Redundant array of independent disks (RAID) is a data storage virtualization technology that is widely used by individuals and businesses. Although it can improve data storage performances, it doesn’t mean it will not corrupt easily. To protect your vital data when coming across RAID failures, you can refer to following 6 tips.
Redundant array of independent disks (RAID) is a specific data storage technology which utilizes multiple hard drives to increase storage capacity, improve performance, and etc. For example, it can totally help when you want to try a pst recovery by data redundancies. However, it is no 100% guaranteed that it won’t corrupt forever. And when it gets corrupt, you should know these following 6 things that have a huge impact on the data recovery.
1.Do not force any drives online
When the RAID works abnormally and some inside disks are offline, then it’s not wise for you to force any drives online, especially the amount of offline disks are more than 2, because the RAID cannot analyze which disk is the first offline drive, if you force any drives online in a wrong order, then it will destroy some data totally.
2.Do not perform RAID rebuilds
RAID rebuild is a reconstruction process for data. It happens when a hard drive gets corrupt or needs to be replaced. For instance, there are 4 hard drives in RAID 5. We can use 3 disks to perform a rebuild and record the results to the remaining one. But what’s the most important is that all the data in these 3 hard drives should be definitely correct, otherwise, it will ruin the data eventually.
3.Unplug and insert corrupt hard drives
As a matter of fact, it’s ok for you to unplug all the corrupt hard disks. But if you continue to insert all these drives at the same time to attempt a recovery, then there is a significant possibility of resulting in mistakes. Thus you ought to unplug and insert corrupt hard drives one by one or do it after you shut off the system.
4.Check disk in operating system
Operating system like Windows, Linux, and UNIX all have hard disk check utility. And if your files in the hard drives get damaged, then this built-in tool will work automatically when the operating system restarts. And if the problem results from failed RAID array check, then the disk check process will influence the data in RAID.
5.Write new data to a single drive in RAID
This is a basic rule that hard drives in the array are a whole. If you change data in one disk, it will probably destroy the whole array. Thus you should never write new data to a single drive in RAID in case of more severe data loss.
6.Keep an eye on power failure
A great amount of input and output information is stored in the cache of RAID card or mainframe. If meeting up with power failures, you will fail to write back data to hard drives or the ROM of RAID cards. In this case, it’s very likely to suffer data disasters.
Author Introduction:
Allissa Shen is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including repair mdf data and word recovery software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com
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