When questioning a prospective client it is always necessary, to the best of your ability, to identify the RAID type your prospective customer may have. It is also imperative that the technician doing the initial interview and diagnostic be aware that the client is more often than not unable and or unwilling to identify the RAID and or NAS (network attached storage) type. ‘Unable’ falls into the category of the normal end user who did not setup the RAID and or is technically unable to understand the idea of what a RAID is. Unwilling are those who think they know and are adamant about the RAID type and are unwilling to listen to reason, or are trying to lower the price by offering a RAID type that is less expensive to recover, such as a RAID 1, over a RAID 0. The following are a few questions to ask your future customer that will help you price their RAID Data Recovery properly.
How many drives in your array?
This in of itself is a clue to the RAID type. If the client says two drives then you know that it is either a RAID 0, or a RAID 1. RAID 5, by definition must have at least three drives in order to function. Two data drives, and one parity drive sequenced by stripe and rotating parity.
What is the size of each drive in the array?
This question is a lead up to the next question since size is a determining factor for a RAID type.
What is the total storage size of the array?
In the above example we asked the user what is the size of each individual drive. Let us assume they replied with 500 gigabytes. We then asked them question three and they reply 1 terabyte. If the answer to the first question was three drives and the drives are 500 GB, and the total storage for the RAID is 1 terabyte then we know that we are dealing with a RAID 5 since we have three drives, two for data, and one for parity.
If the client had said 1.5 terabytes then we know we have a RAID 0 since there is not a parity drive and all drives are part of the data set.
Although this is a simple three question test it will always tell you what type of RAID, drive type and size, your client’s technical expertise, and how you can offer a general price for their RAID Data Recovery.
Use these simple questions to help you determine the RAID you may soon be trying to recover.
