When shared storage fails, everything relying upon that storage fails with it. We recover SAN environments (failed LUNs, corrupted VMFS volumes, damaged storage pools) for businesses and IT providers throughout South Yorkshire.
Free diagnostic on every SAN job. One fixed quote in writing before any work is performed.
On most jobs, you only pay if we recover your data. For electronic, mechanical and chip-level work, we'll take half up front and the rest only if we're able to recover your data. Jobs involving BitLocker, ransomware, forensic or CCTV/DVR work are paid upfront once you accept the fixed quote. Complete pricing can be found on the data recovery cost page.
Every SAN job commences with matching the symptoms encountered to the fault, and these ten causes of failure account for almost everything that comes onto the bench.
Enterprise shelves lose members in clusters, so every disk is recovered and imaged separately first.
The block device that your servers relied upon has disappeared; it will be recreated from the pool's metadata upward.
The mapping of how blocks form LUNs has been destroyed; it will be reconstructed from the raw structural elements.
Updates that brick controller pairs leave healthy data stranded, because the management used to reach that data is dead.
Dual-controller redundancy fails on both controllers together far more frequently than promotional literature admits, so recovery goes drive-direct.
The VMware layer above otherwise healthy LUNs has failed; datastores and VMDKs will be parsed and repaired.
Provisioning errors happen rapidly; recovery depends entirely upon how much has been written after the error.
Volumes reliant upon snapshots collapse if a link in the chain becomes corrupted; snapshot chains are re-stitched at image level.
Pools that run out of real physical blocks become corrupted and damage everything thinly provisioned on them.
Power events with dead cache batteries leave parity and data out of step across the whole group.
SANs layer complexity: physical drives organised in RAID groups, those groups pooled and carved into LUNs, and then file systems or hypervisor datastores on top (typically Dell EMC, HP MSA/EVA, IBM, NetApp or Fujitsu hardware). Recovery works down the same layered stack in reverse: we image the physical drives, rebuild the RAID groups, reconstruct the pool metadata, and then extract the LUNs and the virtual machines or databases located on them. We regularly partner with in-house IT staff and managed service providers (MSPs), and can work to your change-control processes and confidentiality requirements.
Most SAN jobs are essentially VM jobs: the customer needs three key servers back, not a petabyte of raw blocks. We extract VMDK/VHDX files from rebuilt datastores, carry out repairs as necessary and can prioritise specific databases (SQL, Exchange) so the business is running again before the full recovery is complete.
SAN work needs the connectivity just as much as the recovery stack:
HBAs and interposers to attach enterprise shelves and drives natively, including 520/524/528-byte sector formats.
Whole RAID groups can be imaged simultaneously; failed members are repaired on the PC-3000 bench first.
Vendor metadata is parsed and rebuilt (RAID groups, then pools, then LUNs, then file systems) in that order.
Datastores are mounted from reconstructed LUNs; virtual disks are extracted and repaired individually.
Critical workloads (SQL Server, Exchange and similar) are verified and prioritised so critical services restart first.
All original drives and shelves remain read-only from arrival until they are returned to you.
If your platform is not listed, it is still very likely to be familiar, as enterprise storage reuses the same underlying building blocks under different badges.
Remove and clearly label every drive with its shelf and slot position, as enterprise arrays rely heavily on the exact drive order and layout. Get a quote first by phone on 0800 689 0668 or with the free online diagnostic, then send the labelled drives (photos of the original configuration are helpful); the shelves and controllers can remain on site.
Our customers get a quote before sending their media to us, either by telephone on 0800 689 0668 or by completing our free online diagnostic. Once a customer has their quote, they post their media to us, tracked and insured.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please remove the hard drive or SSD from your machine and send us just the drive; we do not offer an internal drive-removal service. If you have a server or RAID system, please send us every disk, each clearly labelled with its bay. We cannot recover data from storage that is soldered directly onto the motherboard (for example Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops), so we need removable drives to be sent to us. If you are unsure which kind you have, ring us first.
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Mark your package for the attention of Leeds Data Recovery and we will contact you as soon as we have diagnosed your media.
Unsure about what to send? Call us first on 0800 689 0668 or complete our free online diagnostic.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote and, in most cases, you only pay if we recover your data. Start now or call the freephone.