufacturer.

On the Configuration tab, select your controller, on the right side of the window, click Create Array.

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Check the media that your future RAID will consist of and click Ok.

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Next, click on Create logical Drive, select the type, number of groups, block size, if necessary, set a specific size, activate caching, and then Save to confirm. The array has been created, it remains to mark it up in disk management.

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How to replace a disk

To replace a broken media, you just need to replace it with the same new working drive, after which the “rebuild” should start automatically. To determine which drive is not working, in the utility, expand the tab with storage devices, by the serial number, see which of the drives is not in the list.

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If there is an additional slot for connection, you can insert new media without replacement and designate it as spare. After that, the controller will automatically detect the “broken disk” and start “rebuild” with the new media. You can set the media as spare in the BIOS, in the Create Logical Drive section. At this point, mark it as a spare.

The rebuild process can be monitored in the HPE Smart Storage Administrator.

How to recover data

If the controller stops working, then without replacing it, just like that, it will not be possible to access the stored information. If it was not possible to replace the controller, or it needs to be ordered, and the data is needed already yesterday, then you should use a specialized utility – imageHetman RAID Recovery. The program will subtract all data available on the disks about the controller and will be able to rebuild the destroyed RAID.

To do this, you need to connect all the media that were included in the array directly to the PC motherboard, boot the OS and run the program.

Before starting the recovery process, you must take care of having a drive with a size equal to or greater than the amount of information being recovered. Even in the process of connecting drives, a question may arise with an insufficient number of SATA ports and power connectors. For this, there are various adapters and expanders, which are usually not expensive.

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The program displays all available RAID data.

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Click on the PCM disk icon and launch the “Quick Scan”. We mark the necessary files and directories and click “Restore”. Next, we indicate the path to save them, again click “Restore”. When the saving process is completed, all files will be located in the directory you specified.

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If “Quick Scan” did not help, and most of the files could not be recovered, then run “Full Analysis”.

Recovery without two disks, how to assemble in a RAID constructor

If the program could not correctly determine the type of the array in automatic mode, the RAID can be rebuilt manually using the RAID constructor. To do this, you need to remember all the information about your array.

Select “Create manually” and click “Next”, then specify the type of array, block order, block size, number of media in the group, select the drives themselves and specify their order, fill in the missing blank.

After specifying all the parameters, click “Add”. It will now appear in the disk manager. It remains to scan it and return the remaining data.

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This type of RAID remains one hundred percent operational if one drive from the group fails. That is, if only two disks are out of order, one from each group, then it remains operational. The program is able to return information even without two disks, but if these are drives from the same group, some of the files will be damaged.

For the full version of the article with all additional video tutorials, see source… And also visit our Youtube channel, there are more than 400 training videos collected there.

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