RAID Data Recovery

Data Recovery Lab technicians are capable of recovering and repairing inaccessible data from all forms of RAID system servers including: file servers, application servers, web servers, network attached storage RAID systems of any data size.

What is RAID?

RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of Inexpensive (or Independent) Disks. A RAID array is a collection of drives which collectively act as a single storage system, which can tolerate the failure of a drive without losing data, and which can operate independently of each other.

RAID storage systems are able to continue functioning even if a hard drive fails. When this happens however, the performance is negatively affected, and the RAID is operates in a degraded or critical state. This occurs because the lost information must be regenerated "on the fly" using the parity data.

When a failed drive is replaced, the data that was removed from the array with its departure, must be regenerated on the new disk by the RAID controller, a process called RAID rebuilding. An RAID array is vulnerable while it is running in a degraded state. Until the failed hard drive is replaced and its data rebuilt, the RAID array provides no redundancy.

RAID systems are susceptible to the same ailments that plague single hard drives, such as viruses, logical problems, human error, and physical damage. Moreover, due to their complexity, they may suffer from additional points of failure, such as lost server registry configurations, accidental RAID drive reconfigurations, RAID controller failures and multiple drive failures. Moreover, it is possible that multiple drives may fail at the same time thus bringing the whole RAID array down. If multiple drives fail, or other serious problems occur in a RAID array, your data will be lost. This is why that RAID data recovery can be extremely complex, laborious and expensive if you do not have a backup of the lost data.

Under such circumstances, if you fail to make a proper backup, you have no other choice other than having to call a RAID data recovery company. Data Recovery Lab will be able to help as we possess all the required technology and expertise to recover data from RAID storage systems and perform a successful RAID data recovery. Using specialised facilities, equipment, and software, we can even recover data from any type of servers or network storage devices or RAID arrays.

RAID Data Recovery Process

We will perform a set of RAID data recovery procedures which includes initial RAID recovery evaluation, where data recovery technicians carefully examine the array to diagnose the exact nature of the problem. During this time, they will also attempt to make an image of the failed hard drives. The RAID data recovery specialists will then extract the data from the image, and will work to piece the whole array together. If successful, they will restore your data onto the media of your choice.

What are the different RAID levels?

A research group at Berkeley University in the United States coined the term "RAID", (short for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) defining six RAID levels. Each level is a different way to spread data across multiple drives--a compromise between cost and speed. Understanding these levels is important, because each level is optimized for a different use.

RAID Level 0 is not redundant, hence does not truly fit the "RAID" acronym. In Level 0, data is split across drives, resulting in higher data throughput. Since no redundant information is stored, performance is very good, but the failure of any disk in the array results in all data loss. This level is commonly referred to as striping.

RAID Level 1 is commonly referred to as mirroring with 2 hard drives. It provides redundancy by duplicating all data from one drive on another drive. The performance of a Level 1 array is slightly better than a single drive, but if either drive fails, no data is lost. This is a good entry-level redundant system, since only two drives are required. However, since one drive is used to store a duplicate of the data, the cost per megabyte is high.

RAID Level 2, which uses Hamming error correction codes, is intended for use with drives which do not have built-in error detection. All SCSI drives support built-in error detection, so this level is of little use when using SCSI drives.

RAID Level 3 stripes data at a byte level across several drives, with parity stored on one drive. It is otherwise similar to level 4. Byte-level striping requires hardware support for efficient use.

RAID Level 4 stripes data at a block level across several drives, with parity stored on one drive. The parity information allows recovery from the failure of any single drive. The performance of a level 4 array is very good for reads (the same as level 0). Writes, however, require that parity data be updated each time. This slows small random writes, in particular, though large writes or sequential writes are fairly fast. Because only one drive in the array stores redundant data, the cost per megabyte of a level 4 array can be fairly low.

RAID Level 5 is commonly referred to as striping with distributed parity. RAID Level 5 is similar to level 4, but distributes parity among the drives. No single disk is devoted to parity. This can speed small writes in multiprocessing systems. Because parity data must be distributed on each drive during reads, the performance for reads tends to be considerably lower than a level 4 array. The cost per megabyte is the same as for level 4.

RAID 0/1 or10 is a dual level array that utilizes multiple RAID1 (mirrored) sets into a single array. Data is striped across all mirrored sets. As a comparison to RAID 5 where lower cost and fault tolerance is important, RAID 0/1 utilizes several drives, in order to provide better performance. Each drive in the array is duplicated (mirrored). This eliminates the overhead and delay of parity. This level array offers high data transfer advantages of striped arrays and increased data accessibility (reads). System performance during a drive rebuild is also better than that of parity based arrays, since data does not need to be regenerated from parity information, but copied from the other mirrored drive.

RAID 0/5 or 50 is a dual level array that utilizes multiple RAID5 sets into a single array. In RAID 0/5 array, a single hard drive failure can occur in each of the RAID5 without any loss of data on the entire array. Keep in mind, as the number of hard drives increase in an array, so too, does the increased possibility of a single hard drive failure. Although there is an increased write performance in RAID 0/5, once a hard drive fails and reconstruction takes place, there is a noticeable decrease in performance, data/program access will be slower, and transfer speeds on the array will be effected.

Data Recovery Lab can recover hard drives attached to RAID interfaces by the following manufacturers:

Adaptec, AMI, Bus Logic, Compaq, HP, Mylex, PERC, Pinnacle, Promise, Raidtec, Software RAIDS, Storage Dimensions, Sun, 3ware,

Data Recovery Lab specialises in recovery of RAID Servers including:

SATA RAID Data Recovery;
SCSI RAID Data Recovery;
Adaptec RAID SATA SAS SCSI Data Recovery;
Promise RAID SATA SAS SCSI Data Recovery;
3Ware RAID SATA SAS SCSI;
Dell Striped RAID Data Recovery;
Highpoint RAID Controllers Data Recovery;
VIA and nVidia RAID Recovery;
Buffalo TeraStation Pro NAS 0.6 TB HD-H0.6TGL/R5;
Buffalo TeraStation Pro NAS 1.6 TB HD-H1.6TGL/R5;
Buffalo TeraStation Home Server NAS 1.0TB HS-D1.0TGL/R5;
Buffalo TeraStation Home Server NAS 2.0TB HS-D2.0TGL/R5;
Buffalo TeraStation Pro NAS 1.0 TB TS-1.0TGL/R5;
Buffalo TeraStation Pro NAS 2.0 TB TS-2.0TGL/R5;
Buffalo Linkstation HD-H250LAN;
LACIE Ethernet Disk;

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