How to do Data Recovery from RAID volumes

Read this article to learn how to recover data from a failed RAID setup. Know the available options to run a recovery on RAID 0, 5, 6, and hybrid RAID array drives with free options and best-paid tools.

RAID or Redundant Array of Independent Disks is a preferred means of data storage in enterprises since it is supposed to provide extra safety against SDD/HDD corruption and data loss due to automatic or manual errors. While RAID0 setup drive failure is fairly common since it is suited for performance and not redundancy, even higher-level RAID configurations are known to fail due to improper configuration and multiple drive failures.

Let's first take a look at why your RAID setups can fail and then we will discuss how you can run a recovery for your setup:

Corrupted or deleted data: If you are using RAID0 then you have a higher probability of data loss compared to keeping data on an ordinary SDD/HDD since the data is stripped across your hard drives. The failure of any one of them will lead to data corruption. There can be a rare circumstance of multiple hard drives failing together due to power failure or an accident in your data center which may cause even your high RAID configurations to fail.

Incorrect RAID rebuild: If there is a mistake in RAID configuration due to metadata corruption or configuration mismatch (e.g., stripe size, RAID level) with the original setup, RAID rebuild will fail. Outdated firmware and faulty controllers are other common reasons for RAID rebuild failures. Such failure will inadvertently lead to data erasure.

Error Message: Sometimes RAID gives read/write error. You may get error messages like "Can't read data from RAID disk" due to bad sectors, parity issues (RAID 5/6), Out-of-Sync RAID Array, etc. This makes your data inaccessible.

Now that we have seen the many probabilities of data on RAID setups becoming inaccessible, let's look at the solutions to recover the potentially lost data.

#1 Check Drive letter

Your RAID configuration might be failing because a partition's drive letter is missing. The Windows Disk Management Tool can easily fix this. Click on the Windows button and search for the Disk Management tool.

See the available drives in the Disk Management windows and if any of them have the drive letter missing, right-click on the drive and select Change Drive Letter. Select any drive letter from the dropdown and click Ok.

Use CHKDSK to repair drives

CHKDSK utility of Windows runs a scan and repair operation of the available drives of the system. To start the utility, open Command Prompt from the Start Menu in Administrator mode, type chkdsk C: /f where "C:" is the drive name, and press enter. If the drive is currently in use, the system might ask your permission to run the utility when the system reboots. Select "yes" for this prompt.

Use RAID Data Recovery Software

If both steps fail or are not valid for your use case, we recommend not to do any more tinkering nor wait much longer before using RAID data recovery software to run data recovery. Waiting too long or doing any further activities may lead to further corruption making it complex or impossible to recover data. Here are the steps to use this RAID Data Recovery Software:

Select file types: As you would expect, the first step is to select the file types you want to recover. You can also select all file types or only specific extensions. The more files you recover, the more time the recovery process takes.
Connect RAID drives: Connect the RAID drives without the controller card if not already connected and click on Next.
RAID Reconstruction: In the next Window, you need to enter your RAID configuration. Ask your Administration who configured RAID if you are unaware of these values. If nobody knows these values, you can also select the Auto determine RAID parameters. The application can figure out these values by running a diagnosis on the connected drives and it is usually accurate.
Enter parity order and repetition for virtually building RAID: Enter these details if you know these values otherwise like the last step, you can leave the default values that the tool has figured out.
Choose Volume to recover data: Once the RAID rebuild is successful, click on Show Volume List and then select the volume from which you want to recover data.
Select files/folders to recover: The scan will take some time according to the volume size but once it is done you can see all the files and folders in a directory structure. Just select whatever you want to recover, select the destination folder, and click on Recover

Hopefully, these steps help you recover a corrupted/broken RAID drive. Make sure to follow the steps mentioned and not tinker too much with the drive or RAID configuration unless you know what you are doing. RAID Data Recovery Software is a professional tool that has rave reviews among datacenter related professionals. While the price is a bit above board compared to other similar tools in the market its effectiveness justifies its cost. The best part is that you can use the Trial version to see if it will work or not before paying to finally recover the data.

How to do Data Recovery from RAID volumes

#1 Check Drive letter

Use CHKDSK to repair drives

Use RAID Data Recovery Software

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