SOS urgent help needed.

Guys I am in a fix as I have a critical case to solve and time is running out. Dell poweredge server of one of my client has crashed logically and is not booting up ,there is no hardware issue with any hard disks which are in Raid 5 configuration.Its file system is Linux .What should I do now as all of my raid recovery weapons are windows based and can't run in live USB mode.Since there is no hardware failure and I have only 24 hours to recover , I can't take all SAS disks Image them and then run these tools. Client is anyway not going to give imaging and diagnostic charges.Off course I will do this excercise against clients full commercial approval and when all external attempts will fail.For the time being I am planning to run runtime raid recovery in live mode and running R studio in winpe mode. But I will be happy to know any other technically right way of diagnostic on initial level.I can share more details in PM.
Thanks.

R-Studio Emergency GUI Startup Media Creator
https://www.r-studio.com/downloads/RStudioEmg8.exe

I'd refuse the job unless we can clone first.

I'd refuse the job unless we can clone first.

and if they refuse paying diag fee. that's a joke for a server recovery...

pepe

Thanks MindMergepk

lcoughey --- yes I agree with you but this is simple logical corruption , first non destructive attempt must be made without imaging. May be data will get easily recovered in fraction of time in imaging and rebuilding raid.
Besides this is time bound job , I don't have luxury of imaging drives.
Since customer is not going to pay towards imaging & diagnostics I will have pay for of 4TB X 2 enterprise hard disks first.
Since file system is linux risks of overwritting any sectors is minimum (than windows NTFS)
If all live USB attempts fail and customer extends deadline then off course manual raid reconstruction will be only option left.

Regarding diagnostics charges -- yes I agree with you pepe .But each customer and case is unique .Every region (USA / Europe is matured market and what you say is absolutely right. Customer understands valute of tile and efforts) has different business dynamics.
What you charge for a desktop recovery is far less than charges in developing countries in APAC region for even server recovery case.
for long term business relations sometimes we will have to compromise and support customer.Again this might not be true in matured market where relations are professional only .If I am getting business worth $ 2000 per year from a corporate then I can't act professionally and reject the work if customer is not paying towards diagnostics.
Besides market is so slow and down if you insist on diagnostics charges and did not support customer then you will be out of that organization and will lose all future business. Besides someone is always willing to take assignment free of cost as this is opportunity for him to enter in that organization so you will have to be flexible and considering long term business offer some free support as well. So many DR companies offer no recovery no charge even for server raid cases.
Unfortunately this is true

I will post any results here , Thanks and happy weekend to all

As far as I'm concerned, a professional will never cut corners. 99 times out of 100, it usually leads to taking more time and gets worse results.

We tell our clients that we follow protocols and if they want corners cut, they must go elsewhere. You are assuming that a logical raid crash suddenly happened without any physical issues with the drives. Might be, but usually not.

That said, you can clone drives while working on the logical recovery at the same time. We usually recover such cases within 1-2 business days.

If the damage is done, why is he giving you 24h to solve it? And he is not willing to pay? What kind of clients do you have??
Tell him to do it himself and he will see that maybe 24h is not enough.

OK, you want to go ahead with a live CD and try to get the data out. What if everything goes south and data is lost? Is it your fault? Or you have to pay him back??

now that the 24h is up, what was the action and result?

BTW, imaging drives with suspected simple logical problems is not a luxury, but standard practice. This whole situation reeks of a customer that you would be better off without

Are you a freelancer, meaning you are self-employed? If yes, as others have posted, cloning or full imaging, sector single pass, is a first thing must.

Guys
As I have already mentioned data recovery business dynamics is always varies in regions .Whats valid in countries like USA /Europe will not be valid in developing countries or elsewhere (depending upon customer type /data criticality etc)
Since there was no issue with any hard disks physically nor raid was disturbed there was no need to panic and start imaging,
Case was solved in flat 15 minutes by a live USB. If I would have removed disks imaged and recovery attempted that would have increased recovery costs , time efforts etc .
Each case must be accessed seprately and without predefined fixed logic I think.
In this case since there was time constraints so no time for imaging so I used my own instincts and logic which was successful.
Thank you all for your help.

Glad you won this one. Good work.

I understand doing more than what was paid for in some cases to gain in the future, but in my experience the promises rarely come, the work rarely appreciated, and the time you spent, you never get back.

I would rather make $50 now for an hours work, than work for an hour with the promise of $100 next time.

In any case, the conditions you had on this case did not sound fun, glad it worked out.

Congrats Terminator2
I think everyone is right here. Every country has its own business dynamics.
In a developing countries DR rates are very low as market is sluggish and corporates are cutting down costs.
Besides customer is not only king ,he is smart as well. We haven't received pure logical cases in several years as most of the end customer do it themselves .
Remaining work is done by computer dealers who are ready to do the task at 25% cost than professional DR service providers.
Customer says if same work is done at fraction of cost then why pay more ?Customers rom USA might think differently as they might be having higher paying capacity.Unfortunately business is driven by customers policies due to competition.
I would like to know what is the situation in other countries

terminator2 wrote:Since there was no issue with any hard disks physically nor raid was disturbed there was no need to panic and start imaging,

And you were able to confirm that every sector on every drive is 100% healthy how?

In such cases I trust on my logic , experience ,client input (about how disk crashed )and gut feelings etc . So far I have not been laid down

And now have you implemented a backup solution?

Hi pclab
actually I have given them backup solution. Unfortunately backup services stopped in 12 december itself. When I checked logs I have found that server has restarted couple of times as well.
However despite knowing this client did not informed us.

RolandJS wrote:Are you a freelancer, meaning you are self-employed? If yes, as others have posted, cloning or full imaging, sector single pass, is a first thing must.

I'm glad OP solved the problem! In this specific situation, cloning or full imaging was not a must.

In my experience doing remote RAID recovery for many years. I almost never image RAID member drives. Sometimes when needed I use partial images, for example to get RAID metadata to detect.

But I do mark the drives read-only and never write to them directly.

If you have the option to image then I agree that is the way to go. But a quality recovery can be achieved in most cases without imaging.

I kindly disagree.
If any of the RAID members is unstable, it can fail on you and then you'll have some explaining to do.
Unstable drives must be read once, when they're being imaged.
This is my way to go all over the years.

northwind wrote:I kindly disagree.
If any of the RAID members is unstable, it can fail on you and then you'll have some explaining to do.
Unstable drives must be read once, when they're being imaged.
This is my way to go all over the years.

This, in my opinion, is a huge factor in what separates data professionals from general computer technicians. There is nothing worse than having to clean up the mess after previous recovery attempts on a drive (or drives) that was assumed to be healthy by the party initially working on them.

SOS urgent help needed.