Raid Recovery

[paulsamuelson]

I had a Snap Server 4000 with 200+ GB of data that ran into a problem. The array filled up one day, then as I was freeing up space it apparently tried to write data before it was ready and lost it's stripe. The result was a broken array and two orphans.

After reading other's experience here I knew I was SOL.

I really needed the data back so I found a place called Raid Recovery Labs www.raidrecoverylabs.com that specializes in (among many other things) Snap Server data recovery. They were wonderful to work with. They work 24x7 and kept me updated during the process. They ran into several problems with my drives (one had to go to the clean room for recovery), but were able to recover 100% of my data.

There were several painful lessons learned during the process. All of my servers are now backed up, and we have procedures in place to make sure they do not get that full again.

I hope you never have to go through anything like I did, but if you do, I highly recommend Raid Recovery Labs for recovery of Snap data.

Thank you.

Paul Samuelson

[blue68f100]

We have a local users that is in the recovery bussiness. He use to work for them in the HD dept. I would wager that they may have sent the drives to him. He has custom software for reading the arrays and is normally 25-50% cheaper than the competation.

But there is nothing like having Backups.

[rpmurray]

Originally Posted by paulsamuelson

I hope you never have to go through anything like I did, but if you do, I highly recommend Raid Recovery Labs for recovery of Snap data.

This would be more useful if you also included how much they charged you to recover that data.

[Phoenix32]

Originally Posted by rpmurray

This would be more useful if you also included how much they charged you to recover that data.

Agreed...

[admin69]

I am in a similar situation with TWO of my 4000s (separate locations, both have orphans that will not resync.).

I tried calling, PMing and emailing snap-tech and have had no luck (phone numbers are OOS). Can anyone put me in touch with Douglas? I tried his business and home phone numbers - neither in service.

Besides this RAID Recovery Labs and http://www.dtidata.com/snap_server_recovery.htm, are there any other places I can try?

I am subscribed to this thread if you post up, I'll get an email notification immediately.

Thanks much!

[snap-tech]

100% Recovered!!!

Just finished.

Total time = 28 hours


432GB of good data recovered from a 750GB raid 5

Douglas Snap-Tech


WHO'S NEXT?

[admin69]

Thanks Douglas - this is excellent news!!!

For those keeping up with my adventure here is the scenario:

My 4000(s) likely had been powered down incorrectly due to recent storms from hurricane activity. (I don't live near the coast but the remnants usually generate strong thunderstorms in my area.)

At work my 4000 (300GB Seagates in RAID5, cable select, 256MB RAM) disk check would fail at 5% and drive 2 was orphaned (it would not show the remaining three drives being in a "degraded" state or I would have replaced / rebuilt drive 2). My problems were twofold on this server, SpinRite stopped running on drive 4 (could never read the drive again) and SpinRite found numerous errors on drive 2 at the MBR (was able to fix those). This Snap was not allowing me to configure the failure notification section - it kept telling me "address could not be deleted" when I was trying to add an e-mail address [when I back-revved the OS from 4.0.855 to 4.0.830, the addresses I had set a couple years ago appeared and could be modified - very strange]. More importantly, there was an incorrect IP address set for the APC UPS used to signal the Snap server (graceful shutdown not enabled). I had an old backup of this 4000 on another (third) 4000 so I replaced the drives with new 250GB Seagates (after checking them with SpinRite), fired up S2S and waited 3+ days for the data to copy.

My home 4000 (250GB Western Digital in RAID5, cable select, 256MB RAM) has the drives Douglas performed data recovery on - it had two orphans (drive 1 and 2 or 0 and 1; depending on how you prefer to number them). The controller for those drives is not bad. SpinRite showed no problems with any of the drives in this Snap. I had no signaling UPS set up, no failure notification configured and most importantly, no backup (shame on me).

Lessons learned:

1. I purchased a couple more 4000s. After reading through numerous posts here, I will follow the lead of others and run S2S (or RSYNC, etc.) between a pair of 4000s both at work and home.

2. I will make certain the failure notifications work on all Snap servers.

3. A signaling UPS will be installed at home.

4. I think that using SpinRite prior to installing drives and as a yearly maintenance routine is a very good practice.

5. As stated earlier in this thread, Douglas is very fair and started working on this as soon as the drives arrived at his location. I urge anyone needing data recovery or hardware repair (he helped me get my 12000 working as well) to seek him out.

[snap-tech]

Admin69 wrote "Douglas is very fair"



Boy that's an under statement!


Now the price is between me and Admin69.

Although my price compared to the big guys is like comparing today's gas price for a gallon vs price for a gallon 70 years ago.


That's Fair for sure

Douglas

[bitor]

Glad to see you back again snap-tech. Don't be a stranger here.
You might want to post your services in the "Snap/NAS Classifides" for all to read and know. http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/forumdisplay.php?f=84

bitor

[geoswrtz]

I had a Apple XServe RAID 50 go down and contacted DTI data recovery but they could not provide any documentation that they had a certified class 100 clean room. I also looked at some companies in Denver in including RAID Recovery Labs and appears they are doing business out of someones house. If you google their address and use the sattlelite view you can clearly see its a house. I also think that they are outsourceing to a company in Russia called Sysdev software along with another company called Datatechlabs.

[blue68f100]

If your HD is to a point where they have to put it in a clean room. Your data must be worth $200k+, and you have no backups at all. Which if this is the case be prepared to pay throught the nose. a price you pay for cutting your IT cost. If you ever took a HD apart and looked at the spindle setup, you will see undefinate possiablilites to center the disk.

I know of several home bussiness that are better than any lab you would use. And when it comes to the snapos there are only 2 places in the country that can actually do it. All of the others send it to them and double the price.

90+% of the HD suffer logic board failures. So you just need a huge libaray of all HD & MFG ever made, and swap parts. Once they get it up they just write it to another drive.

[raidrecoverylab]

[quote=admin69;170366]I am in a similar situation with TWO of my 4000s (separate locations, both have orphans that will not resync.).


Besides this RAID Recovery Labs and http://www.dtidata.com/snap_server_recovery.htm, are there any other places I can try?

************************* Response*******************************

Howdy, this is Craig from Raid Recovery Labs. We are the only dedicated mass storage recovery company around and would like to offer assistance. You probably have seen the post stating we are outsourcing, etc. looks to us like it is nothing more then a competitor post trying to discredit us. As a team we have been developing RAID recovery tools and techniques for many years and perform all our work in house. If you would like information regarding recovery, please feel free to contact us at 1.800.892.8302. You can ask for me directly and I can help you interpret your problem and recovery options. Be cautious when looking for recovery, if your technical ask hard questions to ensure you are speaking with a real recovery engineer.

Cheers,

Craig

[blue68f100]

If you need raid recovery service on SnapOS servers your best bet is SnapTech with Frontline recovery service, 1-866-279-2985. Douglas knows these inside and out because he did if for Quantum when they were bought out by SnapAppliance. Beside Douglas prices are 20-60% below the competation. He has special hardware and software that he wrote to strip the data off.

[bitor]

Yes, David is correct. Call SnapTech and he will help. It would be nice if SnapTech could leave his information in the Snap/NAS Classifides area for all to see and be able to contact him.

bitor

[geoswrtz]

[quote=raidrecoverylab;170622]

Originally Posted by admin69

I am in a similar situation with TWO of my 4000s (separate locations, both have orphans that will not resync.).


Besides this RAID Recovery Labs and http://www.dtidata.com/snap_server_recovery.htm, are there any other places I can try?

************************* Response*******************************

Howdy, this is Craig from Raid Recovery Labs. We are the only dedicated mass storage recovery company around and would like to offer assistance. You probably have seen the post stating we are outsourcing, etc. looks to us like it is nothing more then a competitor post trying to discredit us. As a team we have been developing RAID recovery tools and techniques for many years and perform all our work in house. If you would like information regarding recovery, please feel free to contact us at 1.800.892.8302. You can ask for me directly and I can help you interpret your problem and recovery options. Be cautious when looking for recovery, if your technical ask hard questions to ensure you are speaking with a real recovery engineer.

Cheers,
Craig

If you are not technical ask the following questions:
Where are you located?
Can I bring my RAID to your office?
How many years have you been in business?
Do you infact have a class 100 clean room and can you provide the documentation to prove it?
What is your turn around time?

[crystallake]

I want to cry. I have all of my family's videos, photos, etc on a 4100. The fan on the power supply started making noise last night so I checked the GUI disk screen and it reported the raid array green and the single stand by disk green. This morning it stopped responding. I rebooted and got the following from the server/config/debug screen

12/02/2008 11:42:04 Command: info device

Logical Device: 1000E Position: 0 JBOD Size (KB): 0 Free (KB): 0 Private Unmounted
Label:Private Contains system files only
Unique Id: 0x2DAD87385FD11FC5 Mount: /priv Index: 12 Order: 255
Partition: 1000E Physical: 1000F FS Size (KB): 0 Starting Blk: 0 Private
** Invalid Physical Device Id: 1000F

Logical Device: 10016 Position: 0 JBOD Size (KB): 32296 Free (KB): 32208 Private Mounted
Label:Private Contains system files only
Unique Id: 0x4A07BB895007746E Mount: /pri2 Index: 13 Order: 0
Partition: 10016 Physical: 10017 FS Size (KB): 32768 Starting Blk: 515 Private
Physical: 10017 Drive Slot: 2 IDE Size (KB): 117220352 Fixed

Logical Device: 10008 Position: 1 ORPHAN Size (KB): 0 Free (KB): 0 Public Unmounted
Labelrive2 Orphan from SNAP_DATA_VAULT - RAID5
Unique Id: 0x66504C7A71F15DF0
Partition: 10008 Physical: 1000F ORPHAN Size (KB): 0 Starting Blk: 0 Public
** Invalid Physical Device Id: 1000F

Logical Device: 60000 Position: 2 RAID_BROKEN Size (KB): 232932224 Free (KB): 0 Public Unmounted
Label:RAID5 Large data protection disk
Unique Id: 0x66504C7A71F15DF0
Partition: 10010 Physical: 10017 R 60000 Size (KB): 116466112 Starting Blk: 94152 Public
Physical: 10017 Drive Slot: 2 IDE Size (KB): 117220352 Fixed


------------
Command executed without error.

and the disk status page now shows

Click on the disk icon to view the disk log.
Disk Status Total<MB> Free<MB> Files
Drive2 - Orphan from SNAP_DATA_VAULT - RA
Error. Unknown disk operation error.
View the disk log for details. Unknown Unknown Unknown
RAID5 - Large data protection disk
Error. Invalid device/drive number.
View the disk log for details. 227,472 Unknown Unknown

Anyone have any ideas? It is running 4.0.860 on hardware 2.2.1 Bios is 2.4.437. It has been upgraded to larger drives about 18 months ago.

[admin69]

Originally Posted by crystallake

I want to cry. I have all of my family's videos, photos, etc on a 4100. The fan on the power supply started making noise last night so I checked the GUI disk screen and it reported the raid array green and the single stand by disk green. This morning it stopped responding. I rebooted and got the following from the server/config/debug screen

Anyone have any ideas? It is running 4.0.860 on hardware 2.2.1 Bios is 2.4.437. It has been upgraded to larger drives about 18 months ago.

SNAPTECH is your friend. He is out of town quite a bit but if you PM him several times, he will contact you. He got 100% of my data back on my 4000 that crapped out.

I have recently sent some SCSI drives in a RAID 5 configuration to Craig @ Raid Recovery Labs (didn't even know he posted up here). It is a very difficult job and he made me feel more comfortable with their abilities than others I called. I would have sent them to SNAPTECH too but couldn't reach him quickly and they needed immediate attention... I'll keep all posted on how that turns out.

Hope the .02 benefits someone.

[raidrecovery01]

Hi crystallake!

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If you want to recover your data then you can trust raid-recovery-online.com