RAID 5 IMPOSSIBLE TO MOUNT. PLEASE HELP!!!

Can you be more specific about the exact sequence of events?

When you entered your license, you were running 6.0?

was your volume mounted at that time?

When you entered your licence, did you crash? restart?
When did your volume first not mount?

Do you have access to the application Disk Warrior?

@softraid-support thank you for the quick answer!

Ok, this was the sequence.

When i entered the serial number of the SOFTRAID XT i was running the 6.0.3 trial mode but with the expired time of 30 days (i think). And this is how i did it.

As the serial is in a sticker below the box i eject the volume in finder rigth clicking. The i switch off the unit, check the number, open softraid, enter the serial number and switch on the unit. It didnt mount so i restart the computer and get the warning of "impossible to read the disk" and the raid didnt appear in the finder.

Something strange also happened.... after i did this i checked the licence in Softraid 6 and still was on trial so i tried to enter the licence again but was imposible (it seems to be like an old licence number imposible to enter in the boxes so i did updated the software in the softraid web and purchase for a free update. And when i got acces to the new software i got i new licence number. That one work fine and it the one that is working now

I dont have acces to the Disk Warrior application

All I can guess was the OS was still writing the disk cache information out when the enclosure was switched off.
I ask as the volume has a damaged directory, and the volume header is overwritten with zeros.

How old is your most recent backup? Disk Warrior can probably rebuild your directory, or else you need something like Disk Drill to pull the data off.

@softraid-support So there is no way to fix this more than buying Diskwarrior and give it a try????

I dont have backup...

@carloscubi

Sorry to hear this. RAID protects you against hardware failures, but not file system issues.

Your best options are:

Disk Warrior. This is a serious overwrite of your volume header and possibly also the directory, so it is possible Disk Warrior will not be able to replace the directory. I put the odds at 75%. the advantage is you can fix your volume without needing to copy the data off. The big advantage of Disk Warrior is it fixes things in place, no need to copy to a new location. Its the best utility for this.

Disk Drill: this is recovery only. I put the chances at over 99% it can recover all your data with "structure". perhaps 5% will not have correct names/structure, depending on what happened, but you can fix that. Downside is you need to copy off to another disk. Its copy process is fast and can go about as fast as the hardware will let it. (if to a single drive, probably less than 2 hours per TB.

There are a couple other recovery apps that are good, R-Studio is one that tested well, but Disk Drill has really come along with nice interface and features.

Others I personally tested were either really slow, not effective (cannot get all the file names folders) or did not work as well.

@softraid-support I have already bought disk warrior and trying to fix the problem... Fingers crossed. If it doesn't work will see... 

It may take a while, it has to scan the volume for the backup directory, I bet. A volume this large could easily take a day, so be patient.

Make sure you use the "Preview" to verify your data is OK before clicking replace, also.

@softraid-support Unfortunately Diskwarrior is not working. After one or two hours after starting the process of rebuild the directory my computer crashes and restart. I dont know why.... Ive written to the Diskwarrior support to see if they know why this is happening. If you have any clue of what can be happening let me know.

Thanx

@carloscubi

I am not certain what is causing this, its possible the directory has some unusual corruption.

If you cannot get Disk Warrior to work, Disk Drill can certainly recover the files to another disk. You can start it as trial mode, then pay for it once it shows it can recover your files. It will see the files and perhaps a quck scan is enough for it, otherwise the deep scan process should get you near 100% of your files.

@softraid-support Finally i could solve the problem. After trying to ran diswarrior on my imac several times and keep crashing and restarting the computer i ran it in my old macbook pro and it did the job.  It repaired my directory and mounted the RAID. Almost everything its repaired except like 50 items that im not sure what they are, that couldnt be restored but the are in a separated folder in case i need them. 

Uff, im going to make an external backup ASAP.

Thanx for the support.

@carloscubi

Its interesting how sometimes Disk Warrior needs a different OS, perhaps cleaner system to do its magic.

Glad your data is rescued and yes, backups are critical!

Hey Support,

I was just reading this thread and believe I might have a similar issue.  My RAID 5 on an OWC Thunderbay 8, managed by Soft Raid 8.5.4. XT and connected to an iMac running OS 10.15.7 has failed.  I believe the culprit was a power outage (of course I wasn't connected to my UPS at the time).  MacOS says in can't repair the disk but it will mount it and allow me to view and copy files - just no write.

I've tried to rebuild the directory using Disk Warrior but that failed once and until I've confirmed current backups for everything on the RAID, I'm nervous about trying again.  

I've seen on some forums that launching the iMac in single user mode and running the "fsck -fy" command through the terminal might clear up the issue.  

Do you have any advice?  Thanks in advance!

Here's the error I'm receiving on reboot from Soft RAID for my array

"GW RAID5"

@gdubya3 

Its unlikely the fsck will fix this, in my opinion. Try Disk Warrior again.

Remember, Disk Warrior does not write to disk until you click the "replace" button.

Are you getting text that it cannot replace it, or are you clicking "replace" and gettting a failure?

I am guessing you cannot even get to the Replace button.

With a read only mounted volume, this is unusual.