Is RAID Recovery Really Possible?
As data files have grown to massive proportions, the need for bigger, faster hard drives have grown. Many large corporations, businesses, and individuals have migrated from single hard drives to RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks), a high speed, multi-cached series of disks.
While RAID technology solves many of the storage needs and often employs mirrored disk images, RAID failures do occur. RAID recovery is more complex than data recovery on a single drive. Not only are you dealing with multiple drives, you must also know the RAID's parameters such as block size, drive order, and direction of rotation.
RAID recovery services are available to reconstruct your RAID and recover your data as are RAID recovery software utilities for the do-it-yourselfer. Sending your RAID to a service is one way to ensure results though it may cost quite a bit. Most RAID recovery services only charge if they can retrieve data. They work in dust free environments and handle your disks with extreme care.
Before you pull out your disks and toss them in a box, you too should handle them with extreme care. Do not rearrange or move the disks around in the enclosure because it will make recovery much more difficult if the drive order is lost. Do not run chkdsk or perform any operations that will write to the disk. Call the RAID recovery service for advice on how best to package your RAID for shipping.
If you're capable and want to try a do-it-yourself RAID recovery, several tools are on the market ranging from RAID reconstructors that analyze your RAID parameters and recreate the RAID in an image file that you can then use in conjunction with a data recovery tool to specialized RAID recovery software that analyzes your RAID and gets your data back in just a few steps.
These programs vary in their capabilities so you will need to select wisely. Is your RAID a RAID 0 or a RAID 5? Make sure to get a RAID recovery tool that addresses the type or RAID you have. Is your RAID issue a hardware issue such as a RAID controller card gone bad or a software issue such as file deletion, corrupt Master File Table, or a corrupt partition?
If you are faced with a failed RAID and extensive data loss, you are facing a major problem. Solutions do exist however they aren't cheap. Sending your RAID to a RAID recovery service is one option but it has its downsides. First, you must carefully remove the RAID and ship it using extreme care and secure packaging. Next, it will take several days to get your data back. Even if you select overnight shipping each way, that's two days just in transportation. Plus, the RAID recovery process takes time, even with experts working on it. Finally, it's going to cost hundreds of dollars.
A software solution also has its price tag but if your RAID is a good candidate for RAID recovery and you choose the software wisely, you will get your data back faster and at a fraction of the price.
