RAID Data Recovery

Recovering from a RAID Controller Failure

There are many reasons why a RAID goes down.  A technician will normally assume that one or more of the drives have failed.  This is a common diagnosis as the diagnostic lights on each of the drives may be blinking, the lights may have gone amber, or... 

[Read more...] RAID 5 Stale drive detection

Over the course of a week I receive several calls regarding the recovery of a RAID 5 array. In the course of the initial interrogation of a client I ask several questions regarding the state of the array, what has been done to recover the array and most... 

[Read more...] Network Attached Storage NAS and Other Nightmares

Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices have been a boon for storage technology.  What a great windfall for the industry.  Grab yourself an Open Source operating system, stick it on a prom, get yourself an inexpensive motherboard, some hard drives and... 

[Read more...] More RAID Data Recovery Posts

Exchange Recovery

Missing Exchange Data File

I had a customer recently that called saying his Network Attached Storage (NAS) device had crashed and now his Exchange Priv.edb was missing. He tried running checkdisk on it, tried several undelete and file recovery programs with no luck. The weird thing... 

[Read more...] Exchange Data Recovery Guide

First and foremost, DON’T PANIC.  I cannot remember how many times I have seen somebody (myself included) do something completely idiotic and often times irreversible because they didn’t take the time to think things through.  For example, wanting... 

[Read more...] Recovering a badly fragmented Outlook PST file after a few rounds with chkdsk The Final Installment

Welcome back!  As before, we still have the problem where chkdsk was run on a RAID with a stale drive.  We have had a brief explanation of how NTFS 5 works and how the data is stored on the volume.  Lets take a much more detailed look as to how the... 

[Read more...] More Exchange Server Recovery Posts

SNAP Server Recovery

View It Now for SNAP OS 4.X

The original SNAP NAS devices were developed by SNAP Appliance.  The operating system that was used was a flavor of BSD in concert with the file system UFS.  Although the file system looks very similar to the original UFS there were some subtle changes... 

[Read more...] Analyzing RAID parity

Last time I discussed how to find the RAID data offset for a SNAP OS 4.x RAID handler. To put it briefly it was just a simple matter of finding Cylinder Group zero on the first drive in the array and back tracking 48 sectors. Once the RAID data offset... 

[Read more...] Finding SNAP OS 4.x RAID Data Offset

If you are in this business long enough you will see everything, or will you?  Two weeks ago I received a SNAP RAID OS 4.x for recovery.  I have done a lot of these and I am pretty familiar with the data offsets, how the drives are setup, and where... 

[Read more...] More SNAP Server File System Posts

Data Recovery Solutions

Hard Drive Data Recovery Challenges

When performing hard drive data recovery, it is often a physical problem that requires the disk to be opened. We open hard drives in our clean room to prevent dust and static charges to interfere with the media. Our most commonly faced problem is head... 

[Read more...] DTI Data Recovery Now On Twitter

For all of you tweeters out there, DTI has started updating our visitors with new software upgrades, new products and new articles pertaining to data recovery, backup and storage. Stay up to date on all things happening with the team at DTI by following... 

[Read more...] Hard Drive Recovery Of Magnetic Media Explained

By now you all know that DTI data is a hard drive data recovery company that not only repairs damaged disks, but also provides data recovery software. We offer full version freeware, RAID diagnostics and file system viewers for our customers. We get a... 

[Read more...] More Data Recovery Solutions Posts

Windows Operating System How To's

Online Data Recovery Training

DTI Data Recovery is happy to announce its new online data recovery training course. Exclusive to our resellers, this course has trained hundreds of companies to make money with data recovery services. For 1 month only, DTI Data Recovery is opening this... 

[Read more...] Reload Windows Restore CD Hard Drive Data Recovery

I have been doing technical support for DTI Data Recovery for 3+ years now and there has been one constant problem across those years. Here is the scenario, a user will plug in an external hard drive and back off all of their important data to that drive... 

[Read more...] My Files Have Disappeared

Recently I have had a situation where customers are calling to tell me that they have files that seem to have disappeared. After going through the usual questions, like are you sure you didn’t delete them, or maybe someone else deleted them? I will... 

[Read more...] More Windows How To's

Hard Drive Recovery

Failed Hard Drive Recovery From Stuck Heads

One of the most common problems facing computer users is a failed hard drive. We see all types of failed hard drives, but the most common fatal problem revolves around broken heads. If there are any issues with the platters, often times it will be the... 

[Read more...] Western Digital My Book Problem Question and Answer

Below are some more fun Q&A about hard drive recovery. I have given what I think is the best solution to these problems. As always please leave a comment if you have a question or contact me directly at 727-345-9665 ext 236. Question: I have a 1TB... 

[Read more...] Data Recovery Forum Questions Answered PST Recovery and Hard Drive Not Detected

So I trolled the Internet for topics to write about and found tons of forums with very good questions not being answered so I am going to post the questions and then give you the best possible answer I cam up with. Q: Yesterday I was cleaning out the... 

[Read more...] More Hard Drive How To Posts