Data Recovery Weekly

Recently, surfing the net I came across the site where people advance various ideas. First I was interested in this: http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/DIY_20SSD_20(version_201)#1329873572 The point is to create a SSD using USB thumb drives. We decided to calculate the economic aspect of this project. It was found that much easier and cheaper is to buy a ready-made SSD rather than try to create it with heaps of USB thumb drives. With thumbdrives, you get the cheapest price per gigabyte if you use 7x 64GB USB thumb drives and one 7-port USB 3.0 hub (the cheapest hub at newegg). Thus, the price of such 448 GB storage is 79 cents per gigabyte while for 480 GB SSD the price is 67 cents per gigabyte. Further I encountered this idea http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/DIY_20SSD_20(version_203)#1338542003 The idea intends to combine old computers into network and to create iSCSI RAM disks. Looks really interesting save for one problem. The problem is that an electric bill ve...

If you have a drive which has a mild case of bad-sector-itis, and you want to make an image of it, or clone it, make sure you connect the drive to the Intel ICH-series controller. No nVidia, no Marvell, no VIA or whatever else it might be. Where other SATA controllers lock up or cause a reboot, Intel ICH is still reading, reading, reading, slow but fierce.

Once in a while people demand that we provide technical support not only by e-mails, but by phone as well. Despite the apparent reasonableness of the request, it is not that simple in practice. A typical case of technical data recovery support via email looks like the following:   A client contacts our technical support and describes his or her problem for the first time.   We send a reply where we ask the questions to clarify obscure points. Usually we have three to five questions (although there may be more) which are organized as a numbered list. In the following email a client answers the questions. There are cases when client needs time to think or do some simple checks to answer the questions. In response to the message from a client, we send a list of recommended actions or step-by-step instructions as to what he or she should do next. There are cases when boilerplate instructions fit just right; however, almost half of all cases require pondering on o...

The following setup doesn't work: Intel RAID controller RS2MB044, Intel RES2SV240 expander, 16 WD30EFRX (WD Red) hard drives. The demonstrated symptoms are similar to those described here.  In our experience slowdown appears with both a RAID6 and RAID5. Perhaps, there is some incompatibility between controller, expander, and drives in any of possible combinations.

Every once in a while someone comes up with a forum question along the lines of I have such and such problem with my storage. The data is still accessible, but the storage unit is for some reason in abnormal state. What should I do? Typical (and proper) answer is back up data, test the backup, make sure the original problem, which caused whatever abnormality there was, is corrected, rebuild the storage from scratch, restore data Often, this is not considered a good enough advice: Is there any quicker way to resolve the issue? Actually, no. To make sure the abnormal state is properly repaired, one needs to identify all the undesired effects and changes to the data. This is plain impossible in all but most simple cases. So, there is always a risk of missing some important point during "quick" repair, masking the problem instead of repairing it. The issue might then reappear later in some undesired way.  

If you have an Intel RS2MB044 controller and get the message Controller ID: 0 Controller encountered a fatal error and was reset Flash the latest firmware. Next thing, If flashing with the latest firmware fails stating that Firmware Failed to FLASH flash. Stop!!! FW error description: The requested command cannot be completed as the image is corrupted. Then, start flasing older firmwares first. The update from very old firmware version to the latest one may require several intermediate firmwares to be flashed before the controller will accept the latest one.

Finally, completed the build of Mark II testbed storage array today, to replace aging QNAP TS-639 Pro unit. Intel RS2MB044 controller. 4x OCZ Solid 3 120 GB SSD, directly connected to the controller. Intel RES2SV240 expander, connected by SFF-8088 to SFF-8087 cable. 16x 3TB WD Red hard drives connected to the expander. The hard drives are configured as 14x 3TB RAID 6 and 2x hot spare, for a total of 36 decimal TB unformatted capacity. SSD cache to be configured later.