Why RAID Data Recovery Cost’s So Much
Let’s face it data recovery is expensive. Even just a single failed hard drive can easily run up a bill near $1000 to get back all that lost data. When it comes to RAID data recovery costs can go even higher. The fact is even among data recovery professionals many find themselves lost when it comes to RAID arrays. So the price hike is to be expected.
How Much Should RAID Data Recovery Cost?
Largely this will depend on the specific array. There are many factors which will affect the cost of RAID data recovery. Some factors which will run up the cost are:
- Number of Drives in the RAID – The more drives you have the higher the difficulty. With only two drives, there are only two possibilities of drive order. However just adding one more it becomes six possibilities. Add another and you’re up to 24. This exponential growth is why most companies have to significantly increase the cost of recovery for a large array such as 8 drives in a large NAS.
- Hard Drive Condition – If it’s just a simple matter of a failed RAID controller, this won’t be a factor. However, with many arrays individual drives will need to be recovered first to be able to have a chance for recovery. Even arrays with redundancy such as RAID 5 often have multiple disks offline at different times when the failure is discovered.
- RAID Array Type – A RAID 6 or RAID 5EE array is going to take significantly more time to recover from than a standard RAID 5 will. The added complexities of these array types may run up the costs at most labs. If you have a non-standard RAID type such as NetGear’s X-RAID2, you can expect to pay a lot more. A whole lot more.
- Hard Drive Type – Many labs (including ours) charge extra for SCSI or SAS drives as these are more complex to recover data from before beginning to rebuild the array.
Here in our Rhode Island lab we charge a base price of $750 for typical RAID arrays and increase that cost by $350 per drive over 2 for most RAID configurations. Certain RAID types such as RAID 6 or X-RAID 2 which are very complex may cost more.
Need a Quote for RAID Data Recovery?
Visit our contact page or chat applet at the bottom to get in touch with one of our technicians who can walk you through our data recovery process. We’ll provide a fixed quote to recover the data, and we only get paid if we are successful. If you’re a data recovery professional or intent on DIY recovery, please visit our data recovery forum. There you’ll find professionals who can explain the process and may even be able to offer remote support (for a nominal fee).
