RAID 5 Recovery

RAID-5-array

Also called striping with distributed parity the RAID 5 array is still one of the most commonly used types of RAID array, as it provides a good compromise between data transfer speed, data capacity and redundancy. A RAID 5 array stripes the data across the drives, with one drive used to store the parity information. This parity information is stored on across the drives in sequence for each data stripe.

A RAID 5 array is capable of still operating in degraded mode when a single drive fails. When operating in degraded mode your data is at risk, as another drive failure would cause array to fail. It is therefore essential to rebuild the array using a new drive as soon as is practicable. Although drives are more reliable and have higher data transfer speeds, the larger capacity means that a rebuild can still take a considerable amount of time.

Once one drive in a RAID 5 array fails, it is quite likely that another disk will also fail soon after. We have seen many RAID 5 arrays arrive for data recovery where the rebuild has failed due to a second hard drive failure. When this happens it is essential that the RAID is powered down and the hard drives sent for data recovery.

When experience in recovering data from a large number of a RAID 5 arrays, ranging from a simple three drive array right up to large multi-disk arrays using tens of hard disks. It is essential that the raw sector-by-sector drive image is secured to our servers in order to ensure the integrity of your data.

Once the data has been secured, our data recovery specialists will examine images of the drive to determine the exact RAID 5 configuration which has been used. There are four basic configurations which can be used. The length of the parity stripe can be either the same length or a multiple of the data stripe.

Be it physical drive fails or a logical issue, such as deleting or formatting a partition, our experience and expertise mean that our RAID data recovery specialists will be able to recover your data. Whatever the problem the size of the array or the problems, our RAID data recovery engineers can help.

Comments are closed