RAID recovery services

RAID arrays (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) have many benefits, including data redundancy and performance, but when they fail, a business’s life is on the line. In this article, we provide an overview of our RAID recovery services that can help you get your business up and running after a RAID failure.

We can handle any RAID configuration

RAID levels with different configurations have a lot of similarity, but each type also has its own common failures and different techniques to handle, as well. We have successfully recovered data from all types of RAID configurations and have all the tools necessary to attack any RAID failure.

We have expertise in all disk-based hardware and software RAID array configurations:

RAID 0
RAID 1
RAID 1E
RAID 3
RAID 4
RAID 5
RAID 6
RAID 0+1
RAID 10
RAID 50
RAID 51
RAID 5E
RAID 5EE
RAID 7
RAID Z

While these are the most common RAID configurations, we have the experience and technology to recover from any type of RAID system.

Types of RAID failure

Complex fault-tolerant systems can also suffer from a crash. Even when correctly configured, these are just some of the ways a RAID array can fail:

RAID controller failure — when the controller fails, the operating system has no way to access data.
Multiple drive failure — each RAID configuration has a specific drive fault tolerance, and if that limit is crossed, then data recovery services are needed.
Lost array configuration — depending on the hardware or software controller used, the configuration may be subject to corruption or loss.
Accidental reformatting of drives or whole RAID array
Intermittent drive failure resulting in RAID degradation

Regardless of the configuration or the specific cause of failure, our engineers use state-of-the-art hardware and software technology to recover data.

The RAID recovery process

Every single RAID data recovery case which arrives at our lab receives high priority importance because we understand the data on any RAID to be of vital importance for most organizations. Our disk recovery process, coupled with our ability to produce a safe sector-to sector dump of the complete volume, allows us to process an array as a collection of disk image files. RAID recovery of crashed members of the array is similar to hard drive recovery procedures. Read more about our hard drive recovery services here.

What to watch out for

Please note: the original RAID controller or system is almost never needed for recovery in a well-equipped lab. If you are asked upfront for the original RAID controller or array system by a data recovery company, be careful — you may be risking recoverable data to an inexperienced firm!

We have extensive experience in recovering data from failed RAID arrays, including parity-distributed and basic spanned or striped volumes. We only require the active members of the array in order to recover lost data — no controllers, cables or enclosures.

All further procedures to recover data from array members are done on the raw drive images, leaving the original drives intact. Our advanced software tools will extract the data from the images. When a drive image is not available, the tools can reconstruct the data “on the fly” in the same way that the RAID rebuild process would have done on the original system.

Call us for a consultation.

If your RAID has failed, call us today! We use the latest cutting-edge tools and techniques to get your information back as quickly, safely, and securely as possible.