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When is RAID Data Recovery Needed?

What do you do when your supposed fail-safe: RAID 6, reports a drive failure? Or even worse, if your RAID 5 server reports multiple RAID drive failures? It’s a total nightmare. So now, what do you do about recovering the data from all these RAID drives? The answer to it is you go for RAID Data Recovery.

While there are several RAID Data recovery software, they are effective in case of hardware failure. Read this blog to know in which all scenarios you need RAID Data Recovery and why.

What is RAID Data Recovery?

It is the process of recovering and restoring data from a RAID storage infrastructure or architecture. RAID data recovery uses manual and automated data recovery to extract and restore data from one or multiple RAID drives. 

RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, combines multiple hard drives into a single logical unit. It incorporates several hard disks’ capabilities and storage capacities to form a single system that offers larger storage capacity and better data safety. 

The disks can be combined into the array in different ways, then called RAID levels. These include RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, and nested RAID 10, etc., offer a high level of performance and data security and can even fault tolerance. However, RAID arrays are still susceptible to data loss. Nevertheless, it is a redundant way to store data and has fault tolerance to survive one or many disk failures. 

Common Causes of Data Loss in RAID

Data loss in RAID can occur for multiple reasons, such as virus or malware attacks, controller failures, multiple disk failures, RAID rebuild failures, natural disasters, power issues, and much more. However, human error is one of the most common causes of RAID data loss.

The causes of data loss in each RAID level can be broadly divided into physical damage and logical damage, as explained below.

Logical Damage

It refers to the data loss situation in RAID, which can be caused by power outages, driver problems, or server crashes. Some examples of logical damage in a RAID are:

  • Damaged or corrupt file system
  • Failed, corrupt, inaccessible, and formatted RAID
  • Loss of RAID system registry
  • The RAID server crashed
  • Data deletion, either intentionally or accidentally
  • Partition deletion or formatting
  • Partition overwriting
  • RAID configuration issues
  • Bad sectors on the disk, etc. 
  • RAID Server Crash
  • Accidental reconfiguration of RAID partition.
  • Malware or virus attack

These issues can be resolved by using data recovery software like Stellar Data Recovery Technician. This powerful software supports all Windows-based RAID 0, RAID 5, and RAID 6 arrays and controllers manufactured by Intel®, Gigabyte®, Asus®, etc. 

Physical Damage

The physical damage to a RAID drive can result from a wide range of failures, either due to mechanical, natural, or human errors. Some examples of data loss in RAID due to physical damage are:

  • Multiple drive failure
  • RAID controller failure
  • Damage in a RAID stripe
  • Wrong Replacement Drive
  • Natural issues and disasters, such as fire and water

These physical damages to RAID drives can result in data loss, which is when you need to go for RAID Data Recovery. RAID recovery software can help recover lost data from logically damaged drives, but for data recovery from physically damaged RAID, you must opt for Stellar Data Recovery Services. Because data recovery from the physically damaged RAID drive is challenging, that requires proper technical expertise and experience as well as a dust free-environment such as class100 cleanroom.

When to Use RAID Data Recovery?

Look out for the following symptoms in RAID drive; you need to go for a data recovery solution in terms of either RAID data recovery software or services.

  • Failed SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) status
  • Constant clicking or screeching noise from the hard drive
  • Damage by fire, water, or other natural forces
  • Frequent Read/Write Errors
  • RAID Partition Loss
  • RAID Controller Errors

You must see RAID data recovery as a protective measure and not just a solution to data loss. 

Conclusion

The valuable data stored in various RAID levels can get corrupted or lost at any point, or the drive might become inaccessible. Therefore, regardless of physical or logical damage, RAID data recovery remains a top priority in these situations. However, with some preventive measures, you can avoid all data loss situations, provided you take them on time.