How to Avoid RAID Data Recovery

RAID setups combine two or more hard disk drives into a single unit, for efficiency, speed and capacity purposes. However, the setup of your array impacts on the ease of RAID data recovery.

Different RAID configurations will have their own mechanisms to prevent or ease the difficulty of RAID data recovery. There are three main types of RAID configuration, each having implications in terms of RAID data recovery – RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 5. With RAID 0 configuration, two or more hard disk drives are combined into a bigger, faster drive. When you write data to a RAID 0-configured array, it is split and distributed across all of the drives. This means that the chance of a data disaster, and the need for RAID data recovery, are significantly increased. The chance of failure is multiplied by the number of drives in the array; for example, a RAID 0 with four drives is four times more likely to fail.

Another RAID configuration is RAID 1, also known as ‘disk mirroring’, this type of array significantly reduces the chance of you needing to undertake RAID data recovery. Here, your data is replicated across all the disks in the array, giving the user high levels of performance and added data protection. If one drive fails, the data is still on the others. This does mean, however, that write operations are slower, as the data needs to be written to all the drives in the array each time. A RAID 1 configuration is not a replacement for a good data backup plan, however. Natural disasters will affect multiple drives, which could lead to the need for expensive RAID data recovery.

The final configuration, RAID 5, essentially offers the best of both worlds – capacity, speed, and avoidance of RAID data recovery. With RAID 5, you’ll need at least three hard drives, although most arrays with this configuration use five. All but one of the hard disk drives in this type of RAID are used for storing the user’s data, with one being used to store parity information needed for RAID data recovery in the event of a failure. It’s clear, then, that these three main types of RAID configuration offer multiple benefits. RAID 0 is faster, but the risk of a data disaster and needing RAID data recovery is much higher. RAID 1 gives the user high levels of performance, as well as protecting their data. RAID 5 offers the best of both worlds, but requires a lot of hard disk drives.

If your RAID does fail and you need to get your data back, then Data Recovery Specialists are experts in RAID data recovery and can recover data from all RAID configurations.

RAID Data Recovery