Data Emergency Recovery Guide for Storage Media Failure

Just as it is critical to have an emergency evacuation plan in the event there is a fire at your company, it is equally important to have a contingency plan to backup your data when a server fails. How you react in the first couple of minutes is critical. When a data storage media failure occurs, many system administrators take it upon themselves to fix the problem, believing that is what they are getting paid for. Unfortunately, the tools they have available often consist of off-the-shelve utilities that really will not do the job. Often times, out of frustration, administrators will then take the ill-advised step of opening hard drives or trying to re-initialize RAID arrays. In the majority of cases, rather than solving the problem, such actions only worsen it. Bottom line: a hasty approach to data recovery, such as that just described, diminishes the likelihood of even a trained professional being able to salvage the data with any success, thereafter.

Frequently, when storage media units arrive at our lab they are unrecoverable because well intentioned administrators attempted a job beyond the scope of his or her training. You greatly increase the chances of recovering critical data from an outage when you leave the recovery work to the experts. If your building caught on fire, you certainly would not try to become a firefighter, you would evacuate the premises. Because of the unpredictable nature of media failure, it makes sense to have a data-recovery plan in place and thoroughly understood by all. A good recovery program includes knowing how and from where to access alternative sources of information, through pre-existing and diligently tested procedures.

Rule No. 1 is never to attempt data recovery by yourself. This can lead to irretrievable data loss and make it more difficult or even impossible for our data-recovery engineers to recover your critical data. It is always best to let those who are trained to recover data do their job.

Instead of trying to fix the problem, carefully remove the drives from the computer (if RAID, number the drives). If you do not know how to remove the drives call SalvageData, we will walk you through the process. If you do not feel confident enough attempting to remove the drive yourself, simply ship the entire computer to us following the same instructions for shipping a single drive unit (Please review our packaging and shipping requirements).

When you experience a hard drive or RAID failure and need data recovery, call a SalvageData recovery professional.

Here are some steps to take that will increase your chances of a successful recovery:

• Don't Panic.
• Turn off the power.
• Do not re-install any software.
• Do not restart the machine as damage could spread or data could be overwritten.
• Remove the hard drive (if a RAID array be sure to number them accordingly)
• Do not open the hard disk, or try to repair it yourself
• Do not try to reconfigure or re-initialize the RAID array.