When a storage area network drops a LUN, the instinct across the whole IT chain is motion — failovers, path resets, firmware, vendor scripts. Motion is exactly what the data cannot afford. The first professional act in SAN recovery is a freeze: no writes, no repairs, no well-meant maintenance. Everything after that is mapping — because a SAN is less a device than a set of promises between layers, and recovery means re-deriving every one of them.
Underneath the management console a SAN is disciplined layering: physical disks into RAID groups, groups carved into LUNs, LUNs presented over fibre or iSCSI to hosts that format them with VMFS, NTFS or a database’s raw appetite. A failure at any layer takes the layers above with it — and the console, which reads the same corrupted metadata, frequently reports the situation wrong. Trusting the array’s own opinion of itself is how good data gets rebuilt over.
We work from the bottom: image the members, reconstruct the groups, re-carve the LUNs, then hand each one to its proper file-system rebuild. The map is re-drawn from evidence, not from the config that just failed.
Enterprise jobs arrive with enterprise weight: compliance, insurers, sometimes a boardroom. So the handling matches. A documented change freeze from the moment we’re engaged; every disk and shelf logged in and imaged read-only; the working set kept on our storage, not the patient; and a written scope before any paid hour. NDAs signed without drama. Progress reported in plain sentences rather than ticket-speak.
And the promise that matters most at this scale: everything stays in-house and inside the UK — no partner labs, no offshore “escalation”, no third pair of hands.
A controller pair that quarrelled and split-brained the metadata. A RAID group that lost its second disk during a firmware update. A VMFS datastore showing empty after a resignature went wrong. An iSCSI target that vanished and took the accounts system’s LUN with it. Different logos — HP MSA and EVA, Dell EMC, IBM, NetApp, Fujitsu — same bench method underneath. If the shelf is drivable, bring it to Charing Cross; if not, couriered disks travel fine with the bays numbered.
Because no two of these jobs are the same shape or size, the price is quoted to the job — individually, in writing, after the free assessment and before any paid work begins. Every job starts with a free diagnostic and ends the same way it was quoted: the figure goes in writing before a single sector is read, and on most jobs there is nothing to pay unless your data comes back. No hourly meter, no surprise “evaluation fee”, no percentage of what the files are worth.
Not while the data is unprotected. Vendor repairs are written to restore service, and they will happily rebuild structures over recoverable data to get a green light. Freeze changes, export nothing, and image first — once safe copies of every member exist, repairs can be attempted with nothing at stake.
Usually not — an empty-looking datastore after a resignature or partition fault means the pointers were hurt, not the VMDKs. We rebuild the VMFS structures from an image of the LUN and lift the machines out whole. What ruins these jobs is provisioning new VMs onto the “empty” space, so keep it quarantined.
Yes, and it usually goes best that way — your team knows the environment, the vendor knows the firmware, we protect the data while both talk. We’ll say plainly which proposed actions are safe once images exist and which should wait. One rule holds regardless: nothing writes to the original members.
Scoped and quoted to the job, in writing, after a free assessment of shelf count, disk count and failure shape — because a two-shelf MSA and a forty-disk fabric are not the same week. Multi-disk imaging follows our array pricing from £500 + VAT; the quote fixes the ceiling before work starts.
Two honest routes, no vans. Hand the device in at Tay House, 300 Bath Street — right at Charing Cross, two minutes off the M8 — Monday to Friday, 9am–5:30pm. Or wrap it well and send it by insured, tracked post from Paisley, Ayrshire, the Highlands or anywhere else in the UK. Either way the work is done in-house by our own engineers, with a documented chain of custody, and your data never leaves the UK.
Every hour of “trying things” is an hour of risk the data doesn’t need. Call first — we’ll tell you what to freeze — then get the members to us. SAN data recovery for Glasgow and the rest of Scotland, handled with bench discipline and boardroom discretion.