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PDR / The jobs we take in / Servers and RAID arrays

Servers · stopped RAID sets

Server and RAID recovery, Plymouth. The chassis has stopped working; most times what is inside it is fine.

Often the drives are the sound part, and what has failed is everything around them: a card that no longer agrees with the disks, a prompt where both buttons cost you something, a cache that lost writes when the mains was interrupted. Each member is copied first, and every fix after that is made on the copies. Leave your controller where it is. The volume comes home complete: file shares, email stores, databases, virtual machines. A fish merchant's office at Coxside and a research spin-out at Plymouth Science Park run the same chassis.

Nothing readable? Most jobs carry no bill Free diagnosis, then one written price Boxes come to the lab from Truro, Newquay and Tavistock

You will be talking to an engineer
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Server symptoms, and what each points to.

Yours not here? Start at the triage →
What turns upWhat that points toWhere to start
PERC prompt: Foreign Configuration DetectedWhat the disks say about the array and what the card remembers don't match, so it halts instead of guessing. Nothing has goneGive it no answer at all
1786 — Drive Array Recovery Needed (HP)A rebuild began and might have stopped midwayPower it off. Copies before anything
Amber bay lights following a mains failureWrites were cut off half-done and who knows what the cache still held. The array's own description is intactDo not switch it on again
The machine boots; the data volume is missingThe fault sits in the controller's configuration or in the file system; everything underneath both is untouchedUsually recoverable
The RAID card has goneBay order, stripe size and parity rotation are all written on the membersNo matching card required
Files copied off, but no VM or database will runCopied is not the same as consistent. Only consistent data will runThat becomes a database recovery job
Getting it to us: once you receive your quote, wrap it securely so it cannot shift in transit, insure it for its value, and send it tracked to the intake lab in Bristol. We cover the return postage. If you want an engineer to check the packing before the box is taped shut, contact us before sending. Details are on our contact page.

The disks carry the array's own map.

MegaRAID & PERC cardsDDF is an open format and both cards write it into the closing sectors of every member. Take it out of the images and the array will reassemble with your controller still sitting in the server.
HP's Smart Array cardsHP does things differently. An RIS structure sits at the start of every member, and its parity block sits one stripe away from where you would normally expect it. Point a default preset at that and you get a volume your server never had.
The prompt with two bad answersLeave this one alone. Import can write stale metadata across stripes that were perfectly good, and Clear removes the description from every disk with nothing to restore it from. Copy the members first and the prompt loses its teeth.
Writes stuck in the cacheA write is reported complete once battery-backed memory holds it, well before it reaches the platters. Lose the mains during a flush and the damage settles in the file system where nothing displays it. For that reason alone, copy first.

What happens to a drive while it is here.

01

A number on arrival, then the free diagnosis Free

Whatever is delivered is booked in using a unique reference (case number) on the date it arrives at the bench. The engineer will identify the actual fault at no charge. This gives a straightforward answer on what can be recovered from the drive and what cannot, plus one written quotation. There will be no further activity until you have read and accepted the quotation.

Diagnosis at no chargeA single written figureYou owe nothing yet
02

Leave the machine as you found it

Shut down the server and remove the drives one at a time. Write each bay number on the drive removed from that bay. Give the console nothing it asks for. Each member is copied separately on equipment designed for the task, including the ones the card threw out. No file is opened until all the copies are finished.

Every disk copied separatelyThe dead disks as well
03

Reassemble the array in software

DDF or RIS records travel inside the images. Reading them gives the RAID level, the stripe size, which bay held which member and, for any parity set, the direction parity travels. That is the whole geometry needed to build the array in software. Once it is built in software, a failed card stops being anybody's problem.

Geometry taken from the membersYour card stays in the server
04

Copying it is not the same as opening it.

Whatever layer sits over the array (XFS, ext4, NTFS, ReFS, a VMFS datastore), repairs take place on the reassembled copy rather than on the drives you sent. It is then thoroughly tested: guests boot, shares mount, databases attach, and individual files are opened.

Repairs made on copies onlyProved by mounting and booting
05

You give the word, and it ships back

Give yourself time to consider it. It costs you nothing. We list all of the files we recover for you before sending out an invoice, and we only ask for payment once you have authorised it. We also buy media specifically for your recovery and send it back to you, with the return postage paid by us. The case stays here on our bench until we have your confirmation that the files open properly on your own machine.

You see the list and decideWritten to fresh mediaWe pay the postage home

The faults we see most

  • Not every card writes its map in the same place: HP puts RIS at the beginning of each member, while PERC and MegaRAID keep their DDF record in the closing sectors. Read the wrong end of a disk and the geometry becomes guesswork.
  • Discarded drives still count: a member a card discarded weeks ago could hold the only readable version of some regions, so the images are compared byte by byte. Nothing here is accepted on trust.
  • Default presets get Smart Array wrong: HP places its parity block one stripe further than most standard tools look for it, so the volume such a tool creates never existed on your server. It has to be built to HP's own scheme.
  • The cache battery comes up early: whether data held in write-back ever reached a platter settles the state of the file system, and we establish that before anyone is given expectations to hold on to.

What those two buttons actually do: Import accepts the foreign description as correct and stamps it across whatever configuration the card is running today. Clear deletes the description from every member, leaving nothing to restore it from. Both are just one keystroke away and no warning is displayed on screen, but once full copies exist, neither can cost you anything. Copying is not one stage among several on this kind of job. All the rest relies on it.

A job out of the casebook.

PL · PLY-2026-0816FILED ✓

A dead cache battery, and the practice database intact

The mains had been off long enough to drain the cache battery completely. On restart, the controller asked the practice a question none of the staff could safely answer, so it sat unanswered. Nothing was run on the disks themselves. Each member was imaged first, and the array's own metadata came back off those images. The parity rotation was worked out from that, and the array was assembled on the copies. The practice database opened whole, through to the last write held in the cache.

Database read back whole5 days start to finish

Before you seal the box.

Get these done

  • Photograph each screen the card shows you
  • Number each drive to the bay it occupied
  • Send every disk, the apparently finished ones as well
  • Tell us the workload — SQL, Exchange, guests, shares

What to avoid

  • Choosing Import or Clear at that prompt
  • Dropping a spare in and kicking off a rebuild
  • Putting fresh firmware on the card at this point
  • Switching the server on before copies are taken

Questions that come up most weeks.

The server will not start. Have we lost everything?

Rarely. The disks themselves are generally sound, and the fault lies a level above them: the card's own record of the set, the description of the array, or a corrupted file system. Keep the power off and answer no questions the console asks, and the good position you are in stays that way.

What is 'Foreign Configuration Detected' telling me?

That there is a discrepancy between what is written on the disks and what the card expects to find. A replacement controller, a disk put back in the wrong slot, or a failing card can each cause it. Stopping at this point is the card behaving properly. Both Import and Clear destroy things, so make sure each member is copied before you choose anything. Once copies exist, neither option can take your files.

Must the controller travel with the disks?

No. Each member keeps its own account of the array. DDF, a published format, is what PERC and MegaRAID use, while HP uses its own RIS structures. Whichever it is gets read from the images, and the array is put together in software. No card is needed for that.

Will the databases and the virtual machines start again?

Generally, though it is two different pieces of work, not one. First the VMDK or the MDF needs to come off the rebuilt volume whole. Then either a hypervisor has to be convinced to mount the VMDK, or SQL Server to attach the MDF. That second part is covered on our database recovery page.

Pages people open after this.

Rebuilding a RAID 5 → RAID 0 sets → MacBook Air storage → Virtual servers → All the media we take →

A drive that stays switched off gets no worse.

Diagnosis costs nothing. We give you a report listing which files can be read, which cannot, and what is needed to get them off. Do not connect the drive until then.

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