DROBO Nas Recovery

[higgsboson]

I have got a case of NAS -RAID recovery. NAS box is from drobo. It has 8TB hard disks in Raid 5 ( total 5 nos)
Customer has tried UFS explorer and Reclaime with support from respective teams directly , however both softwares and there tech support aren't successful.
Can someone who has worked on DROBO help. Which software I can try ?
Thanks.

[einstein9]

Its not the software thing, the Drobo Raid structure, totally diff. than the others... not as easy as it looks (based on my experience with many cases).

[higgsboson]

Its not the software thing, the Drobo Raid structure, totally diff. than the others... not as easy as it looks (based on my experience with many cases).

hi einstein9 Thanks a lot for your help.
Now I have understood this is not normal raid case which can be solved by commercial softwares. It needs deeper knowledge of raids ,file systems and experience as well.
I will first get commercial approval from customer. I will have to outsource this work to someone who will solve case remotely.

[einstein9]

@ higgsboson

not gonna be easy or cheap am sure... I hate those units.. never been easy

all the best

[DR-Kiev]

I like those units. Can i have a look remotely ? What about hard drives physical condition ?

[higgsboson]

I like those units. Can i have a look remotely ? What about hard drives physical condition ?

Hi Thanks DR-Kiev

I know you are top Raid experts , this might not be as complex for you considering your vast experience.
Unfortunately customer has decided to abort recovery as it is going beyond there budget.But I will update you again as I am following up with them.

[lcoughey]

In the future, it would be helpful to provide details about why data recovery is needed for the Drobo, rather than list what programs were run.

[higgsboson]

In the future, it would be helpful to provide details about why data recovery is needed for the Drobo, rather than list what programs were run.

Yes this drobo box was only 4 month old. Customer is professional photographer. He moved all data of in nas box. But now there is some issue with NAS electronics and it is failed. Putting disks in another drobo unit might not have worked since configuration and encryption keys (may be) will be different.Hence they tried recovery attempt.

[einstein9]

In the future, it would be helpful to provide details about why data recovery is needed for the Drobo, rather than list what programs were run.

Yes this drobo box was only 4 month old. Customer is professional photographer. He moved all data of in nas box. But now there is some issue with NAS electronics and it is failed. Putting disks in another drobo unit might not have worked since configuration and encryption keys (may be) will be different.Hence they tried recovery attempt.

>> you can always Clone and try... ,,, In Synology >>> works (tested in few models)

[higgsboson]

In the future, it would be helpful to provide details about why data recovery is needed for the Drobo, rather than list what programs were run.

Yes this drobo box was only 4 month old. Customer is professional photographer. He moved all data of in nas box. But now there is some issue with NAS electronics and it is failed. Putting disks in another drobo unit might not have worked since configuration and encryption keys (may be) will be different.Hence they tried recovery attempt.

Yes cloning is a must for mission critical recoveries.
In this case 4 hard disks each 8TB was used. Customer was not ready to spend money and definately not diagnostic charges..
So it is totally impratical to buy so much expensive disks perform cloning and diagnostics totally free of cost.

[lcoughey]

Yes cloning is a must for mission critical recoveries.

No exceptions

In this case 4 hard disks each 8TB was used. Customer was not ready to spend money and definately not diagnostic charges..
So it is totally impratical to buy so much expensive disks perform cloning and diagnostics totally free of cost.

Assuming that you claim to be a professional, the best response would be to turn down the case. Even now, when you return the drives, they could cause you a lot of grief if they take it somewhere else and it is claimed that the data is not recoverable because the RAID meta data was corrupted by the previous recovery attempt.

That said, Drobo users tend to be some of the cheapest data recovery clients. They jump on Drobo because it allows for a cheap way to have a RAID setup that can grow as they need it, but it comes at a huge expense should that RAID fail.

[higgsboson]

Yes cloning is a must for mission critical recoveries.

No exceptions

In this case 4 hard disks each 8TB was used. Customer was not ready to spend money and definately not diagnostic charges..
So it is totally impratical to buy so much expensive disks perform cloning and diagnostics totally free of cost.

Assuming that you claim to be a professional, the best response would be to turn down the case. Even now, when you return the drives, they could cause you a lot of grief if they take it somewhere else and it is claimed that the data is not recoverable because the RAID meta data was corrupted by the previous recovery attempt.

That said, Drobo users tend to be some of the cheapest data recovery clients. They jump on Drobo because it allows for a cheap way to have a RAID setup that can grow as they need it, but it comes at a huge expense should that RAID fail.

Dear Luke
Why non approval of a single case will cause me a grief ? Its normal , not every client is capable to spend money , in USA or Europe paying capacity is more. But in developing countries and APAC region cost of recovery is less than 25% than international standards.
Client has decided to abort recovery and they are not going anywhere as businesses have already suffered due to lockdown .

[lcoughey]

It costs nothing but machine time to image client drives that are presumably healthy.