Raid Data Recovery - How It Works

By Author: Sandra White
Total Articles: 64
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RAID data recovery might be one of the most complex processes any data recovery company can perform. More regularly than not, the issues are compounded by what of the client before sending the drives in for recovery. Many users feel that it is important to try and recover the info themselves or repair the array through various system utilities, and this may be fine if the info is not critical. However, it has been our experience that if you have a RAID failure that has resulted in substantial data loss, more frequently than not, somebody's job is on the line if that data is not recovered. The largest bit of advise this short article can provide in the case of a RAID failure: LEAVE IT ALONE.

IT professionals have a lot of pressure placed to them whenever a catastrophic system failure occurs. It is their job to be sure that all systems are up and running. Many times, out of panic, troubleshooting processes are initiated in order to correct the problem. Quite often these processes only make a bad situation worse, and in many instances they can render the info unrecoverable. Let's keep in mind what this data can contain in ...
... the average corporate environment. You are probably coping with information that cost many a huge selection of tens of thousands of dollars in labor and resources to create. Much of the info probably cannot be duplicated. The intellectual value alone could take the many millions of dollars. Corporate executives really don't care to listen to about how a failure occurred, or what unbelievable string of events led as much as the server crashing. They don't really care to listen to the technical jargon as you try to describe to them what happened, and hope they understand so it was not your fault. They wish to know one thing..."why was this data not supported, and how do we get it back?"

Instead of taking chances on your own, call a data recovery professional. RAID data recovery may be expensive, but in most cases it is much less costly than trying to recreate the info that has been lost. There is a set procedure that a lot of data recovery professionals follow when it comes to performing any recovery work. These procedures are followed and expanded upon when coping with a RAID recovery. The first step of any RAID recovery is to make sure all the drives are functional. In order to properly complete the recovery it is vital that all drives are fully functional (this is particularly so with a RAID 0). This could involve taking any physically damaged drives into the clean room, in order to make the mandatory repairs in order that they function normally again. Once that is completed the next phase is to create complete, sector-by-sector clones of every drive. This is simply not "Ghosting", but an extremely low-level process that allows the recovery technician to work around bad sectors, and have complete control over how a drive functions. Through the cloning process, the initial source drive that you submitted, is generally devote a "write protect" mode so that no data may be written to the drive. This insures that the initial source data is not altered in virtually any way.

When the cloning process is complete, the initial drives you submitted are set off aside and are no further touched. The actual recovery process is performed on the cloned copies, so nothing that is completed during recovery can make the specific situation worse. After the drives are cloned, they will be loaded into an emmulator and destriped. Destriping is similar to taking the scattered pieces of a puzzle and putting them together neatly. Simply stated, destriping is taking the info scattered among the multiple drives which make up array and placing it into an individual destination drive. If the harm to the stripe is not too severe, in most cases an entire rebuild of the directory structure and all associated data may be completed.

For more details visit
http://www.southbit.co.za/data-recovery/raid-recovery/