So I had a RAID5 external controller (MediaSonic HFR2-SU3S2 ProRaid) go bad but all 4 drives are healthy and I’ve dumped raw images of all 4 disks. I’m attempting to recover the data with UFS Explorer but my problem seems to be I have a lack of information on HOW to recover the data. It is my understanding that in order to recover all the data, I will need to know the parameters used in the RAID setup: stripe size, parity rotation order, parity grid orientation, etc. For this controller, the details are unknown. My real question is:
How can I recover the data without so much guesswork taking up so much time in between attempting each combination of parameters.
In UFS Explorer, there is a ‘Scan for lost data’ option, but this seems to take 35+ hours to complete, not to mention the extra stress being put on the drives during that time. There has to be a better way. Alternatively, if I open the Virtual RAID (after setting the parameters and ‘building the RAID’), there is an option to ‘Search undetected partitions by metadata’, where I can select NTFS (I know it is NTFS, verified in the BR Header). Scanning this will usually quickly bring up a new line with a candidate NTFS filesystem, although some combination of parameters result in a many-hours-long scan to which I usually cancel out. But this new line will show an NTFS partition with a red indicator in the corner. I assume this will be green when it finds a good parameter combo. But, I’m not having much luck in finding one that is green.
But this still feels like guesswork. Is there not a way to perform an analysis that looks for files that span a stripe and be able to further hone in on what the correct parameters are?
