The problem
A newspaper publisher in Los Angeles, CA suffered a power outage that disabled two Seagate SAS hard drives in a Dell PowerEdge R710 server running RAID 5. One drive failed completely; the other was unstable. For a publisher with tight deadlines, every hour mattered. The server hosted 6 business-critical SQL databases – and the automated backup system lived on the same array, powered by a PERC H710P controller.
The challenge
Dell Enterprise support suggested rebuilding the array with a hot spare – but the process proved ineffective because the second drive’s media was unstable. With no working backups and a flaky array, the publisher was at serious risk of losing everything.
Our approach
Dell’s support team recommended ACE RAID Recovery as a certified partner, and the drives were shipped to our Dallas lab for a free evaluation.
- Our engineers examined the drives and found the first Seagate had failed long ago and could not be used for extraction – meaning the PERC RAID had been running in a critical state until the second drive dropped.
- We created a full image of the unstable drive before touching anything.
- All six SQL databases were extracted from the reconstructed array and checked for consistency.
The result
All of the client’s data was recovered and returned on a brand-new external drive. From arrival at our facility to delivery of the recovered data: 6 days.
“ACE successfully recovered my entire RAID that went down due to a faulty UPS. Shipped the defective unit to Dallas – they sent back all my data on a 4TB external drive. Took about 1 week. Absolute life saver.” – Michael, publisher
Facing a server RAID failure? Call 844-223-7243 – engineers answer 24/7 – or start a case online. Free evaluation, no data, no fee. Learn more about server RAID recovery.
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