When disaster strikes, the Salvation Army is quick to provide aid and comfort to those in distress. But this time the tables were turned when their regional headquarters in Milwaukee, WI, became a flood victim.
On a weekend, when the building was empty, a water main broke in the basement that housed the organizations servers. Divisional IT Manager, Rich Thorne, arrived at the site and wasn’t prepared for the magnitude of damage he discovered.
I expected to see a foot or two of water but every computer, server and desk was submerged, said Thorne. Even worse, the water had mixed with elevator hydraulic fluid, coating every surface in the basement with slime.
The drowned disks contained compressed files that were scheduled for off site backup: a month s worth of spreadsheets, documents, accounting and email files from 40 offices.
Losing this information would seriously hamper the nonprofits operations.
When the drives arrived at DriveSavers, the first challenge was to clean them thoroughly in the triage area so they could be brought into the pristine cleanroom.
We treat each individual drive as a sick patient and do whatever we can to save each one, explains Cleanroom Manager, Ed Sit. In less than 24 hours, DriveSavers completed the recovery but it wasn’t until the Salvation Army ran the drives on their own proprietary system that they knew the recovery was successful.
When everything worked . . . , said the relieved Thorne, I told DriveSavers we’ll be doing back flips as we cut you the check!
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