Data Recovery Programs/Options

  • Thread starter Deleted member 88227
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Deleted member 88227

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Before I do some research, actually before I do any research I like to start a discussion regarding the topic.

Basically I rent a dedicated server from a data center and my cheap self never got the weekly/daily backup plan and one of the hard drives may have gone bad/corrupted.

So they are going to load a new primary and set the old primary as a secondary to see if I can possibly recover any of the data.

The server is running CentOS5; are there any remote type data recovery programs that can be used in a case like this? I was also told that if that fails to work out, they'll send me the physical hard drive and I can do data recovery that way.

I have never done any kind of data recovery on a hard drive before, so what am I getting into? Can I not send the hard drive to some place that will recover the data for me, put it on another hard drive/DVDs/other media and send the information back to me?

If this were you, what would you do?
 
Well I called one place to see about having the hard drive sent off for data recovery and I was quoted $500 - $2700 depending on the success rate. I defiantly don't think this is a path I'm willing to take.

I am fairly confident the hard drive isn't physically broken, just the data got corrupt from the sudden loss of power.

I also tried looking up "remote data recovery" but it seems I am only getting places that want to backup your data remotely, not programs/methods to recover data from a remote system.
 
since centos is based on RH, I'd *maybe* dd (with the
switch to continue-if-errors,) to an other drive, and
work on the data on the latter. Would help if the latter drive is the
same make/model/size.
****
guessing.. someone else may answer better.

****
and they may have done something similar already. I've only usually
recovered hard data with (BootIt image) or in the case of failing
hardware (the freezer trick).
 
Data recovery from an expert recovery place and cheap don't belong in the same sentence.

If I were you, I'd be getting the physical drive in my hands and trying GetDataBack.
 
Well it turns out none of my important data is bad/corrupted. Only some of the system files on the server got messed up.

Reinstalled the operating system on another hard drive, mounted the two old hard drives and I was able to pull all the data I needed; MySQL databases, web site files, downloads, everything was intact and good to go.
 
Grats. But it just reminds you of how bad it could have been. Also, and correct me if I am wrong, but I would think they would have backups of your backups.. Kinda would seem to me thats the whole reason to even use their services, for the security of data. Id maybe shop around for some other data storage facility. Or maybe pop for the extra $$$ each month, lol :D
 
It's not a data storage facility. It's a dedicated server that hosts multiple web sites and other online services. They do provide weekly and daily backup services, but they cost extra and I'm not willing to pay the amount it costs when my laziness can just take the time out once a month to make backups, which would probably take an hour TOPS!

Seems the only thing that happened was some of the operating system's files got corrupt due to the sudden loss of power. Once a new hard drive was installed with a fresh operating system, I was able to pull ALL the data off the hard disks without a problem. Granted it took about 9 hours to get everything working/setup properly.
 
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