Case summary
Two failed drives made the storage system inaccessible.
The device was a Drobo 5-drive storage system used for studio production media. The NAS failed with two drives out of five affected, leaving the company unable to access years of video and media work.
Device
Drobo storage system with a 5-drive RAID arrangement used for production media storage.
Failure symptom
The NAS failed after two drives in the five-drive set became problematic, preventing access to the stored media.
Diagnosis
The recovery required careful handling of both failed and readable drives before rebuilding the array virtually.
Recovery path
Controlled imaging, array parameter analysis, and a difficult rebuild using a mix of 2 imaged drives and 3 hardware drives.
What RAID rebuild means
Reconstructing the array before files can be recovered.
RAID and NAS systems do not store files on one drive in a simple way. Data is distributed across multiple disks using a specific order, stripe size, parity layout, and filesystem structure. When drives fail or are unstable, the first step is to stabilize and image each disk that can be safely read.
In this case, the rebuild was more difficult because the working set involved a mix of two imaged drives and three physical hardware drives. The array had to be reconstructed virtually before the studio folders and media files could be recovered and verified.
Outcome
Full recovery of six years of studio production media.
The RAID rebuild was successful and OmniData recovered six years of studio production videos and media. The case was handled inside the North York lab using controlled imaging, array reconstruction, and privacy-conscious handling.
