Re: recommendations for data recovery?

[Cal Frye <cjf () CALFRYE COM>]

Run, don't walk, to the RAID controller manufacturer to see if there's any
tricks they can perform in this situation. I don't believe Apple makes these.

The IBM RAID adapters used in the older Netfinity servers did this to us a
couple of times, then a bit too late they released a procedure for recovering
the second drive after the controller marked it as failed -- it turned out to be
a controller error rather than a drive failure, if I recall correctly. Didn't
stop us from rebuilding from flawed backup tapes, though. I feel your pain.

--Cal Frye, Network Administrator, Oberlin College
 www.ouuf.org, www.calfrye.com
GnuPG ID 43061C16, Public key http://www.calfrye.com/cfrye.asc

  "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. " - Albert
Einstein (1879-1955)


Christopher E. Cramer wrote:
> Let me start by apologizing to those who receive multiple copies of this,
> but we're in need of a bit of help.
>
> One of the departments at Duke has been using an Apple XServe RAID and
> ran into a problem.  As I understand it, one of the drives went bad.
> While restoring the replacement, a second drive went bad.  The department
> was able to send the disks off to a data recovery shop which was able
> to repair at least one of the bad drives.  So, in principle, we have
> the N-1 disks available to restore the data.  The problem is that the
> XServe RAID is not recognizing and incorporating the drives into the
> array.
>
> We're working with Apple on addressing the problem, however, in the
> meantime we are starting to plan for the contingency that the drives
> can't be reintegrated into the RAID.  We have spoken with the initial
> data recovery shop about the possibility of taking the data off of all
> N-1 disks and performing the striping and parity checking necessary
> to recover the original information.  Unfortunately, this appears to
> be outside of the company's area of expertise.  Given that, we are
> looking for recommendations for data recovery companies who may have
> done something like this.
>
> If you know of anyone who has such experience, please let me know.
>
> Sincerely,
> Chris
>
> --
> Christopher E. Cramer, Ph.D.
> University Information Technology Security Officer
> Duke University,  Office of Information Technology
> 334 Blackwell St., Suite 2106, Durham, NC 27701
> PH: 919-660-7003  FAX: 919-668-2953  CELL: 919-210-0528