Data Clinic Case Study

Recovery of data from 6th Generation HP ML370 Server

HP Proliant ML370

Job

Recovery and reconstruction of files and folders including several SQL databases from a failed HP ML370 series generation 6 RAID server.

Server Details

14 Disk HP Proliant ML370, Generation 6
The server was split in an 8 disk RAID 6, 4 disk RAID 5 and a two disk RAID 1.
Client location was Glasgow, Scotland. Data privacy issues required the recovery to be completed onsite.

The Fault

After an unknown problem, the client’s server had entered a rebuild, which had failed. Rebooting the server resulted in a blue screen and a loss of RAID configuration information.

All data on the RAID was now inaccessible with no data volumes being shown. It was also unknown how far through the rebuild the RAID had got before the rebuild had failed, so there may have been data corruption issues too

Other Notes

The data on this server was critical to the day to day running of the business, which was now at a stand still since the server failure. This was therefore an emergency job, completed overnight and onsite at the client’s central Glasgow location.

Background

The Hewlett Packard Proliant ML370 server is a very common RAID enabled fileserver that has gone through many generations as it’s evolved. Well known for it’s high quality of build, it has many excellent features and can be greatly expanded to accommodate extra features such as additional hard drives and RAM.
ML370 hard drive

The Recovery and Restoration

Analysis of the ML370 showed that it was running an 8 disk RAID 6, 4 disk RAID 5 and a 2 disk RAID 1. The RAID 1 was not really important to the client as it only contained the Operating System and could therefore be easily replaced. Both the RAID 6 and RAID 5 contained important data which needed to be recovered and once the disks has been analysed, repaired where necessary and cloned, the config information for both the RAID 6 and RAID 5 was determined. Virtual RAIDs were created in software and access the to data achieved.
Although the server had failed in its automatic rebuild process and fallen over within minutes, some data had rebuilt which had obviously resulted in some data corruption. It soon became apparent that two SQL databases had been corrupted quite severely and were now unusable. Using a technique similar to SQL injections, we were able to reintroduce the correct data over the top of the corrupted data in most cases. We were then able to repair the SQL databases and bring the whole server back online.

Time Taken

Two Data Clinic staff working onsite overnight. 16 hours.

Links

Learn more about Data Clinic’s RAID data recovery services here: http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-raid-recovery/
Data Clinic’s HP Recovery Page: http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hp-raid-data-recovery-services/
Learn more about Data Clinic’s RAID and Server support contracts here: http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/raid-and-server-support-services-2/
Data Clinic’s Scotland office is located in Glasgow: http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-glasgow/

Data Clinic Reviews

Data Clinic Ltd

4.5

Jacob Greenwood

14:38 30 Mar 18

5* customer service! Recovered my father's book from an old drive, also retrieved some long forgotten about photos. Simply cant put a price on something like that.

Jarek Roover

12:21 30 Jul 18

Go there if you lost your data

Tony Cowgill

15:56 10 Apr 13

We've used Data Clinic twice now - once for my son's laptop which held all his University work and suddenly seemed to just die, that was recovered with ease. And then secondly in connection with work when our office computer system backups were somehow corrupted. These people really know their stuff - they are very helpful and professional and quick! Thanks so much for everything.

Rob Deighton

11:33 09 Dec 16

Happy to recommend Data Clinic to anybody that suffered Data Loss on storage Media. The guys were extremely helpful and knowledgeable and made the recovery of our valuable data a stress free experience.

George Thorpe

12:19 20 Feb 14

My company provides IT support to approximately 60 Yorkshire based companies ranging from small 10-15 users up to Enterprise sized organizations. Due to disk failure a client recently lost their entire database. We contacted Data Clinic and within hours a representative was onsite, several hours later the drive was returned, again in person by Data Clinic Manchester. I would not hesitate contacting them again, outstanding service in a market that can mean life or death to a business. 10 stars if there was an option!

Kieran Collins

21:02 25 Oct 18

Fantastic. Could not fault them at all, Brilliant, 10 year old iMac full of data and they had the data back to me in 72 hours. Communication via e-mail was fast, clear and superb.

David Tett

14:36 24 Aug 18

Sent them a 4tb WD Red hard drive to recover. They quoted me £588 incl VAT and recovery media. I was a bit sceptical so I asked for it to be returned. First they sent me the wrong hard drive (a 500GB WD Blue). Not too careful about data protection then. When I eventually got the drive back it had been totally stripped and outer casing binned (would have been nice to know about this beforehand). I decided to send it to Curry's PC World. They quoted £90 + recovery media. All data recovered and both hard drives returned within a week. What more is there to say.

Elle Sweet

22:12 20 Aug 18

Awful communication, I was constantly chasing them for updates on my device. My device was with them days before work was started on it. The data this company couldn’t retrieve was later retrieve by Apple. Waste of a £110.

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