RAID Recovery

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RAID, an acronym for Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks, refers to a category of disk drives that employ two or more drives in combination for increased performance and data reliability.  There are three main concepts involved in RAID: mirroring, striping, and error correction.  In mirroring, different data is read from multiple disks. This allows for quicker information retrieval.  However, because this configuration requires confirmation that both data disks are properly written, it is not the choice when expedient writing is called for.  In striping, data is split across more than one disk. Striping is often used to enhance performance, because it allows sequences of data to be read from multiple disks at the same time.  Error correction is when data is redundantly stored in a way that problems can be detected, and more often than not be fixed.  Various RAID levels employ one or more of these techniques, depending on the requirements of the system.  There were originally five RAID levels, but many more variations have since evolved.

RAID drives are most commonly found in servers, but sometimes are used in workstations as well. The problem with multiple disks is that they increase the possibility of disk failure.  When error correction is utilized, the system can more reliably detect and repair failures.  This is called fault tolerance.  Even with error correction, one or more of these disk drives may deteriorate, fail or go offline.  Since RAID recovery is one of the most complicated types of data recovery to perform, promptly calling a professional is crucial in preventing huge financial losses and disruptions in productivity.

With over 20 years of experience in data recovery, our engineers have been witness to a rapidly changing technological landscape. Our data recovery technicians are confident that we will quickly get your vital data recovered and back in your hands.  We have developed proprietary data recovery techniques to recover data from all RAID levels.  Please contact one of our expert technicians if you have any questions regarding your RAID level.

The following are the standard levels of RAID:

Raid 0 -  Striped Non-Parity:  This dual drive system provides the Swiftest read transaction rate out of all RAID levels.  The technique it utilizes spreads blocks of data from each file across multiple discs.  This process is called data striping.  Although this improves performance, it does not supply fault tolerance, also called parity, because there is no data redundancy.  Therefore if one drive fails, all the data can be lost.

Raid 1-  Mirroring and Duplexing:  The writing of data in this implementation is slower than RAID 0.  That is because this technique writes the same data on two or more discs.  Although there is no performance benefit, this level offers fault tolerance since one disc is used for redundant information.

Raid 2- Error-correcting coding:  This level of RAID stripes discs on a bit level.  Usually multiple discs are used to store the data with one disc reserved for fault tolerance.  RAID 2 requires at least three discs and is not commonly used anymore since RAID 3 stripes discs on a byte level. 

Raid 3- Bit-Interleaved Parity:  Like RAID 2, but provides byte–level striping, giving it superiority over RAID 2.  However, since this configuration cannot simultaneously handle multiple requests, it is also rarely used.

Raid 4- Dedicated Parity Drive:  Like RAID O, RAID 4 stripes the data into blocks. Having a parity drive too, this is a commonly used configuration and requires at least 3 drives. 

Raid 5- Block Interleaved Distributed Parity:  Performing excellently while having good error correction, RAID 5 may be the most used configurations.  It both provides byte-level data striping and also stripe error correction information.

Raid 6 – Independent Data Discs with Double Parity:  RAID 6 offers block level striping with parity data distributed across all of the discs.

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