Hi Mark
It all depends on the array. If its a 4 disk array with 3 active members and a hot backup then they *should* just be able to recover the data, assuming the hot backup was alive long enough to sync after the active member died. You should be able to plug a replacement disk in. A raid 5 array (without a hot backup) can tolerate a single failure. If its a 4 disk array with 4 active members and no hot backup then the data is effectively lost to mere mortals. If the data is valuable, ie mission or business critical, then I recommend a company called Vogon. (i think). If its a crashed disk platter then even they probable wont be able to help. If, however, the disk died because of the bearings etc and the platters are intact Vogon can take the platters out and put them in a new case and fingers crossed recover the data. They can work with most file systems and they can even write custom software to do the recovery. All that doesnt come cheap mind you. Budget for around the £10k mark.
Hope this helps
Stuart
-----Original Message----- From: main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Mark Rogers Sent: 29 April 2008 11:57 To: ALUG - mailing list Subject: [ALUG] OT: Recovery of data from dead HDDs in RAID array
Hopefully someone here will have some recommendations..
I have a customer with a Dell server, 4 disks in a RAID5 array, with 2 "dead" disks (I believe they have suffered hardware failures).
As they have no backups and need the data (doh!) they've asked me for advice. As far as I am concerned it's a specialist job, but my experience of specialists is that I'd rather go by recommendation than random website claims of competence. So does anyone here have any recommendations?
If they were my own disks I'd have a play with some Linux data recovery tools, but they're not so I had better not!