WD SHARESPACE RAID 5 FAILURE [ Edited ]

[Cyberblitz]

Ok... I have more information on my predicament... I have come to realise with my tinkering, with a LIVE system and the clone drives, that what has happened is the superblock has become corrupted, that the metadata has been recorded incorrectly due to an impropor shutdown of the device due to the power cut. Also, when exploring the LIVE system, it seems only the first drive has a superblock for the file system.. This really puzzles me and i don't understand why...yet!? Maybe this is why when creating an LVM you can apply an ext3 file system to try and repair it.. But as I've already discovered, there is no LVM structure in place that I can find on the LIVE system... I'm really beggining to worry that this recovery attempt might be in vein.. It would be really helpful if WD explain how they've structured the file system in the ShareSpace, but I know how useless they are with this problem and I won't be holding my breath... I have a few ideas on recovering the superblock and thus recovering the RAID.. I will keep you all posted... JUST SOME ADVICE: I WOULD REALLY RECOMMEND PURCHASING A UNINTERRUPTABLE POWER SUPPLY (UPS) DEVICE. THEY ARE MUCH CHEAPER THAN DATA RECOVERY AND SAVE YOU FROM A GREAT DEAL OF STRESS AND HASSLE. I WOULD ALSO RECOMMEND BACKING UP YOUR DATA TOO...

[Cyberblitz · Accepted solution]

Eurieka!!!!!!

Well, at a last ditch attempt, I imaged all 4 of the last paritions on each drive and played around with them in R-Studios Data Recovery software (you can trial this software for free but you can't off-load your files until you purchase a licence)..

For some reason, my drives produced a Data Volume folder when I placed them in reverse order. Now, i had tried R-Stuidos with all four of the original drives attached to the computer and got the same result but could not see any viable files, but this time the Root folder showed up with all my sub-folders, inlcuidng Public... And yes, all my files too... 

I really don't understand how i can do this when i've tirelessly tried every other method to reconstruct the array... 

I'm in the process of transferring all my files off now, which will take around 4 days to do... 

I really recommend using R-Studios with imaged files (they will image your disks too, even in the trial version) and mess around.. This would have saved me a great deal of time if I had the idea in the beginning....

[RaidLost]

I have the exact problem and have been trying R-Studio for a while now. Do you happen to remember your virtual RAID configuration settings?