Our data is GONE... Again - Petabyte Project Recovery Part 1

Our data is GONE... Again - Petabyte Project Recovery Part 1] follows Linus Tech Tips as they confront a severe data loss incident in their petabyte-scale archival storage system. The video opens with a candid admission that despite their high-end hardware, misconfiguration and a lack of proactive maintenance led to irrecoverable data loss for parts of their Old Vault and New Vault storage clusters. They outline the scale of their operation, detailing two GlusterFS clusters spread across multiple Storinator servers housing thousands of drives, and explain that no complete backup existed for the affected data. The hosts emphasize the financial and logistical challenges of backing up a petabyte of data, and they announce an intent to rebuild a properly configured new 1.2 petabyte server using Seagate 20TB drives as a foundation for recovery. They also foreground the plan to consolidate data movement onto a fresh architecture, reformat the older vaults, and reattempt data migration once the new vault is online. Throughout, they acknowledge the responsibility and the learning opportunity, stressing the need for robust monitoring, regular scrubs, and formal IT ownership to prevent future incidents. The episode frames storage best practices as not just technical niceties but essential safeguards for a media operation that depends on reliable long-term data preservation, with a promise to document progress in upcoming parts of the recovery series. Finally, the hosts recur to their sponsorship and practical advice on reliable cloud and on-prem storage options, while setting expectations for a lengthy recovery process that could take weeks to months depending on data transfer needs and error rates. They close with a call to subscribe for updates and a teaser about revisiting the recovery steps in subsequent videos.

Topics · science & technology · data storage · disaster recovery · hardware infrastructure · video production