| How Data Recovery is Performed on Failed RAID 5 | | | | corrupt or missing causing an entire partition to |
| Arrays | | | | disappear or become unusable. This makes data |
| RAID 5 arrays are used for many applications | | | | recovery necessary. Attempting recovery with |
| because they are for the most part cost-effective | | | | software will increase the risk of permanent data |
| and provide a level of fault tolerance not provided by | | | | loss. |
| some other levels of RAID. Visit here | | | | RAID 5 Controller Failure |
| As with any RAID level, RAID 5 can experience | | | | A Hardware RAID 5 array uses a controller which |
| many different types of problems. This article will | | | | contains all of the logic and handles the operations of |
| provide a brief discussion of some of the problems | | | | the array. For many reasons, the array can |
| causing RAID 5 failure and how data recovery can | | | | experience a controller failure. This can cause the |
| work to solve these problems. | | | | array to not boot. It could also cause the logical |
| Problems That Can Cause RAID 5 Failure | | | | volume to disappear. |
| Bad Sectors | | | | RAID 5 Disk Failure/RAID 5 Drive Failure |
| A RAID 5 can fail due to bad sectors on any of the | | | | A RAID 5 is a set of three or more disk drives. Any |
| disks in the array. This can force the array to go | | | | of these drives can experience failure. A RAID 5 is |
| offline. | | | | configured with the ability to withstand the failure of |
| Corrupt Data | | | | only one disk at a time. In most cases, the RAID can |
| A RAID 5 can suffer from corrupt data due to many | | | | be recovered in a data recovery lab using parity data |
| reasons including viruses, user error, overwriting files, | | | | written to the disks by the array. Even if more than |
| and scratches on the surface of the disk platters. | | | | one disk has failed, data recovery is still possible in a |
| Degraded RAID 5 | | | | recovery lab. |
| A RAID 5 becomes degraded when there is a loss of | | | | RAID 5 Firmware Failure |
| one of the member disks. This causes a huge | | | | Firmware problems can occur in the RAID controller |
| decrease in performance and also removes the fault | | | | or the member disk drives. |
| tolerance of the RAID 5. Operating a degraded RAID | | | | RAID 5 Rebuild Failure |
| 5 is dangerous because the loss of a second disk will | | | | For various reasons, a RAID 5 array can experience a |
| cause the entire array to be lost. | | | | rebuild failure. This may keep member disks offline |
| Deleted Files | | | | and render the array unusable. |
| Many times a user will accidentally delete important | | | | Server Crash |
| data in a RAID 5 array. Other times, it is done | | | | Many times, the host server experiences problems |
| intentionally by disgruntled employees. In most | | | | and can crash. This of course makes the array |
| situations, deleted files can be recovered. | | | | unaccessible. A data recovery lab can recover the |
| Missing Partitions | | | | data from the member disks. |
| In many cases, the partition table can become | | | | |