Client: Colonel Benton P. Zwart, MD, MPH (Retired, USAF)Industry: Data Recovery ServicesChallenge: Recover decades of family photos, videos, financial records, and other irreplaceable data from a failed RAID 5 system.

The Challenge

Colonel Benton P. Zwart is a retired Air Force officer with an impressive career spanning various fields, including electrical engineering, aerospace medicine, occupational medicine, and undersea and hyperbaric medicine.Having built computers since the 1980s, he relied on RAID 5 technology to secure his data. However, after only six months of use, his 3-disk 24 TB RAID 5 volume became inaccessible, putting decades of precious memories and important documents at risk.Zwart then decided to seek professional assistance in an attempt to salvage his and his family’s data.

Data Recovery Solution

After researching various data recovery companies, Colonel Zwart chose SalvageData Recovery due to their favorable reviews and expertise in RAID systems.He contacted our team by phone and was assigned a senior case manager, George Pavel, who is specialized in RAID. Pavel understood the technical details of the case and recommended that Zwart send, free of charge, the failed disks to SalvageData headquarters in Cleveland, OH.Upon receiving the client's three 12 TB drives, SalvageData conducted an initial assessment without charge, noting file system corruption and RAID failure with an 80% probability of successful recovery.Colonel Zwart authorized the recovery, and within ten days, he was informed that the RAID data recovery was successful and complete. SalvageData provided him with a link to review the recovered files and file structure, confirming that all of his lost data had been restored.

Results

SalvageData loaded the recovered files onto an external drive and shipped it back to the client, along with the original three data drives. In the meantime, Colonel Zwart had ordered, received, and installed three new 12 TB HDDs as his replacement RAID 5 volume.Upon receiving the recovery drive, he duplicated the recovered data onto his new RAID volume, restoring all the data he had feared lost. Due to his engineering background, Zwart decided to investigate the disks and realized that only one of them was still working. For this, he believed SalvageData experts to be the most capable professionals in their expertise.

Testimonial

"In my opinion, this company worked technical magic [...] As a retiree and a veteran, this company was incredibly accommodating regarding the cost and speed of my data recovery. They are most obviously consummate professionals and experts in their field. If the data can be recovered, they will get it. Highly Recommended."— Benton P. Zwart, MD, MPH, COL (Ret), USAF, MC, CFSRead the full testimonial here, or find more success stories on our reviews page.