RAID arrays are used in most enterprise servers including SAN and NAS devices as well as finding favor in many consumer products. Whether you have a failing SuperMicro SAN box running 72 6TB hard drives, or a 2-drive WD external hard drive using RAID 0, we have the expertise and resources to repair the defective hard drives, decipher the original RAID parameters, virtually rebuild the RAID array, and reunite you with your valuable data, quickly and efficiently.
We understand IT professionals prefer to resolve their issues in-house or with the support of the original manufacture. No one wants to pay for something they could have done themselves, but if the data is “life & death” we recommend bringing it to us asap. If you must play, do what the professional do, and image all of the Server or RAID disk drives. Then replace the original hard drives with the new copies and make your attempts on them, thus preserving the original RAID drive members. Be aware that most manufacture’s support staff are trained to restore your server to a boot-able state, NOT preserving the data and definitely not RAID data recovery.
Why select Magnext for your enterprise level Server & RAID data recovery?
- Unrivaled experience & recovery techniques for all levels of RAID including RAID6
- Secure, access controlled ESD compliant data recovery lab with data lockdown
- Advanced skills & procedures for VMWare, NetApp, SQL and Exchange server platforms
- Support and resources for SAS, SCSI and FC (Fibre Channel) enterprise hard drives
RAID Data Recovery Services, What causes data loss?
Losing access to the data on your RAID array can happen for a number of reasons. However there are two distinct categories of data loss that will require RAID data recovery services.
LOGICAL OR SOFTWARE ISSUES – All of the hard disk drives that make up the RAID array are functioning properly. The RAID data cannot be accessed because of damage to the file system. The operating system whether Linux, XFS, MAC or Windows, uses the file system to locate the data on the RAID array. One can think of the file system as a large index containing the location and order of all the parts of data that make up a particular file. Examples of file system damage on RAID arrays include:
| Accidental deletion | Incomplete Rebuild | RAID initialized reformatted |
| Accidental Format or FDISK | Malfunctioning controller | RAID missing drives |
| Array incomplete | Master Boot Record bad | RAID Parity error |
| Blue Screen of Death | MFT Master File Table damage | RAID rebuild error |
| Created New Volumes | Missing RAID partition | Use of Chkdsk or Utilities |
| Improper shutdown | Power Interruption Surge | Re-configured RAID |
| RAID configuration error | NTLDR is missing | RAID configuration lost |
| Replaced wrong drive | Virus Infection | Volume Reconstruction Error |
PHYSICAL ISSUES – One or more of the hard drives in your server, RAID box, SAN or NAS are NOT functioning properly. RAID 5 is created to allow the failure of one hard drive with no loss of data. However, the failure of one drive can cause the RAID to start rebuilding itself and if another hard drive in the array fails even momentarily during this process, data can become inaccessible. .
RAID Data Recovery Services, Examples
- One drive of a RAID 5 array failed 4 months previous. The defective hard drive was NOT replaced and the RAID 5 continued to operate in a degraded mode until a 2nd hard disk failed. At this point the RAID 5 now has 2 bad drives which render it totally inaccessible.
- Sometimes a single disk drive fails and the operator installed a new drive in its place and starts a rebuilt. But before completion another drive fails and the RAID goes offline. Our RAID data recovery services are your solution.
- Or we see RAID where a new drive was installed in the wrong slot and when the RAID attempted to rebuild, it corrupted itself.
We see such an enormous variety of damage that was caused after the initial failure and by the user’s recovery attempts, that we must stress the same advice, time after time; if your data is life and death, do nothing after discovering a data loss BUT send it in for Magnext’s RAID data recovery services!