Posts Tagged ‘Hard Drive Data Recovery’

As an industry, server recovery, whether through software or mechanical data recovery techniques, continues to grow. As a rule, the past five years of technological advances have majorly lowered the costs of previously high-end servers, and small organizations have improved productivity as a result. Now, a five employee company can receive all of the collaboration advantages of an Exchange server, as an example. RAID server arrays have become particularly popular, owing to the low cost (the Inexpensive Disks of RAID) of high speed storage. Naturally, it isn’t all good times and hyper-productivity, however. Although preparing for data loss is something most companies forget about, it has become more key than ever.

The dynamics of a small organization differ greatly when compared with a large organization. Quite naturally, the accountability levels are far stronger, and decisions can be made faster, without a meetingdiscussion that has to involve several levels of management. Essentially, a “do it yourself” culture often shapes the small organization. With high end mission-critical applications, however, this DIY-ethic can actually be harmful. When server recovery is necessary due to a crashed hard disk drive, the implications are massive, and it certainly is the least likely possible time to “go guerrilla” and attempt a novice recovery. Yet, high trust in administrators can lead you down this path, which can markedly worsen the situation.

Creating A Server Recovery Action Plan

The “invulnerability factor” with smaller successful organizations can infect the management of IT assets, as evidenced by smaller companies’ lack of server recovery readiness. Isn’t a RAID server naturally “redundant”, after all? On the other hand, RAID servers, particularly in occurrences where more than a single hard drive fails, can crash severely, leaving a dependent organization unable to function, held hostage by a mission critical app that just isn’t working. Building a server recovery plan is crucial, then, and should include these points:

List Important Resources Now – While it may sound rather obvious, researching key IT and intellectual resources in preparation for a server meltdown is something most organizations have not done. All it takes, really, is a single text document listing all crucial support forums, product update alerts and a hard drive recovery shop that can be relied on when your organization needs a solution. Attempting to research these details under duress is never good thing, as panic can occur. Of course, panic gives birth to permanent data loss.

Expertise Pays Dividends – IT administrators, as a rule, have a wide array of expertise in their field. In fact, it is this encyclopedic knowledge of IT assets and applications that makes them an extremely crucial part of any organization, no matter how small. The issue here is that as a result, IT administrators typically work by themselves, and offer solutions on a do it yourself basis. Attempting do-it-yourself server recovery, meanwhile, is one of the trickiest and potentially harmful thing someone without hard drive recovery experience can do. And because 99 out of 100 organizations do not have a staff member with actual physical hard drive recovery experience (nor do they have the specialized equipment), it is key to have the contact details for an expert. It never hurts to get help, and in this scenario, it will be necessary to avoid further problems.

Backup Plans – Drawing up a complete backup plan, especially for mission critical products, should really be a key role for any IT administrator. Unfortunately, it frequently is not. Backup products, meanwhile, are extremely inexpensive and can be automated to guarantee that in times of server issues, very little is lost – including time. Imagine that your organization’s Exchange system has a double hard disk drive crash. The likelihood of anyone using it at this point is zero. Now imagine that you could have the system running on a new server within an hour. Ok, now stop imagining. With a well-executed server recovery backup plan (and some spare hardware), this can be your reality. Planning for the worst helps in any scenario, and knowing you have a superior plan can cut out a lot of distress.

Data recovery emergencies happen each day around the world, and all you can do is be ready for them. Readiness is the critical difference between a safe server recovery and a real panic.

Maureen Davies is an seasoned data recovery technician and the webmaster and editor of http://www.harddriverecovery.org/. Find out more about RAID data recovery and solve your own hard drive failure problems here.