Help - Server Failure - no backup!

GinG · 14 Sep 2009 at 10:32

Hi all,

Last Thursday our server failed, keeps blue screening. Dell have been out and installed new mobo & ram however still the problem occurs.

We were meant to be doing backups every night, however the person who was meant to be doing it, hasn't!!

Now I believe we have 3 HDD's installed, in Raid (not sure which) configuration.

Is it just a matter of attaching 1 to a desktop and getting the data off?

Any other way of getting the data?

Thanks

FatalSaviour · 14 Sep 2009 at 10:42

If all the HDDs are in the same RAID, it's likely to be either RAID 0 or RAID 5.
With either one, it's not ideal to be getting the data off each individual drive if you can avoid it. However, you might be lucky with something like RAID Reconstructor.
R-Studio is also very good, and I've recovered most of RAID 5 volumes using both of these programs before. For best practice, you will need to let these programs copy the data off each hard drive first, which means that you're going to need quite a lot of free space on the workstation first, so be prepared.
I'd be really tempted to try to keep the server operational and get it off directly - you don't really want to be disrupting the RAID if at all possible!

You say that you're not sure what level RAID is in use? Do you know whether you're using hardware or software RAID?

Durzel · 14 Sep 2009 at 10:42

3 HDDs probably means RAID 5 which mean you wouldn't be able to plug just one of the drives into another PC to read the info off.

Sticking all 3 drives onto another RAID controller might work but being a server architecture I wouldn't be surprised if there was something peculiar about it which would mean it wouldn't work on a foreign branded controller.

leexgx · 14 Sep 2009 at 10:43

has the raid Failed and what type of raid is it
if its RAID 1 its as simple to pull the disk out and plug it into an working pc and copy the files off it, (this is the default setup for dell 3 hdds servers boot is on single drive data is stored on an RAID 1 setup for mirroring)

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make sure its one of the raid hdds that your pulling out not the boot drive

Avalon · 14 Sep 2009 at 11:52

Why are you relying on a person to do the backup ? People are generally crap at doing things, automate and monitor daily, takes a little while to set up but once you've got it right it takes very little time to maintain/monitor. Can be as simple as a batch file if you're on a non existent budget.

If you haven't been able to identify the RAID level used and don't know even the basic set-up of the server then with respect are you the best person to be doing this ? Consider if anything goes wrong it's automatically YOUR fault as soon as you become involved.

If you have to then identify the RAID level used (Hint: MB BIOS/Controller BIOS), it may well be 1 in which case pull one of the pair and take a full backup assuming that's where the data is stored. If you're not sure leave it and use some form of bootable device (HD/CD/USB, whatever you have/works) and see what you can access. Live CD's or XP on a stick is handy for such occasions but YMMV.

chaosophy · 14 Sep 2009 at 13:41

Can you not just trouble shoot the blue screen and fix the actual issue? Why was the mobo and ram swapped out? Is the mobo the same model/revision etc, where the BIOS settings taken from the old board and replicated on the new?

Seriously there doesn't seem to be a lot of basic trouble shooting going on from the little you have told us.

But if it's getting as far as trying to load windows then I'd say the h/w sounds ok and the RAID is at least in a decent state that it can see the o/s partition and try to load windows.

As suggested try something like a live CD or build a UBCD4WIN boot disc, might need to slipstream the drivers for the RAID etc, and boot off of one of those to see what state the array/data is in. UBCD4WIN if you build it properly is pretty easy to use and should let you get on the network and copy the data off to another server/storage device.