Repairing Your RAID

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Repairing a RAID system works one of two ways: it can be very simple, with very little stress and immediate results, or it can be difficult, stressful and cause catastrophic data loss.

When faced with that choice, what do you feel comfortable with? Taking your RAID repair request to a professional data recovery services company with over 20 years of hands on hard drive recovery experience? Or “giving it a shot” and rolling the dice on a DIY RAID repair? The choice is yours, but the importance of the data should be your critical factor, and not the cost of the data recovery service.

Using a RAID 0 to speed up your Half-Life game play? Self recovery is probably not your worst option. After all, if your personal data is lost because of a failed RAID hard drive, you probably have only lost the cost of the drive. While we never recommend DIY RAID repair, users with a limited or no budget can always consult the Internet for a myriad of potential solutions.

Running an MS Exchange Server on a RAID 10 that serves 200 users? Your case for not calling a professional RAID repair service has suddenly become far less logical. Time is money, and whether your business data is located on a RAID file server, web or application server or a NAS or SAN appliance, it is far too critical to trust to anyone but an experienced RAID data recovery shop like Hard Drive Recovery Group.

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The Key Causes

The key cause of a RAID system failure is typically a multiple hard disk failure. These can occur for many reasons, including power surges, overheating and excessive vibration. Fixing a multi-disk failure is typically not an option for the regular user.

Instead, this requires professional RAID system repair to ensure that permanent data loss does not occur. What frequently causes these multi-disk failures is the fact that once a single drive has failed, the admin fails to properly reinstall a new drive, and the entire system fails as a result. It is a simple issue, but one that takes down far more RAID systems than we’d like to say.

How To Recover Data from A Failed RAID Array

Recovering data from a RAID array is generally more difficult than running a simple software package. Some of our competitors promote these packages, understanding that while they do work some of the time, they actually can cause worse data loss than would have occurred without software. This, in turn, ensures that their RAID recovery fees are much larger than might have been the case in the first place.

In fact, whenever there is multiple hard disk drive failure in a RAID array, particularly if it is running such mission critical systems as MS Exchange or Oracle, we always recommend a professional shop analyze the problem first.

An experienced RAID repair technician should be able to analyze and diagnose the problem and provide a solution within a single hour of testing – this is something an “out of the box” software package cannot do. What’s more, the technician can do this without worsening the failure.

24 Hour Raid Recovery

Hard Drive Recovery Group has specialized access to immediate shipping services to ensure we can pick up, repair and re-deliver your recovered RAID solution within 24 hours. Only one or two other shops in the country can offer such a level of service, and neither can offer our guarantee: no data recovered, no cost. It really is that simple. When you’ve been in the RAID repair business as long as we have, it’s not only a necessary guarantee, it’s a selling point.

Tips For An Effective Raid Repair

There are several points to look at when you feel you may need a professional RAID repair. Some are simpler than others, but we’ve seen them all. Ensure you have tried these avenues before you commit to any RAID data recovery service:

No Chkdsk – Using CHKDSK in an attempt to recover data from a RAID system from RAID 0-1-2-5-10 or higher, is never a good idea. CHKDSK is NOT a RAID recovery tool. It is simply a tool to ensure the operating system can function properly. The problem it creates is that sometimes when trying to ensure the operating system works well, it can FURTHER CORRUPT your RAID setup. Avoid using it, and save yourself thousands of dollars in repair fees.

Check Connections – As simple as it sounds, sometimes vibrations can break the integrity of hardware and cabling connections. Although rare, it’s never a good idea to ship out a full RAID system expecting a corrupted RAID, only to find out that a single cable had come loose.

Keep RAID drive order the same – Moving your drives around in your enclosure can be catastrophic. Even for professional RAID data recovery companies like Hard Drive Recovery Group, this can make things incredibly difficult, and expensive. So this is a must to avoid.

More Things To Avoid

When your RAID system has failed here are some other important things to think about:

Do not run a software based volume repair on suspected bad HDDs
Do not replace a failed drive with another drive that had been a RAID drive
Ensure you have a backup (and that the backup is valid) before attempting any restoration
Restore any backups before attempting to restore failed systems
Any mechanical noises such as clicking or buzzing is a signal of RAID hard drive failure. Turn the drive off immediately. Call a professional. Do not attempt to repair the failed disk yourself.
Ensure you label all drives by number in regards to their position in the RAID array

No matter your RAID manufacturer, or the operating system your box is using, HDRG can handle it. Our 20 years of experience works daily for all of our clients, ensuring data is recovered and safe.

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