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HI looking at a recent thread regarding Raid etc I feel I should share some frustrations with the LUG after a recent foray in to the realms of Raid and recovering data. The Setup was Dell Server with MS Server 2011 SB, a Proc s300 raid controller with 3 disks in a Raid 5 setup, a usb "Backup" disk for Server and Data backups. The server after it's last full backup, shutdown and failed to come back up. PLugging in a screen shows its trying to recover by loading a system image from backup. I point it to the Backup begins recovery and waits....., after %75 it says unrecoverable error, run scandisk /f whatever and try again! look at the Raid bios and says FAIL! so I guess at the disk put in a new one and reboot gets now Raid degraded Fair enough we have 2 good disks and a Global Spare. re boot and try to load backup image. No good as before. Try to get to F8 and command line, Need the Local Admin password! I am told it has never been set or asked for! ON the Raid disks is all the Company's data, and on the backup disks is the same data, but as VHD with the backup operators permissions. SO this is where Linux comes in Fire up Mint from a usb hard disk, install Virtual box Fire up a Eval version of Win 7 add to the Win 7 an extra hard disk and point it to the USB backup VHD image. copy off all 897GIgs to a new external drive. This took 9 hours! I am not one to be defeated by a MS Server Local Password, so I found I could only get to the Raid whilst booting the server up in Recovery mode (this by the way is a partition on the Raid disks), the win 7 in Virtual box wouldn't load the drivers nor it seems can Linux. So at the point of it saying find a recovery image and Do you want to load Drivers? i say yes, .... It gives me an explorer window!, I explore to the OS drive and Win sys32 and Whoopee! I have a Right Click! so I copy the SAM SYSTEM files out and dump them on my Mint HD. Fire up Mint again and install chntpw, blank the Admin pw and put them back ( also copy to LNG a swell for good measure). So now I can boot up the server hit F8 login as Local Admin with no pw and smash 7 shades out of it to make it work. It still doesn't by the way but at least I got to this point. I try to load a new OS but if fails SO I put in a SATA hd, remove RAID card, install OS and it comes up! Deduce raid card is duff, but have recovered my data so who cares. We now has a Netgear NAS box in Raid 2 with all the data on which runs SMB and does all we need so the server is under the bench. Success or Failure! I don't know but if you rely on a Raid card to secure your data have a spare one sitting around... -- ________________________________________________________________________ Regards Kevin Lucas Minions Post Master(Sub) A dedicated Linux user /usr/bin/microsoft minions.kevin.lucas@xxxxxxxxx www.minionsbandb.co.uk www.tearooms.minionsbandb.co.uk http://hangouts.google.com/start Po House, Minions, Liskeard Cornwall PL14 5LE 01579363386 -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq