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RAID data recovery leaps forward
Posted by Mark on Sep 23, 2008
Failure of a RAID system can seem like the end of the world for the stressed out people trying to find out what is wrong whilst fending off the attentions of the accounts department, members of the board of directors and probably people from every department who have data stored on the RAID and want to access is “now – thank you very much”.
Traditionally RAID data recovery has been a protracted process because of the greater complexity and the lack of flexibility in those recovery tools that are publicly available. A faster service could sometimes be achieved only by increasing risk by not securing data before starting work.
Now this has changed with Altirium’s latest RAID recovery software the process can be completed within a few hours.
The key to all data recovery is to secure all available data as early in the process as is practicable. I the case of the first RAID since the latest software was made available to the technical team, this meant transferring the data from 14 x 320GB hard disks and backing it up before work could begin. Undertaking this work on 14 separate systems writing data to LTO Ultrium 3 data cartridges this “imaging” process was started and completed and within approximately 3 hours all data was secure and the rebuilding process started.
In this example case the entire RAID was processed and rebuilt on a new disk array in just over 5 hours, at which point all files were accessible and data could be backed up to tapes for return, or simply returned on the new disk array.
This speed of service was made possible by two factors. First improvements to Altirium’s RAID software to enable high speed rebuilding. Second, the absence of any file system problems that would have required additional examination and processing.
Altirium do not claim that this technique allows rapid recovery from all RAID problems, but for quite a number RAIDs data recovery could now be completed within hours rather than days.
