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RAR / Every level and layout / RAID 1E, 5E and 5EE

RAID 1E · RAID 5E · RAID 5EE · ServeRAID · Adaptec · compaction · integrated hot spare

RAID 1E, 5E and 5EE recovery. IBM's and Adaptec's own layouts, with the mirror rotated or the spare folded into the stripes.

Three layouts from the ServeRAID and Adaptec world that the generic RAID pages do not cover. RAID 1E stripes mirrored data across an odd number of drives, so that each block's copy sits one drive along; it tolerates one failure, and sometimes more if they are not adjacent. RAID 5E keeps a hot spare's worth of space at the end of every member, and RAID 5EE interleaves that spare space through the stripes; after a failure the controller compacts the array into the spare space, and the layout on the drives changes. A reconstruction of any of them needs the rotation pattern, and for 5E and 5EE needs to know whether compaction ran, because a compacted array and an uncompacted one with the same drives have different maps. They arrive from IBM xSeries and System x servers and older Adaptec cards, often after the controller has died and nobody can find another. A set of two to four members is £500 + VAT upwards after the free look, fixed in writing, 5–10 days at the bench.

Free first lookOne fixed figure in writingNo data, no bill on most jobsReturn postage paid

Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
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Power down. Label every slot before a drive comes out. Do not rebuild, do not force a drive online, do not import or clear a foreign configuration, do not initialise, and do not run chkdsk, fsck, zpool import -F or mdadm --create on the members. A rebuild reads every sector of every survivor and writes to the replacement; each of the commands writes to the drives. On images, all of them are reversible. On the originals, none of them is.

1E, 5E and 5EE symptoms, and what each means.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →
ServeRAID controller dead; no replacementThe layout is on the drives. Imaged and reassembled without the card.Everyday job
One member failed; array compactingDo not let it finish onto a weak survivor. Power down.Do not delay
Second failure during compactionTwo layouts on the drives at once. Every member imaged.Do not delay
Two adjacent drives failed on 1EPast the tolerance. Both imaged.Do not delay
Configuration cleared on an old cardVendor metadata gone. Geometry from the data.Do not delay
Drives moved to a newer controller; not recognisedDifferent layout family. Do not initialise.Do not delay
Packing it and posting it: power down, photograph the controller's screen or export its log, and write the slot number on each drive with a marker before it comes out of its carrier. Send every member of the set, including the one that failed first; it holds the stripes the rebuild never reached. Each drive travels in an anti-static bag inside its own padding, in a box with nothing able to move. Send the controller if it was replaced or holds an encryption key; otherwise it stays. Insure the parcel for what the data is worth, use a tracked service, and know that the posting address is not printed anywhere on this site; it arrives by email in reply to the form, with a booking sheet to print; the sheet inside the parcel is what matches it to your enquiry when it is opened. Or hand the sealed parcel in at the nearest of ten drop-off points, your name on the outside and the sheet inside; say where you are on the form and it comes by email. We pay the postage home either way. The whole of it is written up on the guide to packing and posting.

What it tolerates, what fails it, and what the bench has to find.

RAID 1EThree or more drives, each block written to two of them, the copy one drive along. Adjacent drives share blocks; non-adjacent ones do not, which is why two non-adjacent failures can survive and two adjacent cannot.
RAID 5EA RAID 5 with a spare's worth of space reserved at the end of every member instead of a separate spare drive. After a failure the controller compacts the array into that space, and from then on the stripes are laid out differently.
RAID 5EEThe same idea with the spare space interleaved through the stripes rather than kept at the end, so that every drive shares the load. Compaction after a failure changes the map more thoroughly still.
CompactionWhether it ran, and how far it got, decides the layout on the drives. The controller's metadata records it; where the metadata is gone, the bench finds the point where the map changes.

What a reconstruction has to determine.

Describe yours to us →
Unknown Where it is read from What goes wrong when it is guessed
Rotation pattern (1E)Metadata; identical content one drive alongCopies assembled from the wrong drives
Spare placement (5E/5EE)Metadata; the reserved region's positionData read from spare space
Compaction stateMetadata; the point where the layout changesTwo layouts assembled as one
Order, stripe, rotationMetadata; XOR across candidate ordersAs for RAID 5

From the parcel arriving to your files going back.

Work we have closed →
01

Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free

A case number goes on the parcel and a number on every member the day it is opened, matched to the slot you wrote on it. Each member goes on the imager its interface needs, never on a controller, and its metadata is read before a sector is: the level, the order, the stripe size, the event counts that say which member is current and which dropped out first. An engineer settles what has happened to the set and how much of it can honestly be read back. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.

Nothing to pay for lookingA single figure, put in writingNo rebuilds, no imports, no initialise
02

Every member imaged, including the one that failed first

Every drive in the set is imaged sector by sector, weak areas last, on hardware that controls every retry, with a map of what could not be read kept for each. Members with failed heads go to the clean bench first; that is the drive site's work and the same bench does it. The drive that dropped out first is imaged too, because it still holds every stripe written before it dropped, and a rebuild that stalled part-way never reached them.

Sector by sector, weak areas lastThe first-dropped member included
03

The geometry, from the metadata or from the parity

A 5E or 5EE set is proved in two halves if compaction ran: the layout before the failure, with the spare space empty, and the layout after, with the failed member's data folded into it. The bench finds the boundary from the metadata or from where parity stops agreeing, and assembles each region with its own map.

Metadata first, parity secondOrder, stripe, rotation, offset
04

Assembled in software, and repaired on the virtual volume

The set is put together from the images in software, with nothing written to any of them: the current members in, the stale member used only to fill holes a survivor could not give. The file system is checked and repaired on a copy of the virtual volume, VMFS and CSV volumes opened and the virtual machines' disks extracted, databases repaired where they need it. The originals are not touched again.

Nothing written to the imagesVirtual machines and databases opened
05

You see the file list before you pay

What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge at all. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have opened the files on a machine of your own.

No charge until you accept the figureFresh media, supplied with the job5–10 days at the bench

What arrives most often

  • The card is not needed. A dead ServeRAID with no replacement on the market is the commonest way these arrive, and the layout is on the drives.
  • Say whether compaction ran, and how far the controller said it had got. It decides the map.
  • Do not put the drives on a newer controller to see. A newer family reads them as unconfigured and offers to initialise.
  • These are old arrays on old drives. The members are often SCSI, and the drive site's SCSI page applies to them.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · RAR-2026-0611JOB LOGGED ✓

A five-drive RAID 5EE on a ServeRAID 6M in an xSeries 346, the card dead, one drive failed a year earlier and the array compacted, and a second drive failed the week the card went

All five drives came in, SCSI, with the drive site's terminated controllers doing the imaging. The failed second drive was imaged after a head swap. The controller's metadata on the survivors recorded the compaction as complete, so the compacted 5EE map was used throughout; the geometry was proved by parity across the images and the set assembled from the four current members. The NTFS volume mounted and the practice's records were copied out.

100% of the volume recovered11 days here, and back by post
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine case

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Power down and label the slots
  • Send every member, and the card if you have it
  • Say whether compaction ran and how far
  • Tell us the controller and the server

What sets us back

  • Trying the drives on a newer controller
  • Letting a compaction finish onto a weak survivor
  • Clearing the configuration
  • Initialising anything a host offers to

Questions answered before you commit.

What is RAID 1E?

Striped mirroring across an odd number of drives, each block's copy one drive along. It tolerates one failure, and two if they are not adjacent.

What is the difference between RAID 5E and 5EE?

Where the spare space lives: at the end of every member in 5E, interleaved through the stripes in 5EE. Both compact the array into that space after a failure, and the layout changes when they do.

The ServeRAID card is dead and IBM does not sell them. Are the drives readable?

Yes. The layout is on the drives; they are imaged and the set reassembled without the card.

What does it cost?

£500 + VAT upwards for two to four members after the free look, fixed in writing.

How long does it take?

5–10 days at the bench, longer where the members are SCSI drives needing donors.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

IBM and Lenovo storage →Adaptec and Microsemi →RAID 5 →RAID 10 →

Nothing gets worse while it is powered down.

Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the server off and the drives in their slots.

0800 6890668

Price my jobPacking and posting