A business-critical server knocked out by multiple disk failures — brought back on an expedited, round-the-clock recovery.
A manufacturing firm had lost the one server its whole operation depended on. It ran on an eight-disk RAID 6 — an array built to survive two disks failing at once — but when a third disk went down, the parity could no longer cover the loss and the array dropped offline. Production had halted, and with every hour on the clock costing money, we took the job on as an emergency: a priority recovery worked around the clock rather than through the usual queue.
All eight disks went on the bench together. Several were failing to varying degrees — typical at this stage, since the disks tend to share an age and a batch and start giving out around the same time. Three disks down on a dual-parity array left no margin whatsoever, so the aim was to pull as much as possible off every struggling disk: the fuller each image, the more the parity could do to reconstruct what the weakest disks couldn’t deliver.
Each member disk was imaged on its own, with several run in parallel to save time. The failing ones went onto DeepSpar Disk Imagers to squeeze the most out of drives on their last legs, while the PC3000 dealt with firmware-level faults. From those images we worked out the RAID 6 parameters — the stripe size, the disk order and the way the two parity sets rotated across the array — and rebuilt the array in software, leaning on the dual parity to reconstruct the data the weakest disks couldn’t fully give up. Because everything was rebuilt from the images and never the original disks, the recovery itself could do no further harm.
From the rebuilt array we checked that the whole file system — the production databases the business ran on included — was complete and opened correctly, then delivered it back on fresh media.
The full file system was recovered and handed back within 48 hours of the disks arriving, and the business was running again. It’s a blunt reminder that even a resilient array has a ceiling: disks that share an age and a batch can drop in quick succession, so a current off-array backup — plus acting the instant the first disk fails, rather than waiting — is what separates a scare from a catastrophe.
DeepSpar DDI · PC3000 — imaging and recovery carried out in-house. Every job is imaged before any recovery work begins, and the original media is never written to.
Send us your device for a free diagnostic, and tell us a little about what happened — an engineer will review it and confirm your exact quote in writing before any work begins.
Getting your data back begins with getting the device to us. Pack it up safely, pop your contact details inside, and send it over — once we’ve run the free diagnostic, we’ll confirm your exact price in writing before any work starts.
Posting it? A tracked, insured service is what we’d recommend. Rather drop it in? You’re welcome Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm — just package the device up as above first.
Want a bit more detail first? Fill in the form with more about your issue and an engineer will review it and send you a custom quote.
We’ll be in touch shortly. For anything urgent, call 0191 406 1051.
Yes — any level, controller or failed rebuild. We image every member disk read-only, recover the parameters, then rebuild the array virtually from the copies.
From £500 plus VAT, with no fix, no fee on most jobs and a fixed quote up front; emergency round-the-clock service is available too.
No. A failed rebuild is the single most common cause of permanent loss. Stop, pull the drives labelled with their bay order, and send them to us.
Start with an instant online quote, or call and talk it through with us first. You'll have a clear, fixed price before any work begins.