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!
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!
Stuart Fox wrote:
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.
I wish! Actually, it's not my problem, and its probably in my interests to help them out, but even so I still wish people would treat their data like it matters!
If the data is valuable, ie mission or business critical, then I recommend a company called Vogon. (i think).
It'll cost enough to work around the loss of data to justify the recovery, put it that way.
Vogon, aka OnTrack. Thanks, I've spoken to them and it sounds like they'll be able to help. We'll see where it leads. (If the customer goes for it I'll report back level of success in case anyone is interested.)
They can work with most file systems and they can even write custom software to do the recovery. All that doesn’t come cheap mind you. Budget for around the £10k mark.
Just for the record, they're quoting around £8k for a standard service, up to three times that for a priority service where they work on it 24/7. Coul dbe a lot less if it turns out to be an easy recovery.
Hope this helps
Just what I was after, thanks.
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Mark Rogers -
Stuart Fox