Hi all,

My RAID5 setup: Sans Digital TR4M enclosure with 3 x 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200s. The enclosure uses a Silicon Image 3132 PCIe port multiplier card, connects by eSATA.

First off, I've had this setup for 2 and a half years with no real problems (something made it rebuild the array once which took a very long time, but I never lost anything), but at this point I'm definitely not a fan of Sans Digital/SI, and I'm probably done relying on it. Probably going to use it as JBOD after this.

However, I have ~700GB of data I really really really don't want to lose on there. Even after throwing in a brand new 2GB HDD I had sitting around unopened SATARAID5 Manager (Silicon Image's RAID utility), "Rebuild Array" stays greyed out and only shows it as a PASS-THRU drive. I've found a few threads on tech sites with people having the same exact problem, but no solution was ever posted (great).

Has anyone ever dealt with this hardware or similar problem? Anyone have any ideas? I do have "Runtime RAID Reconstructor" but it doesn't even see the 2 drives in question, it does however see the 1.8GB listed as a pass-thru. I have a support request in with them, but after using their forum a year or two ago, I'm not expecting anything useful from them.

I did make a copy of the main folder in question back on June 3rd, but that's still 4 months of things I'd have copied there lost, so I'm really hoping I can get this array rebuilt to at least make an up-to-date backup.

Thanks.

Edit: I guess one exact question I have is to anyone that has experience with Silicon Image RAID setups... if I "Delete Array" in hopes that I can then recreate it, does that destroy the data automatically? I seem to remember it doesn't, but it's also not great to chance it, I could be wrong though.