Case Study
Two drives down, a RAID 5 rebuilt within 24 hours.
A Dell PowerEdge T110 running Windows Server 2008 crashed when two of its four RAID 5 drives failed. A mobile technician was on site within the hour, and the array was rebuilt and the data recovered in our Belfast laboratory the same day.
The case
A RAID 5 server, down to two live drives.
This was one of our last data recovery cases of 2016. A Dell PowerEdge T110 server, running Windows Server 2008 on a four-disk RAID 5 array, crashed completely when two of the four drives failed.
With two drives down in a RAID 5 configuration, the array had lost its fault tolerance entirely — the server was inaccessible and the business was without its data.
The recovery
From crash to rebuilt array, on-site and in the lab.
- 01
On-site within the hour
The customer called and, within an hour, a mobile technician was on site with DeepSpar's mobile imaging tools.
- 02
All four drives imaged on site
Every drive in the array was imaged on site, then taken back to our Belfast laboratory on the Ormeau Road for reconstruction.
- 03
RAID rebuilt in a virtual environment
The array was reconstructed virtually from the images using specialist software. Dell's default RAID controller for this model was known for causing complications, which made the rebuild slower going than a standard array.
The outcome
Data back in under 24 hours, at a fixed price.
The array was rebuilt and the data recovered in under 24 hours from the drives arriving in the lab. The job came in at a fixed price of around £750 + VAT.
85% of the total data on the array was recovered, and — critically — 100% of the data the customer actually needed was back in their hands.
A degraded array with a failed controller or a second failing drive is not a DIY job. Get it imaged and assessed by a lab that rebuilds RAID for a living.