Rebuild Interrupted — Array Visible but Empty

When the Volume Survives but the Data Disappears

Sometimes the rebuild finishes halfway, the volume remounts, and everything looks fine — until you open a folder.
Empty.
The array came back online, but the file system didn’t.
This halfway state is dangerous — one false move, and usable parity becomes overwritten noise.

What You See

• Controller shows Virtual Disk Online but capacity mis-reported.
• File system mounts blank or reads as RAW.
• Logs record Rebuild Aborted or Parity Check Incomplete.
• SMART errors on replacement drive show reallocation events.
• OS may prompt to “initialize new disk.”

Why It Happens

• Interrupted rebuild left partial parity writes.
• File-system metadata blocks overwritten by incomplete rebuild.
• Controller re-synced offsets without verifying FS headers.
• Background initialization resumed after power loss.
• Stale cache flushed after incorrect drive re-add.

What NOT To Do

• Do not mount the volume read-write.
• Do not run CHKDSK/fsck to recover files.
• Do not delete and recreate partitions.
• Do not resume rebuild without verifying sector alignment.
• Do not apply firmware updates mid-triage.

What You CAN Do

• Clone all members to preserve current state.
• Map parity stripe layout to determine offset damage.
• Extract file system metadata from remaining good members.
• Validate sector 0 through 4096 for boot record persistence.
• Use binary recovery to restore MFT or inode structure offline.

Diagnostic Overview

• Array Type: RAID 6 — Dual Parity Set
• Controller State: Rebuild Interrupted / Volume Online but Empty
• Likely Cause: Partial Parity Writes or File-System Metadata Loss
• Do NOT: Mount or Write to the Volume Before Analysis
• Recommended Action: Clone All Drives, Rebuild Parity Offline, Recover Metadata via ADR Imaging Suite