Recover files from RAID5

[Llonks]

Hi all,

I have a big problem... Let's start by the beginning. I created a NAS using truenas and an old computer that I had in my house. I used a SSD for the system and 2 HDD (RAID 5) for the information. The thing is that the motherboard of the PC has died. how can I recover the information from the raid 5 discs?

Thanks and regards!

 

[sretalla]

2 HDD (RAID 5)

That doesn't make any sense... Either there aren't enough disks for RAIDZ1 (RAID5 equivalent in ZFS), which would need 3... or you're mistaken and you made a mirror or even a stripe... either way:

The thing is that the motherboard of the PC has died. how can I recover the information from the raid 5 discs?

Assuming you really did create a pool using TrueNAS, just move all of your disks over to another system and boot it from the SSD, you should be able to get to your pool with no issue.

 

[Llonks]

You are right, it was RAID 1 (mirror), sorry. So, if I install all the discs in another system (new motherboard, processor and RAM) then it will work with any problems, am I right? Perfect!

 

[sretalla]

am I right?

All other things being equal, yes. Of course moving hardware around can always introduce problems, but if everything is moved carefully, it will be fine.

 

[artlessknave]

do NOT use RAID with ZFS. RAID mangles ZFS's access to the disks, both hiding issues and adds issues of its own. make sure the ports are set to ahci/ide, anything but RAID.
ZFS is stripe, mirrors or raidz1/2/3. do not call it RAID, because that is a different, incompatible, technology, and makes trying to understand what you mean difficult.
ZFS is all you need, it handles all volume manager (eg RAID) and filesystem (eg NTFS/ext3) operations in one integrated program, you just feed it *direct* access to disks.
motherboard RAID is particularly flaky, and if the motherboard dies, the data goes with it, unless you get a motherboard with a compatible chip.

with that in mind, did you have a ZFS mirror, OR a motherboard RAID1?
if you had a ZFS mirror, it will work on any motherboard with just about any direct connection type (SAS/SATA cards, motherboard sata nonRAID ports)
if you had ZFS running on top of RAID, you might be screwed, though sometimes the motherboard RAID disks can be accessed with low level linux rescue-like commands.


aditionally, forum rules are to include your hardware. often the easiest is to setup a signature that includes it with every post.

 

[Llonks]

Hardware included, thanks artlessknave. I have a ZFS mirror, not a ZFS on top of a motherboard RAID. And sorry for the confusion between RAID and ZFS mirror, I am quite new in the NAS' world.

 

[danb35]

do NOT use RAID with ZFS.

No, do not use hardware RAID with ZFS. I'd wager that the vast majority of TrueNAS installations use ZFS RAID, which is not only normal, not only expected, but actually a good thing. And I'm not sure if OP updated his .sig since your post, but the hardware's now listed there. The motherboard is suboptimal in many ways, it's unlikely that its onboard RAID would even work with FreeBSD, so that isn't likely what's going on.

 

[artlessknave]

eh. hardware RAID is kind of a misleading term. all RAID is software RAID...what changes is where the software runs (CPU/RAID card).
ZFS usually consistently uses raidz, since it's fairly different technology from RAID. I try to stick to that, because people start conflating RAID5 and raidz1 expecting it to work the same, or trying to run raidz on RAID *shudders* (without knowing what they are doing).
the signature is, indeed, now hardware descriptive, so thanks for that.

for the original question, yes, if you have a pure ZFS mirror, you should be able to replace the motherboard with anything reasonably modern and it should pick up the drives no problem.

I would highly recomend getting something at least near the recomendations. an x9scm or x9scl off of ebay can be pretty cheap, and will have (I think) better performance, better RAM, IPMI(though the java needed is a PITA - get adoptium 8 and iceatea), ECC, etc.

 

[BluRay]

Hi all,

I have a big problem... Let's start by the beginning. I created a NAS using truenas and an old computer that I had in my house. I used a SSD for the system and 2 HDD (RAID 5) for the information. The thing is that the motherboard of the PC has died. how can I recover the information from the raid 5 discs?

Thanks and regards!

Normally, even if you are using "hardware" raid on a motherboard and the Intel IRST or IRSTe software AND you are only using Raid 1 then you can transfer them to another computer without issue. If you leave the SATA interfaces as AHCI then both drives would still be readable without issues, but the Raid 1 would be broken. If you want the Raid 1 working you would need to recreate the Raid 1 with the same parameters as before in BIOS and set the BIOS in the new motherboard to Raid instead of AHCI.

The Raid 1 array can also be assembled with mdadm in Linux, and will work correctly even with the motherboard included Raid "hardware". Mdadm can then be used to monitor/repair/re-sync the array as if it was created by mdadm itself. The only difference will be imsm name for the array. In Windows you can use the IRST/IRSTe software from Intel as before. You may have issues with dual boot where the other partition is not visible, however all the data will still be there and can be recovered using 3rd party software like R-Studio or even the available free software. I would recommend cloning the drive prior to making any changes. R-studio includes that functionality or you could just use dd.