I started backing up my fileserver Friday morning (as I usually do every weekend) and when I came home I discovered that the backup had failed. When I started looking into the problem, I discovered, to my horror that my d: drive had failed.

My fileserver is a windows machine that serves as a DNS, DHCP, print and mass storage server. In this server, I have a Promise FastTrak TX4310 SATA II raid controller with 4 360g Seagate HDDs configured as RAID5. 1TB of disk space filled with music, pictures, installation software, video files and DVD movie ISO backup files.

I always believed that backups were important, so I have a DLT tape drive that I use to backup only the important stuff. Email, documents and other files from my workstation. Pictures, music and installers from the fileserver (approx 200G) but the rest I cannot afford to backup. 600G of videos (mostly tv shows) and DVD movie ISO backups.

I originally installed the raid controller and 4 drives to protect against an HDD failure, but it looked like from the windows server logs that I have had 2 simultaneous drive failures. What a dissappointment, it appears that I have lost all my data.

I started doing some basic debugging, testing the HDDs to see if they start spinning, reseating the connections etc, but to no avail. Promise controllers have a web interface that shows the status of the device. It appeared (as reported by windows) that drives 1 and 2 had both failed. This seemed odd to me, so I decided to switch the HDD/controller connections to see if the failed drives moved as well. They didn’t. It looks to me like it is a controller problem.

I have opened a case with Promise Technologies to see if they can help.

Hopefully, if it is a controller issue and not drives so I will be able to replace the controller and still get to my data.

Stay Tuned!!

Update: Feb 19th 7:28pm

OK, so after a full day of back and forth with Promise Technical Support they are in agreement that it is most likely a controller issue and have asked me to open an RMA to see if I can get it replaced. They have also confirmed that simply replacing the controller will allow be to rebuild the Volume Group and get my data back.

I will keep my fingers crossed!

Update: March 4th 7:49pm

Promise Technical Support have agreed to replace my card and the replacement in on its way. Finally! One step left, install the new card and hopefully find all my data.