Do you store data recoveries on a server?

[wolfson]

That's assuming he's the boss. It's harder when you're an employee trying to convince your boss to do things the right way.

Exactly.

 

[DataMedics]

I know you have to be careful how you present things at times, I've been there myself. In my experience though, if you stand your ground on doing things the right way and not cutting corners the boss will ultimately respect you more for it. I had one boss who I used to constantly argue with over not cutting certain corners, at times I even refused to do things his way. But, in time, I was his right hand man who's work he trusted the most and he stopped second guessing my way of doing things. Sometimes he'd later admit that my way was better and he was glad I was so stubborn.

 

[lcoughey]

Ask your boss to give me a call (866-750-3169) and I'd be happy to explain the risks to him/her. I don't mind being the bad guy in situations like these.

 

[wolfson]

Ask your boss to give me a call (866-750-3169) and I'd be happy to explain the risks to him/her. I don't mind being the bad guy in situations like these.

Thanks for the offer, but I don't think it'll be necessary. I'm going to start with @DataMedics' approach.

 

[trevm999]

Thanks for all the info! I'm going to play around with FreeBSD and FreeNAS and see how that works for us.

Please note that I'm not advocating for RAID5 or RAIDZ. (ZFS's software RAID5) RAID mirroring (RAID1 or RAID10) are the only ones that should be unless you are using 5+ drives (then you can use RAID6)

 

[wolfson]

Please note that I'm not advocating for RAID5 or RAIDZ. (ZFS's software RAID5) RAID mirroring (RAID1 or RAID10) are the only ones that should be unless you are using 5+ drives (then you can use RAID6)

I was thinking about RAIDZ2. Any particular reason to go with ZFS software RAID vs a hardware RAID card?

 

[trevm999]

I was thinking about RAIDZ2. Any particular reason to go with ZFS software RAID vs a hardware RAID card?

A RAID 6 (RAIDZ2) rebuild is very resource intensive, therefore if you go with software RAID there will be more processing power in order to do the rebuild, with the limited resources of hardware RAID it could take a long time.

 

[wolfson]

This is very bad practice and a huge risk to your client's data. You should never attempt file recovery without first imaging the drive, preferably with proper data recovery hardware imager or, at the very least, ddrescue.

Thanks for this, it was the kick I needed to start advocating for better data recovery practices. We're going to build a safer, more consistent model for how recovery should be performed (including always working off an image) then push heavily for its implementation.