Data recovery issues

[HeroRareheart]

A while ago I had 3 SSD's in my server in a RAID5. I only had a hardware RAID card so I think I created a virtual drive consisting of each singular SSD effectively passing through the drive to the OS then created a RAID5 array in Ubuntu. I replaced the OS and drives with a bunch of HDD's and pulled all the data I wanted to keep off of the SSD's and placed it on a flash drive. Unfortunately for me I left the ONE BACKUP of my Minecraft server on the flash drive then a month later forgot it was there before repurposing the drive. It's now quite some time later and I'm getting around to recovering the date but I have a few issues and I'm stuck, here's what I've done so far;

 

1. I broke out my Linux Mint laptop and hooked up 2 of the SSD's via an external drive cage, I don't have all 3 anymore, and determined the drive partition type is "ddf_raid_member" with a UUID of "Dell" followed by a rectangle with numbers in it looking something like this:

Spoiler

|0 0|

|1 0|

I've seen these before but I can't quite remember what they are and I do not know if it's important.

 

2. I learned I needed to use mdadm to recreate my array and that I could gather more info with it. I ran "sudo mdadm --query --detail /dev/sd*", both drives are mounted as sda and sdb, and got the error "[device] does not appear to be an md device" for both disks.

 

3. I ran "sudo mdadm --examine /devsd*" and got this output;

Spoiler

/dev/sda:
          Magic : de11de11
        Version : 01.00.00
Controller GUID : 44656C6C:20202020:31313232:33333434:35353636:37373838
                  (Dell    1122334455667788)
 Container GUID : 44656C6C:20202020:10000060:10281F0C:4F448206:44DE7888
                  (Dell     02/21/22 00:49:58)
            Seq : 0000000f
  Redundant hdr : yes
  Virtual Disks : 1

      VD GUID[0] : 44656C6C:20202020:10000060:10281F0C:4F448206:75F4948F
                  (Dell     02/21/22 00:49:58)
         unit[0] : 0
        state[0] : Optimal, Consistent
   init state[0] : Not Initialised
       access[0] : Read/Write
         Name[0] : SSD 5
 Raid Devices[0] : 3 (0@0K 1@0K 2@0K)
   Chunk Size[0] : 128 sectors
   Raid Level[0] : RAID5
  Device Size[0] : 116654080
   Array Size[0] : 233308160

 Physical Disks : 255
      Number    RefNo      Size       Device      Type/State
         0    9d7b9ceb  116654080K                 active/Online
         1    60bc37fb  116654080K                 active/Online
         2    00f5ce9c  116654080K /dev/sda        active/Online
/dev/sdb:
          Magic : de11de11
        Version : 01.00.00
Controller GUID : 44656C6C:20202020:31313232:33333434:35353636:37373838
                  (Dell    1122334455667788)
 Container GUID : 44656C6C:20202020:10000060:10281F0C:4F448206:44DE7888
                  (Dell     02/21/22 00:49:58)
            Seq : 0000000f
  Redundant hdr : yes
  Virtual Disks : 1

      VD GUID[0] : 44656C6C:20202020:10000060:10281F0C:4F448206:75F4948F
                  (Dell     02/21/22 00:49:58)
         unit[0] : 0
        state[0] : Optimal, Consistent
   init state[0] : Not Initialised
       access[0] : Read/Write
         Name[0] : SSD 5
 Raid Devices[0] : 3 (0@0K 1@0K 2@0K)
   Chunk Size[0] : 128 sectors
   Raid Level[0] : RAID5
  Device Size[0] : 116654080
   Array Size[0] : 233308160

 Physical Disks : 255
      Number    RefNo      Size       Device      Type/State
         0    9d7b9ceb  116654080K /dev/sdb        active/Online
         1    60bc37fb  116654080K                 active/Online
         2    00f5ce9c  116654080K                 active/Online

I'm not 100% sure what all of this means but a few things don't come across as normal to me. It's saying the RAID level is 5 but according to an internet search Dell RAID cards label the partitions as ddf_raid_member even when you make a RAID array with a single drive. Could it be reading some of the data the raid card wrote and some of the data Ubuntu wrote at the same time? If not I clearly just forgot that I made this a RAID5 array with the RAID card.

 

3. I assumed I forgot how I had configured the SSD's and ran "sudo mdadm --assemble --run /dev/md0 /dev/sda /dev/sdb" which successfully assembled an array with this output;

Spoiler

mdadm: Container /dev/md0 has been assembled with 2 drives (out of 3)

 

4. I tried to mount the array with "sudo mount /dev/md0 /mnt/raid" and got this error;

Spoiler

mount: /mnt/raid: can't read superblock on /dev/md0.

 

I'm at a loss as for what to try next now. I'm thinking I could try to backup all the data on my server, it's not a lot, remove all the new HDD's and try to recreate this old array. I'd prefer not to as I'm afraid that I'll mess it up and wipe everything. I assume that if you could read the individual bits the data is all there and probably not obfuscated in any way. Is this a job for a data recovery company such as drivesavers at this point?