Recover Data From Inaccessible RAID – Complete Guide
RAID may become inaccessible due to several reasons such as bad sectors, disk errors, virus attack, server crash, and more. In all such situations, you may lose access to the data. Thus, it is necessary to learn the steps to recover data from an inaccessible RAID. Read this complete guide to know how to restore data from an inaccessible RAID 0, RAID 5, and RAID 6 Arrays.
RAID or Redundant Array of Independent Disk is a storage technology. It merges different physical hard disk drives’ components into one or more logical units to act as a single volume to procure advantages such as data redundancy, better performance, etc. When this unit gets damaged, corrupt, or breaks due to power surges, sudden system shutdown, and virus attack, etc., the RAID volume may become inaccessible, resulting in severe data loss. Don’t Worry! You may get back your essential data with the help of a RAID data recovery tool. Read on to know the causes for Inaccessible RAID and the steps to restore data from an inaccessible RAID.
What makes RAID inaccessible?
Several reasons could be there, which are responsible for making RAID inaccessible. Some of them are given as follows:
1. RAID Controller Failure
RAID controllers are either hardware-based or software-based controllers, which are located between the storage disk drives and OS and manages all the drives in an entire array. If the Controller gets damaged due to sudden power outage, power surge, or server crash, etc. the RAID array may become inaccessible.
Note: When the RAID controller fails, the data remain safe on the drives. You may replace the Controller, which should be of the same model as they share the compatible Metabase. Replacing Controller with a different model and may cause you data loss. However, you may recover data with a RAID data recovery tool.
2. Disk Errors
Some common errors, such as frequent Read/ Write errors, RAID rebuild error, RAID Controller errors, or file system damage, may lead to an inaccessible RAID array. The causes could be malware attack, power failure, server crash, etc.
3. Bad Sectors
Usually, the bad sectors are found on the old disk drives associated with a mechanical issue. Whenever the drive sector is marked as Bad, any data which remains on that sector becomes inaccessible or non-readable. Consequently, making RAID array inaccessible.
4. Server Crash
If the host server of RAID arrays fails or crashes due to software errors, driver conflicts, failing disks, or failure of the RAID controller, it may get corrupt and become inaccessible.
5. Multiple Disk Failure
Some RAID configurations such as RAID 5, RAID 6, and RAID 10 helps the server to survive the failure of one or two disk failure without any data loss. However, if multiple drives get failed, they may turn out to be vulnerable to the other functional disk drives, followed by RAID Array failure and data loss.
How to Recover Data from an Inaccessible RAID?
If you can’t access your RAID drive due to any of the afore-stated reasons, you may use a powerful yet easy-to-use RAID data recovery tool such as Stellar Data Recovery Technician. This do-it-yourself (DIY) software restores data from lost, missing, and inaccessible RAID 0, RAID 5, & RAID 6 arrays and Windows drives. It can retrieve lost or deleted documents, photos, emails & more from RAID drives. It can even extract the data from hardware & software-based RAID without a hardware controller. This tool creates an image of the disk drive for secure and quick data recovery. The data can also be extracted from lost or formatted RAID logical volumes.
- Download and run the Stellar Data Recovery Technician.
- On the screen ‘Select What to Recover,’ click either Everything or select the specific data that you want to recover. (See Image 1)
Image1: Select data from Select What to Recover
3. On the next screen, ‘Recover from,’ select RAID Recovery. (See Image 2)
Image 2: Choose RAID Recovery
4. Now, navigate to the RAID level, such as RAID 0, RAID 5, and RAID 6 from the software and select the parameters available by clicking [>].
5. After this, click Build RAID. (See Image 3)
Image 3: Select disks and Build RAID
- The software will virtually build the physical drive and make it accessible for data recovery.
- Once the building RAID process is done, select the drive from which you want to retrieve the data, and click Scan.
- The software will scan the drive and show the recovered data on the screen.
- Select the data you want to recover and click Browse to choose a destination.
- Finally, click Start Saving to store the recovered data.
[Caution: Do not save the recovered data in the same RAID drive from which you lost the data in the first place to avoid data overwriting.]
Wrapping Up
Whether the RAID array became inaccessible due to RAID controller failure, bad sectors, disk errors, virus attack, or multiple disk failure, your data is at stake! Thus, it is necessary to recover data first and then proceed for fixing the inaccessible drive with the help of the experts. To recover data from an inaccessible drive, use a powerful RAID recovery software. This easy-to-use data recovery software rebuilds a virtual RAID and facilitates quick recovery. The software may also extract the data from corrupt or missing RAID partitions. Once you are done with retrieving data, you may construct RAID from scratch by formatting all the disks in the array to fix inaccessible RAID.