I have the following RAID drive…
G-Speed eS Pro (G-Tech) RAID (mini SAS)
8 TB (4x2TB Hitachi Deskstar 7200rpm)
setup as a RAID 5
RocketRAID 4322 PCI-E to SAS host adapter
I used HighPoint Web RAID Management Software to setup and monitor this drive.
I’ve been using this RAID for video editing for several years now. Although I do have most (all?) of the video data spread out across numerous backup discs and SD cards, I do not have a proper backup of the RAID drive itself, including all my Final Cut projects, folders, and work.
Stupid. Yes, I know.
Recently, I started having trouble. Drive speed was way low. Crashes, dropped frames, and other playback issues.
I did routine maintenance, ran diagnostics. The computer (Mac tower) crashed trying to do benchmark tests and AJA speed tests.
At the moment, Drive #1 has a “critical” symbol next to it and says it “needs to rebuild”. The configuration utility shows that Drive #1 is trying to rebuild. But it sits at “Rebuilding 0%” forever, with no progress.
The SMART values for that drive, Drive #1, are all “OK”.
However, the SMART values for Drive #4 shows a “FAILED” notice for “Reallocated Sector Count”.
The only other issues I can see are that Drive #3, and Drive #4 have 247 and 202 “bad sectors found and repaired”, respectively.
I’ve tried to copy files to a different RAID (I have a 16TB RAID, as well), but progress slows to a stop and then it crashes the computer.
Here’s my question…
Should I pull Drive #1, the drive that is trying to rebuild, and replace with a new one and let it try to rebuild the array with that new drive?
And if I do try that, and it fails to rebuild from the replacement drive, should I then put the original drive back in that bay, while I’m considering other ideas?
Regarding the replacement drive…
I have a second set of drives already in enclosures that were used for a project I no longer need. In other words, these replacement drives were a RAID array I no longer need. Do I need to format the replacement drive before swapping it?
Thanks in advance for any assistance. The data is very important to me. I’ve been in contact with a data recovery outfit. The quote for an attempt to fix things was far more than I have at the moment. I’m just trying to make sure I’ve done as much as I can before I have to go down that road.
