In exchange for a small amount of storage, RAID 5 offers one drive of redundancy. Data and parity are striped across all the disks, meaning no single disk is a bottleneck. RAID 5 is probably the most common RAID level, meaning we get a lot of them into the lab for RAID data recovery.
RAID 5 arrays need at least three drives, although systems with six or even eight hard drives are not uncommon. Like RAID 0, RAID 5 stripes data across multiple hard disk drives – but it also stores parity information to aid with RAID data recovery. RAID 5 offers the user both speed, as data is accessed from multiple disks, and redundancy due to the parity data. A RAID 5 system uses around a third of the available hard drive capacity to store parity information. It seems, then, that RAID 5 is the best of all worlds – so why do users lose their data?
Unfortunately, even a well-maintained RAID 5 array can need a trip to a RAID data recovery lab. RAID 5 isn’t a logical backup – there is no second copy of your data unless you back it up yourself. RAID 5 doesn’t protect against data loss through human error or malware. It’s this failure to recognise the distinction between RAID 5 and a solid backup that leads to so many RAID 5 systems arriving into our data recovery lab on a regular basis. The most common cause for needing RAID data recovery for a RAID 5 array is multiple drive failure. Essentially, the dangers are exactly the same as with single hard drives, only with a greater risk. Sometimes multiple drives fail because of an unexpected power surge.
Our RAID data recovery process is simple. When your RAID 5 system arrives into the data recovery lab, we’ll inspect and ascertain what has gone wrong with your array. We’ll need to figure out which drive is damaged, and if the damage is limited to one drive or if it’s multiple. We provide a free evaluation for all RAID data recovery work.
