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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Data Recovery Suggestions Anyone?

A

Anson Fogel

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Has anyone used a data recovery firm they like? Any specific experience recovering smoked RAID arrays (8 drives, RAID 5 in this case, looks like 2 might have failed at the same time)?

This morning, I sit down in front of the main editing/grading machine (MP), and our CalDigit HDOne primary online array is, well, offline. Reboot. Check raid shield, refresh - all drives are locked. No sign of drive failures or plugouts recently. Now working with CalDigit support, not looking good. We backup the main array weekly, but not daily - given time and the fact that its RAID and can tolerate a drive failure. Right? Well....looks like I lost about 100 hours of work from an intense week and its going to smoke 2 deadlines for clients. Live and learn. Not sure how to back it up well more often but we're sure as hell thinking about it. Data recovery here we come...

Thanks...

Your friendly neighborhood "back up even your CalDigit RAID5 data every day or make an example of yourself" friend Anson
 
i've had really good experiences with drivesavers. both single drives and raids have been recovered for my clients. Mac friendly as well.

good luck......
 
Thanks

Thanks

Thanks rick, I'll look them up.

As for hardware - its a Caldigit HDOne 16TB w/8 2TB drives, the cards is Caldigit as well Esata, the usual Caldigit HD One setup. Mac Pro leopard, 8 core, late 08, etc etc

RAID 5.

Aside from the question of recovery, there is one of backup practice and expecations - its RAID. So how often can/should one backup? Is it super rare for 2 drives to fail at the same time or the entire array to cook? Or not? Backup up the main online array often is obviously not easy. We do it once every week or two, but its not something that can be done every night easily...what do folks out there do?
 
Hi Anson, I'm not sure what stage you're at with this, but I want to say that CalDigit does have some issues with locking drives out and not allowing the user to reset them without a rebuild. This seems fine I theory, but there are times when drives can lock due to a power fluctuation or SMART anomaly, when there is actually nothing wrong. It's bad news when this happens to more than one drive in the array.

I'm not saying there is nothing wrong or this is what has happened here, but I think it's likely given the two-drive scenario. That combined with the non-recoverable drive locking on the CalDigit Element, HD One and their RAID card /RAID Shield software.

Do the drives report as being locked? Or are they powered down / plug-out in the RAID Shield? Locked drives should also have a yellow status LED, plug-outs should be red. depending on the drives' operability and how far you want to go on your own, it may be recoverable on your end. That said, I primarily run CalDigit RAIDs as well. I back them up weekly - full workstation and RAID volumes to LTO. I do daily backups of important projects or anything I spend 10 or more hours on. Many times those backups are just making a duplicate copy of project files or working folders over to another storage volume. It's saved my butt seveal times over the years to be vigilant about backups like that.
 
Just .02, it seems incredibly unlikely that 8 drives would all fail catastrophically, unless you can smell a control board melt-down, or you're not using a line conditioner.

I don't like the idea of CalDigit "optimizing" their own drives and not letting you load your own, but then they're far from affordable for me.
 
Anson,
Same problem six months ago with HDOne, last caldigit for me. God save Sonnet. I think caldigit have same problem with Raid5 managment, ask in creative cow to Mr. Jared Picune, and pray.
 
must also suggest for future practice using 1 tb drives instead of 2, lower chance of failure due to the smaller surface area. You'll probably gain better speeds too. Capacity may be more of a priority though...
 
Anson Fogel said:
Aside from the question of recovery, there is one of backup practice and expecations - its RAID. So how often can/should one backup? Is it super rare for 2 drives to fail at the same time or the entire array to cook? Or not? Backup up the main online array often is obviously not easy. We do it once every week or two, but its not something that can be done every night easily...what do folks out there do?
Click to expand...
How much data are you talking about backing-up? I know you said it's 16TB storage, but are you talking about backing-up the whole shebang, or just your most important files?

If possible, you really should back-up your project files daily. I would think weekly or bi-weekly would be fine for the majority of the drive, unless there has been a significant change in the content of the drive, in which case you should back-up accordingly.

You should back-up as often as you can afford.
 
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