We have a WIN2012 R2 server (3 x SSD 1T each, 1 x SATA 2TB), each drive is being put on it's own RAID (reads 4 "Adaptec Array SCSI Disk Device) on device manager in windows "disk drives" section
suddenly the (1 x SATA 2TB) disappeared, we tried hard with company's support, they told us the drive is (dead and unrecoverable).
we logged on the server from KVM, and choose the RAID application from BIOS before OS load, it shows that the Array is healthy, we went further to disk check tool which is a part of the RAID bios program, and hit verify disk media on it, it began checking sectors normally!
after checking about 40%, it stopped with (error) message
unexpected sas command failed / sense key 0Eh – Miscompare / Sense Code: 00h
but driver does not show on windows, and device manager now show only 3 "Adaptec Array SCSI Disk Device" items in "disk drives"
1- could we restore the drive normally?
2- if couldn't, can we retrieve the data on it?
can anyone give some instructions?
Best Answer
It would seem the first 40% of the drive is readable so some data may be recoverable. But the Sense Code error indicates the disk check tool ran into unreadable sectors. And the drive "disappearing" is not a good sign. So at a minimum the drive is starting to fail.
If you want to try something yourself you could try to access the drive from Linux and attempt recovery or possibly try and take a drive image with a tool like ddrescue. But know any stress you put on the drive can cause more damage and make recovery more difficult and costly, perhaps impossible.
So if the drive contains high value data it's best to send it out to a data recovery lab.