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Manual Part 1 | Manual Part 2 | Manual Part 3 | Manual Part 4
Background
RAID arrays have been widely used in server and production environments for many years. Today, the availability of RAID controllers built into most current motherboards enabled home and small office users to benefit from using RAID arrays. The use of RAID arrays can enhance storage capacity and performance, data reliability, or both depending on the configuration of the array.
However, the use of RAID arrays at home and in small business environments has issues that are unlikely to appear in server and production use. Using inexpensive, consumer-grade hard drives to build and continuously run RAID arrays affects reliability of the entire storage system. Should at least one of the disks fail (except in a mirrored array), it becomes impossible to access data stored on the affected array by usual means. In that case, specialized RAID recovery tools must be used to extract information stored on the failed array.
Is RAID Recovery Possible?
Despite what many data recovery services are trying to let you believe, recovering a corrupted RAID array at home is often very much possible. Depending on the exact configuration of the original array as well as whether or not there is physical (electrical) damage to any of the disks comprising the array, it is often possible not only to save all data from the RAID, but to rebuild the entire array to its original configuration.
However, letting the "RAID recovery" tools bundled with your motherboard to the job is generally a bad idea. Such tools are designed to rebuild the original configuration no matter what, often ignoring data integrity and causing severe loss of information. Tools such as RAID Recovery are designed to take care of any user data first, and rebuild the array later.
Six Easy Steps to Recover RAID
As a Step 1, disable the RAID support in your system BIOS (read your motherboard manual to figure out exactly how to do this). If your RAID array is based on a discrete RAID controller such as Adaptec, disable the controller and connect the drives that comprise the array directly to the motherboard. RAIDs using Network Attached Storage systems such as MyBook will have to be disconnected, and all the hard drives comprising the array shall be plugged into the motherboard. The general idea here is to be able to access the drives separately.
Let RAID Recovery Do Its Job
The most complex part is over. Steps 2 to 6 are easy. Start the RAID Recovery Wizard, and click Next on the welcome screen. You'll be presented with options to recover a RAID array or a Dynamic Disk, use Expert Mode, or skip the wizard altogether in favor of the RAID Constructor tool.
In order to recover a RAID 0 array that consists of two hard drives, select Recover RAID.
The following screen allows you to specify information about your RAID array. You can enter the exact RAID type, disk count, and stripe size if you happen to know them. If not, simply leave the values as Unknown, and RAID Recovery Wizard will detect these settings automatically.
On the following screen, you'll specify which particular drives that were part of your RAID array. The example below selects the two drives that were used for the RAID 0.
The RAID Constructor tool allows you to change the RAID configuration specified during the previous steps or detected automatically by the RAID Recovery Wizard. The bottom part lets you browse the directory structure, access and preview files discovered on the RAID array. The upper left part of the window contains the drives that were added to the RAID being rebuilt, while the upper right window contains other available drives. You can move the disks from one part to another to add or exclude drives to the RAID array being rebuilt. Multiple configurations are supported. Click Finish to access the RAID arrays you specified. They are available for the scan and re-build operation. Just let the Disk Wizard to scan the arrays that you've built, and it will recover your data automatically.
Manual Part 1 | Manual Part 2 | Manual Part 3 | Manual Part 4
