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How to Use the RAID Recovery Wizard
A RAID array specified by the RAID Recovery Wizard is all that you need to begin the recovery. There are three steps involved: scanning the RAID, finding and recovering files.
Recovering Data from RAID Arrays
Windows sees RAID arrays as if they were a single disk. All RAID arrays are formatted with the same file system as single disks. Windows uses NTFS and FAT, while Linux systems employ EXT2/EXT3 file systems.
There are two RAID recovery modes supported by the RAID Recovery Wizard.
Quick scan: scans the file system to locate the files;
Comprehensive scan: reads the entire surface of each of the disks comprising the array in order to locate as many files as possible.
The Comprehensive scan mode is the most sophisticated recovery tool, guaranteed to locate and restore as many files as physically possible. It does take quite a while to scan all of the disks though.
Using Disk Wizard in RAID Data Recovery
Click the icon representing the RAID array specified in the RAID Wizard. In the window that appears, select Full or Fast recovery, and click Next.
If specifying Full recovery, the comprehensive disk scan will be performed. You do need to specify the correct file system in order to perform full recovery. Most modern versions of Windows will use NTFS by default. Click Next.
The Disk Recovery Wizard is memory-hungry, and requires quite a bit of free RAM to operate. If your PC has less than 4 GB of RAM, make sure your paging file is at least 4 GB. When the Wizard is over, click Next.
The list of recoverable files and folders is displayed. All files can be viewed with the Preview function. More than 200 types of files can be previewed in Live mode, meaning that pictures will be shown as pictures, and documents will appear as formatted documents. Even music and videos can be played back in the Preview mode. Note that you won't need to have Microsoft Office installed to preview office documents. Similarly, a separate media player is not required to preview multimedia files.
A special folder named Recovered Files will appear in the recovery window. This folder is not saved on the disk, and is only accessible from within RAID Recovery Wizard. The Recovered Files folder contains information located by the Comprehensive scan algorithm. Unfortunately, it is not possible to discover the original names of the files recovered this way, so you will have to use the Preview in order to determine which file is what. Fortunately, the majority of information can be recovered without referring to this method.
In order to restore the files, select all files and folders you want to recover and click the Recovery button. The Disk Recovery Wizard will ask for a destination folder where these files will be saved to. Make sure to select a different hard disk or drive letter to store your files to. You can also burn the files onto a CD/DVD or upload them over FTP.
Useful hint: The Disk Recovery Wizard can be used with single disks as well as RAID arrays.
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