Daniel Aviles contacted Secure Data Recovery Services through one of our local offices in Miami, Florida. An immigrant from Cuba, Mr. Aviles has lived in Florida for many years, during which he has preserved a large collection of images, videos, and other documents that chronicle his family history both in Cuba and in the United States.
It was when these cherished personal and family records were threatened that Mr. Aviles contacted us for help. He stored these documents and other files on a personal server containing two 8 TB Western Digital Red NAS hard drives configured as a RAID 0. He lost access to the server after an electrical failure took it offline.
Assessing the Damage
Power surges, outages, or other electrical issues can create a variety of failure scenarios. Only a detailed physical examination can determine the exact cause. Our customer support team guided Mr. Aviles through the induction process by gathering as much information as possible about the circumstances of the failure and scheduling free delivery of his failed media to our lab.
Our expert engineers conducted a free and comprehensive diagnostic to evaluate the scope of damage to the Western Digital NAS drives and what would be required to recover Mr. Aviles’ lost data. Our analysis uncovered damage to the drives’ printed circuit boards, moderate media damage to the platter surfaces, file system corruption, and lost RAID configuration.
Finding the Right Solution
The extent of the damage meant that our engineers and developers needed to create a custom solution to restore Mr. Aviles’ lost data. Their first step was to restore access to the failed drives, which required invasive techniques to repair chip damage on the PCB. Next, our engineers needed to burnish the drive platters to remove scoring that made them unreadable.
Once access was restored, we imaged the drives in a certified Class 10 ISO 4 cleanroom to preserve all data in its original state. This specialized environment prevents additional damage to sensitive internal drive components by filtering out any airborne particulates that could interfere with normal drive functions.
Excavating Lost Treasures
After addressing the physical damage to Mr. Aviles’ drives, our engineers needed to resolve the file system corruption and rebuild the array. Drives configured as a RAID 0 “stripe” or write data in different blocks across multiple drives. However, the lack of mirroring means the server has no redundancy. All lost data has to be manually pieced together.
Our developers resolved the file system corruption and successfully destriped the drives. Next, they stitched together the NTFS file system and reconstructed the original volume architecture. Finally, our team employed industry-leading data recovery and forensic utilities to extract all available user data.
RAID Data Recovery Specialists
All Mr. Aviles’ lost files were successfully extracted to our secure storage servers. We recovered more than half a million files totalling nearly 195 GB. All recovered data was then transferred to a FIPS-validated and hardware-encrypted 4 TB SecureDrive BT external storage device for secure return shipment.
Our data recovery team has driven innovation in hard drive recovery, SSD recovery, and RAID recovery for more than a decade. We pursue new techniques and utilities relentlessly so that we can keep pace with the rapid evolution in digital storage technology. Every new advance brings greater challenges, and we’re proud of our ability to meet them head on.
We try to remember as well that our customers might not fully understand the technical sophistication of the work we do, but they appreciate the end result. As Mr. Aviles put it: “I lost photos, videos, and more important to me as a Cuban immigrant, my family history. You can’t put a price on that. The Secure Data Recovery Services team restored all my files.”
Secure Data Recovery Services knows how devastating data loss can be. That’s why we’ve worked so hard to become the most trusted name in the industry. All our customers get a free diagnostic and no-obligation price quote, and we guarantee our results. If for any reason we can’t recover your lost data, you pay nothing. That’s our “No Data, No Recovery Fee” pledge.
Call us at 800-388-1266 to speak to our award-winning customer support team for more information or to open a new data recovery case.
