Enterprise Server Data Recovery Services

Supported Server Hardware and RAID Controllers

We recover data from Dell PowerEdge, HP ProLiant, and IBM Power Series servers, including arrays managed by PERC, Smart Array, and SAS HBA controllers. Both SAS and SATA member drives are supported.

• Dell PowerEdge with PERC controllers: H730, H740, and H755 PERC cards store RAID metadata in proprietary formats on each member drive. When the controller fails or metadata becomes corrupted, we image each SAS or SATA member and reconstruct the array configuration offline using PC-3000 RAID Edition.
• HP ProLiant with Smart Array controllers: P408i and P816i Smart Array controllers use their own on-disk metadata structure. We capture this metadata during imaging and use it to determine stripe size, parity rotation, and member ordering without requiring the original controller hardware.
• IBM Power Series: IBM servers running AIX or Linux on POWER hardware use JFS2, ext4, or XFS filesystems over hardware-managed RAID. We image member drives through SAS HBAs and reconstruct the array layout from captured controller metadata.
• SAS vs. SATA interfaces: Enterprise servers commonly use SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drives, which require different interface hardware than consumer SATA drives. Our lab is equipped with SAS HBAs and PC-3000 SAS support to image these drives at their native 12 Gb/s interface speed.
• PCIe NVMe enterprise drives: Intel P5510, Samsung PM9A3, and Micron 7450 are common in modern server deployments. These drives connect over PCIe rather than SAS or SATA and require NVMe-aware imaging procedures.

Enterprise arrays use proprietary RAID controller firmware that standard recovery software cannot interpret. We reverse-engineer controller configurations and reconstruct arrays offline using PC-3000 RAID Edition without relying on the original controller hardware. This applies to RAID 6 recovery with dual parity, striped mirrors in RAID 10 recovery, and every other common enterprise RAID level.

Recovering Virtual Machines and SAN Storage

We extract .vmdk and .vhdx virtual disk files from failed RAID arrays running VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V, and we recover data from SAN appliances where the storage layer has failed but underlying drives remain intact.

• VMware ESXi and VMFS recovery: VMFS (VMware Virtual Machine File System) is a clustered filesystem designed for virtualization. When a VMFS volume becomes corrupted or the underlying RAID array degrades, we reconstruct the array from member drive images and parse the VMFS metadata to locate and extract individual .vmdk files for each virtual machine.
• Hyper-V and .vhdx recovery: Microsoft Hyper-V stores virtual machines as .vhdx files on NTFS or ReFS volumes. When the host server's RAID array fails, we image the members, rebuild the array, and extract the .vhdx files intact. Individual files within the virtual disk can then be recovered as needed.
• Traditional SANs: Dell EMC Unity, NetApp FAS, and HPE Nimble storage arrays present LUNs over iSCSI or Fibre Channel to host servers. When the SAN controller or firmware fails, the data still resides on the physical drives. We remove drives from the SAN chassis, image them through SAS HBAs, and reconstruct the LUN layout and filesystem from the raw images.
• Virtual SANs (VMware vSAN): vSAN distributes VM storage objects across local disks in an ESXi cluster. A multi-node failure or metadata corruption can make the entire vSAN datastore inaccessible. We image the member drives from each affected node and reconstruct the distributed object layout to recover the underlying .vmdk files.
• Software-Defined Storage (SDS): When the software layer (ZFS, Ceph, GlusterFS, or similar) fails but the underlying drives are physically intact, recovery focuses on imaging the drives and reconstructing the storage pool metadata. The physical drives contain all the data; the software layer is the map. We rebuild that map from the raw images. For ZFS-specific failures, our ZFS pool recovery guide covers pool states, TXG rollbacks, and safe diagnostic steps.

What Makes Enterprise RAID Recovery Different?

Enterprise server recovery differs from consumer NAS recovery in three ways: proprietary RAID controller metadata, SAS drive interfaces, and multi-layer storage architectures that stack RAID, virtualization, and SAN protocols on top of one another.

• Proprietary controller metadata: Consumer NAS devices from Synology or QNAP use Linux mdadm or Btrfs RAID, which stores metadata in well-documented formats. Enterprise RAID controllers from Dell (PERC), HP (Smart Array), and LSI/Broadcom write proprietary on-disk metadata that generic recovery tools cannot parse. PC-3000 RAID Edition is designed to interpret these formats and reconstruct arrays without the original controller.
• SAS drive handling: Enterprise servers use SAS drives with 15K RPM spindle speeds and dual-port connectivity. These drives cannot be connected to a standard SATA port. Our imaging hardware includes SAS HBAs that communicate at the drive's native protocol, preserving access to all addressable sectors including those outside the standard SATA command set.
• Multi-layer storage stacks: A typical enterprise failure might involve a RAID array presenting a LUN over iSCSI to an ESXi host running VMFS with multiple VMs, each containing its own filesystem. Recovery requires understanding and correctly reassembling every layer of that stack, from raw disk images up through the guest filesystem.
• Scale: Enterprise arrays routinely contain 8, 12, or 24 drives. Each member must be imaged individually before array reconstruction can begin. The imaging phase alone can take days for large arrays with degraded members, and the reconstruction phase must correctly handle the metadata from every drive in the set.

How Much Does Enterprise Server Recovery Cost?

Enterprise server recovery follows the same transparent pricing model as every other service we offer: per-drive imaging based on each drive's condition, plus a $400-$800 array reconstruction fee. No data recovered means no charge.

• Logical or firmware-level issues: $250 to $900 per drive. Covers filesystem corruption, firmware module damage requiring PC-3000 terminal access, and SMART threshold failures preventing normal reads.
• Mechanical failures (head swap, motor seizure): $1,200 to $1,500 per drive with a 50% deposit. Donor parts are consumed during the transplant. Open-drive work is performed on a validated laminar-flow bench.
• Array reconstruction: $400-$800 depending on RAID level, member count, filesystem type, and whether parameters must be detected from raw data or can be captured from surviving controller metadata.
• Total cost scales with the number of drives in the array and whether any members require physical repair. A 4-drive array where all members read normally costs less than a 12-drive array with two mechanically failed members.

We sign NDAs for corporate data recovery. All drives remain in our Austin lab under chain-of-custody documentation. We are not HIPAA certified and do not sign BAAs, but we are willing to discuss your specific compliance requirements before work begins.