Therefore, the best action you can take in the situation of a Raid data recovery problem is to immediately send the hard disk to a specialized firm. Should a serious system failure occur, the whole pressure is transferred to the hard disk data recovery professionals. As the users are in the habit of starting troubleshooting processes in order to solve the problem, the data recovery experts must also repair the damage done by these processes, as they can make the data impossible to recover. The information involved in such a situation can cost many hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of dollars in labor and resources to create. This is the reason why the executives are not at all interested in finding out the cause of the failure, they just care about the fact that the server has crashed and that the problem must be immediately solved.

It is true that the Raid data recovery process can be pretty expensive, but in most cases it is nothing compared to trying to recreate the data that has been destroyed. Not to speak about the fact that getting the data back could be enough to save someone's job!

The procedures that Raid data recovery consists of start by making sure all of the drives are properly functioning. This may mean taking the physically damaged drives into the clean room and try to make all the necessary repairs, in order for them to normally function again. The hard disk data recovery technician then initiates a very low-level process that allows him to work around bad sectors of the disk. It is in fact making complete sector-by-sector clones of every drive. The original source drive is being put in a "write protect" mode, in order to protect the existing data during the cloning process. The actual recovery process is performed on these cloned copies!

IT professionals have a lot of pressure placed on them when a catastrophic system failure occurs. It is their job to make sure that all systems are up and running. Many times, out of panic, troubleshooting processes are initiated in order to correct the problem. Often times these processes only make a bad situation even worse, and in many instances they can render the data unrecoverable. Let's keep in mind what this data can consist of in an average corporate environment. You are probably dealing with information that cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars in labor and resources to create. Much of the data probably can't be duplicated. The intellectual value alone could be in the many millions of dollars. Corporate executives really don't care to hear about how the failure occurred, or what unbelievable string of events led up to the server crashing. They don't care to hear the technical jargon as you try to explain to them what happened, and hope they understand that it wasn't your fault. They only want to know one thing..."why was this data not backed up, and how can we get it back?"

Instead of taking chances on your own, call a data recovery professional. RAID data recovery can be expensive, but in most cases it is much less costly than trying to recreate the data that has been lost. There is a set procedure that most data recovery professionals follow when it comes to performing any recovery work. These procedures are followed and expanded upon when dealing with a RAID recovery. The first step of any RAID recovery is to make sure all of the drives are functional. In order to properly complete the recovery it is essential that all drives are fully functional (this is especially true with a RAID 0). This may involve taking any physically damaged drives into the clean room, in order to make the necessary repairs so that they function normally again. Once that is completed the next step is to make complete, sector-by-sector clones of every drive. This is not "Ghosting", but a very low-level process that allows the recovery technician to work around bad sectors, and have complete control over how the drive functions. During the cloning process, the original source drive that you sent in, is generally put in a "write protect" mode so that no data can be written to the drive. This insures that the original source data is not altered in any way.

Once the cloning process is complete, the original drives you sent in are set off to the side and are no longer touched. The actual recovery process is performed on the cloned copies, so nothing that is done during recovery can make the situation worse. After the drives are cloned, they will be loaded into an emmulator and destriped. Destriping is like taking the scattered pieces of a puzzle and putting them together neatly. Simply stated, destriping is taking the data scattered among the multiple drives that make up array and placing it onto a single destination drive. From there we have a single drive in which we can complete what we would consider to be a "normal" recovery. We can complete this process even at the multi-terrabyte level. If the damage to the stripe is not too severe, in most cases a complete rebuild of the directory structure and all associated data can be completed.