![]() ![]() What was once impossible is now an easy fix.” For example, he says, “I used to think platter swaps were impossible, and now my guys do them routinely.”Įven when Sit thinks a drive is too far gone for repair, “These younger guys just say, ‘Let me have at it.’” Like doctors, they’re curing ills that were incurable just years ago. “In earlier years different symptoms were impossible, but now we’ve resolved them. Sit also cites the culture of continuing improvement among his team. ![]() They’re also productive: “Each guy may touch ten recoveries a day I’ve got seven guys in here 70 a day I can do 1,400 a month.” “Some of the guys are better at firmware, some of the guys are better at component repair-and then there’s my solid-state guy, who rocks,” Sit says. In fact, he seems to relish them, and credits his team-oriented approach for keeping DriveSavers on top of the changing landscape. PC and storage system manufacturers are also making life more difficult for the cleanroom engineers by subtly modifying the firmware in the hard drives they install in their products-the exact same Seagate hard drive, for example, may have different firmware in a Dell system than it does in one from HP.īut Sit, DriveSavers’ cleanroom manager, takes the increasing challenges in stride. ![]() Into it now come RAID arrays, NAS (network-attached storage) and SAN (storage-area network) devices, tape drives-even such solid-state devices as USB drives, Memory Sticks, and digital-camera cards. Today the new cleanroom hosts more than simple, straightforward hard drives. Times have changed in other ways, as well. “Hardly anything had to go into a clean room in that year.” Complexities are increasing “Back in 1994 when I started, most things were corruption, or electronic, or slight mechanical problems,” Cobb recalls. While this has made life better for hard-drive owners-higher capacities, faster performance, longer drive life-steadily increasing complexities and closer tolerances have made drive repair dicier. Today’s files aren’t always straightforward data buckets, either: Enterprise IT systems often encrypt sensitive files, so DriveSavers trains and certifies its engineers in common encryption technologies.Īlso, hard-drive engineering has progressed over the years. Reassembling filesĮlectrically grounded coveralls, hood and mask, safety glasses, and latex gloves: the all-day uniform of a cleanroom engineer. Government-the company has deployed aĬisco Self-Defending Network architecture to keep even the most resourceful hackers from snooping. Due to the sensitivity of much of the data that DriveSavers saves-clients include major financial services, Hollywood filmmakers, and the U.S. The recovered data is then transferred from the clone to DriveSavers’ immense and highly secure storage network, which includes 65TB of 24/7 online storage, with another 100TB of near-line backup. After the sickly drive has yielded its raw data, it’s no longer part of the workflow-it’s laid aside, and all further recovery work is done on the data now moved to its clone. There, a team of seven veteran engineers transfers the drive’s data onto another drive after repairing the malfunctioning drive using parts from an on-site, 20,000-drive inventory. When a sick storage system is brought into the company’s hardware hospital, it’s given a preliminary examination in what Sit refers to as the “triage area.” After diagnosis, 95 percent of ailing drives are sent into the cleanroom for disassembly, repair, and preliminary data recovery. “Do no harm” is more than a slogan at DriveSavers it’s the basis of the company’s workflow. In DriveSavers Class 100 cleanroom, hard drives can be operated with their cases open without fear of being contaminated by drive-destroying dust. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |