“From Blackout to Breakthrough leveraging Ontrack’s Just-In-Time (JIT) data recovery tool development”
Overview: Successful data recovery solution after a catastrophic server failure.
In today’s data-driven world, the loss of critical information can be devastating, especially for organizations that rely heavily on digital assets to pursue their missions. This case study highlights how Ontrack delivered a successful data recovery solution for a research organization after a catastrophic server failure threatened the future of their work.
The Client: Non-Profit Research organization.
A dedicated research non-profit organization had accumulated a substantial amount of critical data during the early phases of its work—data that was essential to the progress of multiple research teams around the world. However, a sudden hardware failure in their primary server, caused by a power surge following a UPS system failure, led to the unexpected and severe loss of a significant portion of this invaluable information.
The Situation: Windows REFS volume on Supermicro server entirely inaccessible after powersurge.
The crisis began with a catastrophic component failure that disabled the organization’s Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) system. As the team worked to restore operations, severe weather triggered a series of brownouts and power surges. A significant power surge ultimately tripped a breaker in the data center, cutting power to the server environment.
Although the server appeared to reboot normally and no drives were marked offline, attempts to access the system revealed a critical problem: the main Windows REFS volume had become entirely inaccessible.
For this team in its early stages, the loss was not only operationally crippling but posed a potentially career-ending risk for the researchers relying on this data. That’s when Ontrack stepped in.
The Solution: Ontrack’s Just-In-Time (JIT) data recovery tool development.
Ontrack’s data recovery specialists began with a comprehensive assessment of the failed server, identifying both the extent of data loss and the underlying hardware issues. Due to the complexity of the environment, an enterprise-scale system with over 800TB of total capacity - a custom recovery solution was required.
Leveraging their in-house Just-In-Time (JIT) Development Team, Ontrack devised a tailored, multi-layered recovery plan. The client identified that over 250TB of data was at risk—data not included in any backup. While the project was expected to be time-intensive, Ontrack proposed an incremental recovery approach, prioritizing the most critical data first to minimize disruption.
The Resolution: recovered 100% of the lost data and client’s research teams to resume their projects.
After weeks of focused effort, Ontrack’s engineers developed new recovery tools specifically for this case. Through persistent collaboration and meticulous execution, the team successfully recovered 100% of the lost data—enabling the client’s research teams to resume their projects and avoid significant professional setbacks.
The client shared the following feedback:
“I just wanted to drop you and the team a note to say THANK YOU for everything you’ve helped us with over the past year. I know this wasn’t a small project, so thank you for your patience in not only working with our server but consistently staying on top of things throughout this whole process and always keeping me in the loop. Hopefully it was also a good experience for your team, and they should be proud they managed to recover all that they did! For a new lab losing this data would have been an absolute career-killer.”
Conclusion: With the right data recovery partner, even the most daunting data losses can be overcome.
This case demonstrates how a strategic, customized approach to data recovery—supported by technical expertise and clear communication—can turn a near-disaster into a success story.
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