Hack 100 Data Recovery of Last Resort


your tape backup turns out to be a dud, who you gonna call? Use this
hack.You have critical data on your server and your hard drive
crashes. And you haven't made a backup recently.
What do you do? I know, not making regular backups is irresponsible,
but these things happen. Or perhaps you have a RAID 5 unit and the
unimaginable happens: two drives fail simultaneously. And
Friday's backup tape is unreadable, because you
haven't cleaned the tape drive for over a year.
Another example of being irresponsible, but let's
lay aside the blame until we fix the problem, okay? So, what do you
do?You need a data recovery companyfast. I know seasoned
administrators who have been in this unfortunate situation, and
here's a list of companies they've
recommended to me that you can try if this ever happens to you:Ontrack
A popular data-recovery service provider that offers various
levels of services, including in-house, remote, and do-it-yourself.
They also have a partner program that offers discounts based on
referrals and resale. They have worldwide locations in the US,
Europe, and Tokyo. Their web site is http://www.ontrack.com.
DriveSavers
An industry leader in data recovery that offers free estimates.
They also have a terrific list of tips on their site (http://www.drivesavers.com), explaining how
to anticipate and prevent drive problems before they occur.
ActionFront
An ISO 9001:2000 Certified company with data recovery labs in
Atlanta, Santa Clara, and Toronto. On their web site (http://www.actionfront.com),
you'll find a free 22-page Data Emergency Guide you
can download, and it's definitely worth a read.
These are only a few of the many data recovery services out there,
but they come highly recommended by competent IT professionals I know
personally, so I pass them on to you. However, you should know that
data recovery usually isn't cheap, so clean that
tape drive regularly if you don't want to break your
IT budget!By the way, if you've ever had to use a
data-recovery service yourself and would like to recommend them, feel
free to post a comment on this book's web page
(http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/winsvrhks/).