Florida-based VLP Holdings is a family-owned and operated real estate company that has served Miami and surrounding communities for nearly five decades. The IT department uses a standalone server configured as a RAID 5 to store critical business files and accounting database records.
Miriam Velasco, vice president of VLP, contacted Secure Data Recovery Services when she began experiencing problems accessing important Quickbooks accounting files stored on the RAID server. She initially attributed access issues to a problem with the Microsoft Server OS but soon determined that professional data recovery services were required.
Diagnostic Analysis of the RAID 5
Miriam contacted our customer support team to arrange for free shipment of the server’s three Dell Constellation 500 GB hard drives to our secure data recovery lab. There, our expert technicians conducted a comprehensive analysis to evaluate the likely cause of data loss and to determine the precise steps necessary to restore access to the missing files.
Our technicians produced a detailed report on the Dell Constellation HDDs, which found that two of the three had read and reallocation errors – a common sign that an HDD has an increasing number of bad sectors on the drive platters where data can no longer be successfully stored. As a result of the storage errors, the HDDs no longer contained their unique identifier, role within the array, or status indicators for parity.
The diagnostic analysis further revealed that one of the Dell Constellation drives had become stale. This could have been related to the missing RAID metadata or something that predated the failure, such as the array being taken offline and not properly returned to service.
A stale drive is one where the data it contains as part of the RAID has become outdated, meaning that it no longer accurately pairs with or reflects the data on the other member disks. Depending on how it falls out of synchronization, a stale disk may also contain a mix of old and current data.
Delivering a Custom RAID Data Recovery Solution
Miriam gave our data recovery engineers authorization to proceed with the case. They successfully cloned each of the Dell HDDs in a certified Class 10 ISO 4 cleanroom, guaranteeing that the drives’ sensitive internal components would not suffer any additional damage during the recovery process.
Our expert developers then went to work on rebuilding the lost RAID configuration. After manually extracting the original data and recovering the original RAID parameters, they built a new array and copied over the lost data using custom utilities modified specifically for this case. All recovered data was then transferred to a secure storage server pending return shipment.
The Most Trusted Name in Professional Data Recovery
Secure Data Recovery Services has helped thousands of customers recover data from failed hard drives, solid-state drives, RAID and NAS servers, virtual drives, and mobile devices. Our engineers have the most industry-specific certifications of any provider, and we maintain a documented 96% successful recovery rate.
We’re also the only data recovery service that has FIPS-validated data handling procedures. Our technicians and data security systems undergo regular SSAE 18 SOC 1, 2, and 3 auditing to ensure that all customer data remains protected from unauthorized access and secure at every stage of the data recovery process.
Secure Data Recovery Services offers flexible data recovery options, including emergency services as well as onsite and remote recovery services for cases involving extremely sensitive information. Every customer receives a free diagnostic and no-obligation price estimate, and they pay nothing until their data is recovered. That’s our “no data, no recovery fee” guarantee.
Call us at 800-388-1266 for a free consultation or to open a new recovery case. Our customer support team is available 24/7 to assist you.
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