Question : Problem: Promise FastTrak SX4100 - Loss of all data on RAID 5 Drives

Hi Hoping someone can help.

I have a Win2K Server with the Promise FastTrak SX4100 and the SuperSwap 4 Bay Internal Enclosure populated with 4 320Gb Hitachi HDDs in RAID 5 Configuration. Has been running fine since April 2008. Yesterday noticed a Red LED on the enclosure indicating HDD fail (disk 2). Thinking oh well at least I have a spare I removed drive and replaced with identical HDD. Today however, I have noticed that the entire array has disappeared. The PAM software reports all drives are present albeit with no data and no logical drive.

The rub is that the only good backup in existence is from April so a lot of data may/has been lost. So would be kinda great if I could resolve this problem sooner rather than later.

Looking at the event logs within PAM it is stating the following :
Task 20 disk error on disk 4 at LBA 0x00 (Length 0x1) with status 51

This error appears many times with different disks different Hex codes but always Task 20 Disk error and with a status of 51.

I cannot believe all disks have failed. Other symptom is Promise controller no longer appears at boot but is present and recognised in Windows. I have refitted the original supposedly failed drive as a blind prayer but no difference.

500 Points are awarded to anyone whose answer restores RAID Data.

Answer : Problem: Promise FastTrak SX4100 - Loss of all data on RAID 5 Drives

I looked at both solutions and had yet to try them as I don't have a 4P non-raid SATA Controller. I didn't want to plug the RAIDED drives into the mainboard SATA's as these are populated with the only working backup of data from April and I didn't want to lose that as well.

Whilst my mind was churning over the potential effects of the loss of data, I thought back to all events preceding the failure. What I couldn't understand is why the promise controller is not being seen at initialisation at boot but is seen in windows. Yesterday I had plugged an external USB HDD in for the very purpose of making a backup with BUE which is when everything seems to have gone to hell. I removed this and reconfigured the BIOS boot order (the USB HDD seems to change it) and suddenly the promise controller was seen at boot. Also all data appeared in Windows with no apparent ill effects.

So not sure what is going on except I don't trust the promise controller/ Mainboard anymore and it will teach me to practice what I preach about backups! One has been kicked off now - users on system or not.

Not sure what is fairest way to split points my thoughts are 400 for 1st answer and 100 for second answer or a 250 split - what do you guys think?