Recover Data from RAID Arrays When RAID Controller Fails

Summary: Data in the RAID array becomes inaccessible if RAID Controller fails. Further, it becomes the need of the hour to recover data from RAID arrays. Read on to know the way for performing RAID Recovery. In fact, this is the perfect place to know about RAID Controller, the aftereffects of failed RAID Controller, and the method to perform RAID data recovery, be it from a hardware or software RAID.

Introduction

Among several reasons such as virus/malware attack, power outage, number of drives more than the particular RAID level can withstand, human error, natural disasters, etc.; failed RAID Controller is also responsible for RAID failure.

Consequently, data stored in the redundant array of independent disks becomes unavailable thus resulting in a business loss. This is a major drawback when RAID Controller fails. In such a situation, the first thing that comes to mind is to make the inaccessible data of the failed RAID accessible followed by building the RAID.

If your business that uses RAID on Windows for maximum data availability and security is suffering losses due to RAID Controller failure, this blog serves the purpose of RAID data recovery.

RAID Controller

We are explaining RAID Controller to provide a better understanding of RAID arrays and the path forward for RAID recovery.   

A RAID Controller is a useful hardware device or software program for managing or controlling the physical disk drives (HDDs or SSDs) fashioned in an array. However, to the computer system, the Controller presents the physical drives as logical segments so that the physical hard drives function as a logical unit.

In Hardware RAID, the Controller is a physical device that manages the RAID array in Hardware RAID, and can be a PCI or PCI Express (PCIe) card supporting drive formats like SATA and SCSI. These may also be available as fully-programmable miniature devices. However, In Software RAID, Controller is a program on the host system created to control hardware resources including RAID arrays.

What to do when your RAID fails due to RAID Controller failure?

Whether you are using controller based on Hardware RAID or Software RAID, both of these can fail and make that data stored in RAID array inaccessible. If the RAID in the organization where you serve as an IT administrator goes down due to failed RAID Controller, and no matter whether the RAID configuration is known or not, we recommend the following:

1. Turn the system OFF at the earliest to avoid data loss.
2. Recover inaccessible RAID data using Stellar Stellar Data Recovery Technician. It is a Windows RAID data recovery software that can recover inaccessible RAID data.

If you know the details of the parameters like Stripe/block size, Parity Order/Rotation method, and Parity Repetition/Delay time, use these. Else, use probable Start Sectors. If the Start sector that you desire is not enlisted, you can add one or more entries (up to 32).

3. Once you have performed RAID data recovery, use a new RAID Controller, and construct the desired RAID using the same hard drives and the recovered data.

Note – To know the entire process-steps of using Stellar Data Recovery Technician when the RAID card fails, go through this Knowledge Base. RAID recovery software performs RAID data recovery in two main steps: Rebuilding RAID and scanning the found RAID volumes. Finally, recover inaccessible RAID data safely.

Conclusion

We suggest all System Administrators and IT professionals in organizations using RAID on Windows, to keep RAID recovery software handy. Well, the reasons are many. One, it provides easy RAID recovery, no matter you know or do not know the RAID configuration parameters. Second, it is capable of recovering data from complex RAID structures. The supported RAID configurations are RAID 0, RAID 5, and RAID 6 and advantages include Raw Recovery in RAID, detection of RAID factor automatically, recovery from hardware and software RAID, recovery from the virtual RAID, etc. It can recover inaccessible data from RAID arrays even when RAID Controllers or RAID Card fails, which is an extraordinary feature of this RAID recovery software.

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