What kind of Raid-5 controller in Linkstation Quad ?

[Shatinwater]

   

I have 4 1.5TB WD disks with Raid-5 in a LS Quad taht the power led flashin 6 times.

 

Is it possible to use a Linux workstation with the same Raid Controller in LS Quad to access the data on the drives ?

 

I need to recover the data I moved into the Raid-5 disks and I can build a linux pc to access the data provides that I can use the same Raid controller !

 

 

[PCPiranha]

This unit uses linux software RAID:

    * When mounting a single disk from a RAID1 array in a Linux machine, you must specify the filesystem type as XFS. If you don't, it won't mount:

root@linuxmachine:~# mount /dev/sdb4 /mnt/data
mount: unknown filesystem type 'linux_raid_member'

    * Specify XFS as the filesystem type with the -t switch:

root@linuxmachine:~# mount -t xfs /dev/sdb4 /mnt/data

    * Then you can see the data:

root@linuxmachine:~# ls /mnt/data
drwxrwxrwx    2 root     root           22 Feb 13 18:43 FTPTest1
drwxrwxrwx    2 root     root            6 Jan 15 02:39 FTPTest2
drwxrwxrwx   12 root     root         4096 Mar 18 14:36 Share
drwxrwxrwx    2 root     root            6 Mar 13 11:52 restricttest










    * The RAID5-capable units all use similar RAID5 methods. The following has been confirmed for Linkstation Quad:

The starting sector of the raid array:

root@linuxmachine# fdisk -l
Device    Boot Start     End       Blocks    Id System
/dev/sda1      63        771119    385528+   83 Linux
/dev/sda2      771120    1044224   136552+   82 Linux swap
/dev/sda3      1044225   312223276 155589526 83 Linux
/dev/sda4      312223277 312576704 176714    83 Linux

    * These are DISK1 partition tables:
          o the /dev/sda1 is for system files (rootfs) which is RAID1.
          o the /dev/sda3 is data area which is: RAID1,5.
          o others are not RAID.
    * T block size: 4096bytes
    * parity rotation: left-symmetric

Message Edited by PCPiranha on 09-29-2009 02:52 PM

[Shatinwater]

   

Finally, I got a Linux PC setup with Fedora 11 and I have the first 1.5T SATA hooked up.

However, the partition table is slightly different.

 

Disk /dev/sdb: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1         125     1004031   83  Linux
/dev/sdb2             126         748     5004247+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb4             749      182401  1459127722+   5  Extended
/dev/sdb5             749         873     1004031   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb6             874      182266  1457039241   83  Linux

Command (m for help): q

[root@localhost ~]# mount -t xfs /dev/sdb6 /mnt/disk1_6
mount: /dev/sdb6: can't read superblock
[root@localhost ~]#

Should I mount /dev/sdb6 or /dev/sdb4 ? 

 

Thanks !

[Colin137]

Well, if the disks were in RAID5, you'll need to use the Linux software raid utility (mdadm) to mount them. As you can see from your fdisk -l output, the largest partition is /dev/sdb6, this is the partition with the data RAID. So put at least 3 of the drives in the system, and use mdadm to assemble and mount the array. If you just try mounting /dev/sda6, it won't work, because it's not a regular filesystem, it's a raid member.

 

I haven't personally had experience with mdadm, but there should be a lot of info about it online.