Server Data Recovery

The Data Recovery Process: How We Recover Data

At Gillware Data Recovery, our data recovery experts are extremely proficient at reconstructing and recovering data from failed RAID arrays. The server data recovery process generally follows the same steps as data recovery from a failed RAID array. Our technicians will take the hard drives that were in your crashed server, repair any drives that have failed, and use custom data recovery software called “Hombre” to reconstruct the RAID array, retrieve files, and restore server data and access lost files. From that point, our data recovery technicians make use of our powerful data recovery utilities, specialized equipment, data recovery tools, and data recovery software to reunite you with your recovered files.

What Can Cause Server Data Loss?

Servers are fairly autonomous. It can be easy to get in the habit of “out of sight, out of mind” as the server does its job. But just like any other data storage device, servers can fail, crash, and break down. When your server fails, data loss or service interruptions can hurt your business or organization.

There are many ways a server can fail. Any server failure will result in some downtime for your business, but not all failures result in data loss. A failure of the hard drives beyond the tolerances of your RAID array will result in data loss. Data can also be lost through accidental or purposeful file deletion from the server. Hard drive failure is by far the most common reason clients come to us in need of our RAID server data recovery services.

Hard Drive Failure

The hard drives in a server are arranged as a RAID array. A popular configuration for servers is RAID 5, which provides fault tolerance in the event that one hard drive fails. Some businesses set up their servers with complex nested RAID levels. Nested RAID arrays such as RAID 50 can tolerate the failures of several drives.

That said, any hard drive, enterprise or not, will still fail sooner or later. And no matter how many fault tolerances a RAID array has, it can fail as well. A hard drive in a server that is constantly running will eventually work itself to death as its components wear themselves out. It is not a question of if, but rather of when.

Server Failure

Server failure by itself will not cause any data to be lost from the hard drives. However, an unexpected shutdown may cause one or more hard drives to fail. A server can fail if the space it is kept in is not properly ventilated or air-conditioned.

All electronic devices normally generate heat. You’ve probably felt how hot your phone or laptop can get after prolonged use. If that heat is not allowed to properly dissipate, your server can overheat. This will eventually cause some internal component to fail. The components inside your server can also fail as a result of natural wear.

If the RAID card used in your server is a particularly old and difficult-to-find model, you may not be able to find a suitable replacement. Hard drives in a RAID array contain metadata which tells the controller how the drives are meant to fit together. A different model of RAID card cannot properly interpret this metadata. In this rare case, you could be effectively locked out of the data on your own server, unable to recover your valuable data from it.

If this happens, taking the hard drives out of the server and trying to read them individually won’t do much good. The data on your server RAID array cannot be accessed on individual drives. To rebuild RAID arrays and recover data, our data recovery technicians must analyze the metadata on the hard drives and use custom emulation software to do the job of the RAID card.

Malicious or Accidental Deletion

Somebody could delete files from your server, either on accident or on purpose. Files that have been deleted from data storage devices are irretrievable by normal means. However, our logical data recovery engineers here at Gillware have developed extremely powerful methods for retrieving deleted files.

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What Is a Server?

A server is a program or device that acts according to a server-client model. You, the client, send a request to the server, and the server fulfills it. Servers share data and resources in order to handle the many tasks and services we rely on as we go about our daily lives.

Application servers host web apps, allowing users to run software through their internet browsers. Database and file servers store massive amounts of information, which can be accessed by multiple people. Game servers allow people from all around the world to play online together. Email servers allow people from all around the world to communicate with each other. When you binge-watch your favorite TV series on Netflix, your video is coming from a media server. While you do this, the website itself is hosted on a web server. The entire Internet depends on servers for just about every facet of its existence. It’s hard to think of something you do on a daily basis that doesn’t involve data stored on somebody’s web server somewhere in the world. Servers make the world go ‘round.

A server machine is a computer, but it doesn’t much resemble the computer you sit in front of at home or at work. Servers don’t have screens or keyboards. They are designed to perform their tasks unattended and are managed remotely from another computer workstation. Unlike your computer, servers are kept running all the time. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. A small business may have one or two servers. A massive business may have dozens or hundreds clustered together in massive server farms. And unlike your computer, a server will have many hard drives instead of just one. These hard drives will usually be special enterprise-class hard drives.

Enterprise-class hard drives, such as Hitachi Ultrastars and Seagate Constellations, are optimized specifically to run continuously and in sync with other hard drives. This is just what a server needs. You probably won’t see enterprise-class hard drives inside a consumer NAS device you can pick up at Best Buy, but for servers such as the Dell Poweredge, HP ProLiant, or Acer AT350F2, hard drive performance and longevity is paramount.

Exchange Server and SQL Database Server Recovery

One common use of servers is to provide email services and store SQL relational databases. When these servers fail, or the databases inside become corrupted and unusable, the results can be devastating. Fortunately for you, though, our data recovery server engineers can help you. Whether it’s a crashed server or corrupted data locking you out, Gillware provides Exchange Server recovery and SQL Server recovery services to help you recover your mission-critical data from a server failure.

Exchange Server Recovery

Email is one of the most essential tools used by modern businesses of all sizes. Over 300 billion emails were sent every day during 2022. Many businesses rely on Microsoft Outlook, which means these businesses also rely on Microsoft Exchange servers. Information flows one way when a static website is hosted on a server. The mechanics of an exchange server are a bit more complex, due to the complex nature of email.

As we discussed briefly in the previous section, the server-client model outlines the basics of how servers respond to requests made by clients. An exchange email server is responsible for communicating messages between email clients. Examples of email clients include Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Opera Mail, and many more.

When an exchange email server suffers failure, it likely means that nobody in your organization can send or receive internal or external messages. For obvious reasons, this is a really bad situation to find yourself in. If your business is experiencing issues with your exchange server, the data recovery professionals at Gillware are here to help!

SQL Database Server Recovery

Similar to email, relational databases are a cornerstone of many modern businesses. Your database may simply contain information like client names, email addresses, and phone numbers. It’s also well within the realm of possibility that your database server contains thousands or millions of order ids, items, quantities, vendors and recipients. A SQL server manages the relationships between all of these tables of data.

If your business suffers SQL server failure it can be devastating. Not only can a failed SQL server result in extended downtime for day to day business activities, but if you lose years of valuable business data, that could jeopardize the entire future of your organization.

Gillware has extensive experience with complex data recovery cases, and SQL server recovery certainly falls under that umbrella. If your business is searching for SQL server disaster recovery, look no further than the talented engineers at Gillware!