Anyone tried Seagate's data reovery services?

[https403]

I'm building a NAS and now choosing between WD Gold and Seagate IronWolf Pro. Seagate offers a data recovery service and I would like to know how it works, how long it takes, and all other related experiences if anyone tried it. The main question will be: Does it worth it?

[BobVonBob]

It's incredibly unlikely you'll need the data recovery within 2 years, which is why they offer it. It's under a month, but it's not particularly fast. They send the data back on another drive.

[Kilrah]

They send whatever they can recover, if any on another drive.

Recovery is always last resort and if you have to make use of it you've already made a lot of mistakes and need a bunch of luck to get anything back.

 

You should always do things so that you never have to use such a service.

 

 

[Radium_Angel]

18 minutes ago, https403 said:

NAS

If you use the right RAID config, you won't need data recovery services.

[Mr Technician]

2 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

If you use the right RAID config, you won't need data recovery services.

This. And backups as well.

[Letgomyleghoe]

3 minutes ago, ThatFlashCat said:

This. And backups as well.

Yeah I have raid 0 in my primary storage setup, and a server that’s tucked away in a closet with slow shity drives that copy’s everything off the raid drives and makes backups.

[Mr Technician]

2 minutes ago, scuff gang said:

Yeah I have raid 0 in my primary storage setup, and a server that’s tucked away in a closet with slow shity drives that copy’s everything off the raid drives and makes backups.

Raid 0 is worse than no Raid at all. If you lose one drive, it's all gone.

[https403]

Thanks everyone. I think I go for WD Gold then (few bucks cheaper).

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 hour ago, Radium_Angel said:

If you use the right RAID config, you won't need data recovery services.

Wrong! Dead wrong! All a RAID can do is protect you from data loss due to disk failure (up to the failure tolerance of the RAID). If you have a RAID that has a failure tolerance of only one disk and a second disk dies before the frist one's replacment can be rebuilt, you will lose data. If your RAID gets infected with a virus, or other malware, such as ransomware, your data is probably history, even if you pony up. If yoiur house burns down, taking the RAID with it, you are S.O.L. If a theif makes off with whatever the RAID is in, again, S.O.L. Same for if a power surge blows through your surge protection and BBQs all your drives. User error, such as accidental deletion (and please don't tryo to tell me you don't make mistakes like that) cannot be recovered by a RAID.

 

For that matter, no data can ever be recovered from a RAID. Once the RAID has lost the data, it's history. You can recover data from backups, though. For a backup to be a backup, it must be kept away from the computer, disconnected from the computer, and powered down except while updating the backup.

[Radium_Angel]

22 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

no data can ever be recovered from a RAID

I used to do data recovery as a profession. I've recovered data from RAID before.

22 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

up to the failure tolerance of the RAID

Like I said, if you have the right RAID config, this isn't an issue (and let's be honest here shall we? If you are smart enough to run a RAID or a NAS, you can monitor for drifve failures, or have the NAS itself let you know, long before a drive dies.)

22 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

If yoiur house burns down

This is true for anything, unless you are using some kind of offsite storage, unless *they* burn down....

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 hour ago, Radium_Angel said:

I used to do data recovery as a profession. I've recovered data from RAID before.

Like I said, if you have the right RAID config, this isn't an issue (and let's be honest here shall we? If you are smart enough to run a RAID or a NAS, you can monitor for drifve failures, or have the NAS itself let you know, long before a drive dies.)

This is true for anything, unless you are using some kind of offsite storage, unless *they* burn down....

Sigh! If the data on the RAID is lost, it is lost for good. You can NOT recover data that isn't there. Drive failure is not the only way you can lose data. I've already explained that.

 

Drives can, and do, fail irrecoiverably without any warning whatsoever. And there is no such thing as "the right RAID config" that will protect you from all the ways you can lose data.

 

Of course you should be using some kind of an offsite backup. For data to be reasonably safe, it must exist in three, separate places. This usually means on the computer, on an external onsite backup, and on an external offsite backup. For a backup to be a backup, it has to be kept away from the computer, disconnected from the computer, and powered down except while updating the backup. Period! If an external NAS runs all the times and is connected to the computer, even if via a network, it is NOT a backup!

[Radium_Angel]

50 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

RAID is lost, it is lost for good

Sorry, this is incorrect. If you have all the drives, you can recover the data (I have done this for a RAID 5 array where the system took a direct lightning strike, throwing the server across the room, embedding it into the drywall)

If it's just one drive, then yeah, that's no good (perhaps I was not clear on this) for obvious reasons.

51 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

For a backup to be a backup, it has to be kept away from the computer, disconnected from the computer, and powered down except while updating the backup.

And how many people here (go on, raise your hand) do this?

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

2 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Sorry, this is incorrect. If you have all the drives, you can recover the data (I have done this for a RAID 5 array where the system took a direct lightning strike, throwing the server across the room, embedding it into the drywall)

If it's just one drive, then yeah, that's no good (perhaps I was not clear on this) for obvious reasons.

And how many people here (go on, raise your hand) do this?

 

You still don't get it. If the data is lost on drives in a RAID, you can NOT recover it from the RAID. For example, you accidentally delete a file. A RAID will not allow you to recover that file. If your RAID became infected by ransomware, you data is lost.  Go back to my original post where I listed some of the ways other than drive failure you can lose data.

 

If you had a backup, then you could recover it. Btw, you were lucky with that lightning strike. Usually, that would result in BBQed drives (and no data). 

 

I do keep onsite and offsite backup drives (and I'm not the only one). In fact, I keep two onsite backup drives and two offsite backup drives for every data drive I have (overkill for most people but I value my data more than most people). I swap out the onsite backup drives with the offsite backup drives no less than one a month (often, more often) to keep the offsite backups as up to date as possible. My onsite backup drives are stored in a drawer away from the computer. The offsite backup drives are kept in my safe deposit box at my credit union around six miles away.

 

[Radium_Angel]

7 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

For example, you accidentally delete a file.

Ah, we were talking about different things, I was referring to if a drive died, not if the drive had deleted files. Totally different issues, my bad.

[RayLeech]

11 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

And how many people here (go on, raise your hand) do this?

 

 

[Kilrah]

12 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

And how many people here (go on, raise your hand) do this?

2 backups, one offsite

[Lady Fitzgerald]

One thing I want to clarify... I'm not saying RAID (or other redundancy) or a NAS is a bad thing; they do have their uses. For example, if you need (or even just want) for a computer to be able to keep running even after a drive (or more depending on the redundancy scheme), then redundancy is a good way to achieve that. If you need (or even just want) for data to be available to multiple computers, then a NAS is ideal. Redundancy schemes can also be used to lump a large number of drives into a single volume larger than available drives.

 

The thing to remember, however, is redundancy is not a backup since it only protects data from drive failure and cannot be used to recover data after it has been lost. If you have your data on a RAID in your computer or a NAS, they must be backed up for your data to two separate locations to be reasonably safe. This means having separate copies of your data, which can be difficult if dealing with volumes larger than individual drives (it's doable but it's a PITA, requiring keeping data organized into drive sized folders).

[Kilrah]

30 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

cannot be used to recover data after it has been lost.

This sentence is what's causing tension - You can run file recovery software on a RAID just like you can on a single drive. What you want to say is that it doesn't offer additional protection over a single drive for anything other than a drive hard failure. But it's not making it worse, which your wording suggests.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

5 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

This sentence is what's causing tension - You can run file recovery software on a RAID just like you can on a single drive. What you want to say is that it doesn't offer additional protection over a single drive for anything other than a drive hard failure. But it's not making it worse, which your wording suggests.

Now you are the one missing the point. Again, drive failure is not the only cause of data loss. Also, again, drives can, and do, fail irrecoverably without no warning whatsoever. Yet again, a RAID can NOT be used to recover data once that data has been lost on the RAID (in other words, is no longer intact somewhere on the RAID).

 

For example, you are running a RAID 5. One drive dies, say, due to a massive head crash (in other words, irrecoverably). No problem, you replace the crashed drive and let the RAID rebuild itself. But, let's say, a second drive dies irrecoverably before the first failed drive has been rebuilt. You will not have enough data left on the remaining drives in the RAID for recovery. You are S.O.L. becasue the RAID will not be able to recover itself. However, if you had had a backup of your data (i.e. a copy), you could build a new RAID, then repopulate it from the backup.

 

In another example, you get a virus, ransomware, etc. on your RAID and your data becomes corrupted or otherwise lost beyond all hope (paying off ransomware is no guarantee you will get your data back, btw), the RAID cannot recover itself. But, if you have a backup, again, wipe and rebuild the RAID, then repopulate it from the backup.

 

Yes, in some cases, you can run recovery software on a failed drive or RAID and recover data but that is a crap shoot at best. But if the data is no longer intact on the failed drive or RAID (which probably happens more often than not), then nothing will resurrect that data from the dead. Your only hope is if your data also existed somewhere else.