RAID, which stands for Redundant Array of Independent Drives, are hard drives that are grouped together into one system, ensuring high reliability of data. Most servers now use the technology, but it should be noted that RAID systems are not 100% reliable.
Although the improved performance of RAID arrays are of benefit to businesses and home users, the main draw of using this system is the protection of critical data. We've discussed the various levels of RAID previously. In a well-implemented RAID, downtime caused by hardware issues can be drastically reduced. But this isn’t necessarily the case. One factor that can cause issues is the similarity of the individual hard drives within the array; often they are from the same production batch. If they all have the same fault, the chance of all the hard disk drives within the RAID system failing is high. This can cause a domino effect, with the whole system eventually going down. As well as faulty batches, a sudden power surge can also knock out multiple (or all) drives simultaneously.
The natural reaction for victims of a failed RAID system is to go online, and look for a solution – but this is an incredibly bad idea. We always hammer home the dangers of DIY data recovery, and this is especially important when using RAID. Botched data recovery attempts are only likely to make matters worse, and probably even eliminate the possibility of ever getting the data stored on the disks back. With RAID systems in particular, you should always leave it to the professionals; RAID data recovery requires a precise skillset and our technicians have years of invaluable experience.
