OUR CASES

System Specifications:

The client operated a high-performance server configured with the following specifications:

• Server: Custom-built 2U rackmount server
• RAID Controller: LSI MegaRAID 9260-8i
• Storage Devices: 4 x 2TB Seagate Barracuda (ST2000DM008)
• File System: CentOS with ext4
• Application: Magento 2 e-commerce platform

Failure Incident:

Technical Analysis:

Our engineers received the four 2TB Seagate drives at our lab. An initial diagnostic on each drive revealed the following:

Drive 1: Severe electronic damage to the PCB. The drive was not spinning and was completely unresponsive.
Drive 2: No physical damage detected, but numerous bad sectors were identified during a surface scan.
Drive 3: Fully functional with no immediate signs of physical or logical damage.
Drive 4: Firmware corruption, causing the drive to report an incorrect size and model number.

Because the client was using a RAID 0 configuration, the data was striped across all four drives without any parity or redundancy. This meant that the failure of even a single drive would render the entire array inaccessible. In this case, with one drive electronically dead, another with bad sectors, and a third with firmware issues, the challenge was to recover enough data from each drive to reconstruct the original stripe set.

Recovery Methodology:

Our recovery process was executed in several parallel stages:

1. Drive 1 (Electronic Failure): The damaged PCB was carefully removed in our Class-100 cleanroom. We sourced a compatible donor PCB from our inventory. The ROM chip from the patient drive, containing unique adaptive information, was meticulously transferred to the donor board. After the successful transplant, the drive was powered on and became accessible.
2. Drive 4 (Firmware Corruption): Our firmware specialists used specialized tools to access the drive’s service area. The corrupted firmware modules were repaired, and the drive was restored to its correct operational state.
3. Drive Imaging: With all four drives in a readable state, we created a sector-by-sector image of each drive using a write-blocker to prevent any further data loss. This is a critical step to ensure we work on a copy, preserving the original evidence.
4. RAID 0 Reconstruction: Using our proprietary software, we analyzed the data patterns on the four drive images to determine the RAID 0 parameters, including stripe size, block order, and drive rotation. The analysis revealed a 64KB stripe size. The virtual RAID was then reconstructed, taking into account the bad sectors on Drive 2. Our software was able to read the data from the remaining drives to compensate for the unreadable sectors, minimizing data loss.
5. Data Extraction and Verification: Once the virtual RAID was rebuilt, we were able to access the EXT4 file system. We scanned the file system for integrity and extracted the critical data, including the MySQL database, Magento application files, and product images. The database was checked for corruption, and all critical tables were found to be intact.