Time to Brush Up on Drobo Data Recovery

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Although I've had several calls about Drobo recoveries over the years, I've yet to find anyone who thinks their data is worth our minor data recovery rates to send one in. As most Drobo users are using the unit because they don't value their data enough to get a real RAID or NAS, it seems reasonable that they are going to be equally cheap when it comes to data recovery services.

I think the same goes for ZFS. The most common place for it, that I know of, is FreeNAS systems where the owner puts their critical data on the cheapest hardware possible.

Disagree,
Not All FreeNAS Are On Cheapo Hardware ,Some Of The dudes Out There Do Spend Money ,Checkout Some Youtube Videos

 

[Jared]

Not many corporate clients around here using FreeNAS. Perhaps in India they pinch pennies enough to build their own NAS, but around here anyone with important business data is usually buying a complete system with good security such as Synology, Drobo, EMC, etc. FreeNAS is more just home media servers and personal data belonging to hobbyists.

 

[LarrySabo]

Just got a Drobo case in: 5 x 2TB Seagate DMs. The user tried to rebuild the array but it crapped out part way through. He has a Unix and technical background and connected a DIY terminal to the Drobo to watch what it was doing, and found it just seems to stall at some point during the rebuild, due to less than 85% free space (or something like that), he says. This should be fun. :shock:

 

[Jared]

Just got a Drobo case in: 5 x 2TB Seagate DMs. The user tried to rebuild the array but it crapped out part way through. He has a Unix and technical background and connected a DIY terminal to the Drobo to watch what it was doing, and found it just seems to stall at some point during the rebuild, due to less than 85% free space (or something like that), he says. This should be fun. :shock:

Time to bust out that Reclaime Pro and see if it can work some magic.

 

[lcoughey]

Probably a piece of cake after you get the drives cloned.

 

[LarrySabo]

The drive marked by the customer as the failed drive has 47680 sectors reallocated and 17496 pending reallocation. Another drive, not identified as problematic, has 348 sectors pending reallocation. I'm imaging the latter drive first, then we'll see what success I have with imaging the "failed" drive. I have no idea whether I can recover anything with just 3 of the 4 drives.

I was surprised to see in the ReclaiMe video on Drobo recovery that they didn't clone the drives first. Cloning to target drives or virtual disks is a challenge for a small shop like mine, given the limited number of drives and storage volume on hand. Maybe I should borrow his Drobo FS so I can cobble something together to hold drive images. (jk)

Given that the rebuild failed part way through, I'm not optimistic ReclaiMe Pro is going to have much success, but we shall see.

 

[LarrySabo]

I'm an idiot! I have just ReclaiMe Ultimate, not Pro. I will therefor not be able to recover the data if cloning the unhealthy drives and re-installing them in the Drobo doesn't fix the problem. I'm not advocating doing so -- that's something the customer will have to decide to do or not. I'm just saying, that's the only option other than referring the case to someone else or shelling out for an upgrade to ReclaiMe Pro. Given my limited market and the cost of the upgrade (~$500 USD), that's not going to happen. Time to consult with my customer. Too bad, I was looking forward to seeing whether ReclaiMe as able to handle the job. <sigh>

 

[jol]

Too bad, I was looking forward to seeing whether ReclaiMe as able to handle the job. <sigh>

You can still download a trial to check it out

 

[LarrySabo]

Thanks, @jol. Yeah, I never thought of that. I'll give that some thought. Cheers!

 

[lcoughey]

Perhaps you aren't charging enough to do it right? Drobo is proprietary and very few support it. It would be at least $5K with Seagate and probably triple that with DriveSavers. If you aren't quoting at least $2K (preferably more), you are under charging.

If the client says it's too much, we come back to my earlier comment.