Raid 5 Recovery

Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) 5 refers to a simple data recovery system configured as a Level 5, parity striped, volume set. It is a volume which combines at least 3 hard drives structured for writing data across them. When a drive fails, Raid 5’s written parity data from the other drives is used to rebuild the contents of the crashed drive. The parity data written in the second drive serves as a back up to rebuild damaged hard drive. The backup drive must be of same capacity as the first drive, or of higher capacity. The third drive in a Raid 5 Recovery system contains the software from where recovery procedures are to run.

Using standard drive controller for the hard drives and a recovery software to manage the drives, data access in a Raid 5 is faster and a hard drive crash can be easily recovered. A hard drive crash, corruption, or failure is backed up by 2 hard drives that can continue to operate as a striped volume. The biggest disadvantage in a Raid 5 recovery system is the loss of storage capacity equivalent to the capacity of one hard drive from the volume. If there were 3 100 GB hard drives in the configuration, your storage capacity would only be 200 GB. Your other 100 GB hard drive would be used for parity. However, 2 hard drives crashes or failure at the same time will make all of the volume’s data inaccessible.

Data may still be recovered from the original data in the free space. However, formatting it at a low-level will wipe out every single data on a hard drive. RAID’s data recovery is safer by capturing the image of all storage block from each individual hard drive. From these, the original can be rebuilt and the important files and other data recovered. Data must first be recovered from each individual crashed hard drive before the rest of the hard drives that make up the volume. There is still the extent of the damage incurred. The integrity and quality of the recovered data will depend on the individual condition of each hard drive being revived. The sooner it is revived, the better its recovered condition will be.

The danger in using data recovery software in a Raid 5 recovery system is that the read/write always goes over areas of the original media, damages it further, and possibly rendering the data unrecoverable.