When your RAID 5 system fails, you may proceed to attempt RAID 5 data recovery. If you intend to perform recovery by yourself, you can refer to this article. Here we’ll expose you 7 things that you should never do in RAID 5 data recovery.
Generally speaking, for most individuals, among all kinds of RAID levels, RAID 5 is most suggested. It usually consists of at least 3 hard drives. With its distributed parity, users can achieve data redundancy with utmost ease. It means that even if a hard drive fails, the array system can continue to work. However, at that time, it is also advisable to replace the failed hard drive as soon as possible.
To be honest, though users can benefit a lot from RAID 5, it doesn’t mean that it is flawless. It can crash thoroughly as well. At that point, data in the RAID system is going to become compromised, like PST corruption. At such times you have to do RAID 5 data recovery. Hence, thereinafter, we suggest you that you should never do the following things. Otherwise, you’ll destroy the chances for successful data recovery totally.
1. Keep Your RAID System On
Many users tend to continue operating when RAID array crashes, such as in order to find related solutions online. However, keeping RAID system on may overwrite your data with ease. You’d better shut down the RAID system as soon as possible and stop all operations.
2. Hard Force RAID Back Online
Usually, when confronted with RAID failure, most users are unable to figure out the actual causes, namely the culprits – faulty RAID controller, insufficient power supply or misconnected cables or others. Therefore, under this circumstance, if you hard force your RAID 5 back online, you will be likely to damage the array
3. Reinitialize Internal Drive
In such a case, provided you reinitialize your hard drive in the RAID 5, your data will get lost absolutely. Perhaps you receive any messages asking you to do it, you still should reject it.
4. Run CHKDSK on Hard Drive
When RAID 5 fails due to malfunctioning hard drive, some users tend to scan and fix the issues via CHKDSK. However, it is not suggested and even stupid. CHKDSK will run to look for orphaned files and relocate them. This process may damage your data and make data recovery much more difficult.
5. Replace Over One Failed Drive
In RAID 5, when one hard drive fails, the system is able to continue functioning. If 2 hard drives fail, the system will stop working. At this time, if you replace both failed drives, it will lead the array to rebuild improperly. Thus, you should replace the hard drive as soon as one drive fails.
6. Reconfigure RAID Level
Sometimes, you may feel that RAID failure may be due to RAID misconfigurations. So, you tend to reconfigure it. However, it is inadvisable to change the RAID level, such as reconfiguring RAID 5 to RAID 0. It’ll surely ruin the partition table, hard drive order and parity information and so on. Your data will be erased.
7. Run Unreliable Recovery Software
There are multiple relevant DIY data recovery utilities in today’s market. But, it is due to the diversity that you should keep cautious when selecting such software. A free or too cheap recovery may be unreliable. Such tool is able to destroy your data at times.
Author Introduction:
Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including recover mdf and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com
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