Monday 15 September 2008

RAID 0 Recovery - RunTime RAID Reconstructor Works!

We have a pair of 75GB WD Raptors on the bench.

For prior recoveries, we have used RunTime's GetDataBack for NTFS. We have had amazing success with their product.

The pair of Raptors were striped. That is, they were configured in a RAID 0 array for speed.

Now, something has burped. All of the tables and RAID array configuration were toasted.

So, we downloaded both the RAID Reconstructor and Captain Nemo by Runtime to test the drives for recovery.

RAID Reconstructure discovered and setup the RAID array into a small image file that subsequently gets opened by Nemo. With Nemo, we were able to get full access to the data.

The drives themselves were somewhat stable, though they seemed to hang up once in a while and require some assistance to restart the recovery process.

In the recovery process, what is the first folder on the system that we will go for?

For us, it is the Documents/My Documents folder because that is where data tends to be stored that is critical to the organization. If the client indicates that data is in an accounting program, we will go to that program's data folder first. The desktop would be further down the list.

Though, we make sure in our initial interviews to ask where any critical data may be just in case.

When it comes to disks that may not be too stable, we will go through the list one by one until the disk or disks no longer respond. We will toss them into the freezer for an overnight visit there, then try again in the morning.

For the most part, we have been very successful, and thanks to Runtime, our odds of recovering data barring a physical failure of the disk or disks, are pretty darn good.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

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