Home
 
Download
 
Buy now
 
Tech support

   

Tools
Tutorials
Unformat
RAID recovery
Partition recovery
Digital image recovery
Email recovery
Physical flash failures
Physical HDD failures
Recovering an NTFS backup boot sector
Extras
Contacts


 

Home / Tutorials / RAID recovery

   
 

RAID recovery

Summary

This tutorial describes the data recovery procedure used to recover a RAID0 or RAID5 array if
  • the controller failed and the array parameters are lost
  • Windows software-based RAID configuration data is damaged

Note: The older than current versions of ZAR might have been used to create the screenshots in this tutorial. We did not update the screenshots if there is no significant difference between older and current versions. If you see some option in the program which is not described in the tutorial, just leave it at its default setting.

 

Hardware considerations

Take care to avoid running the recovery on the system with imperfect hardware.
  • If the array crashed due to the hardware problem, make sure the problem is corrected before attempting recovery.
  • If the source of the problem is uncertain, make sure at least the system memory (RAM) is checked.

 

Step  1 - Get, install, and start ZAR

Get and install ZAR just like you do with any regular program.

  1. Get ZAR full version for $49.95(US) (risk free)
  2. When you run it, ZAR displays the window like the one below:

  1. Click "Next >>"

 

Step 2 - Select processing mode

  1. Select "Reconstruct RAID layout, then recover data"
  2. Click "Next  >>"

 

Step 3 - Select array members and types

  1. Select all the drives that were members of the array
    • If you recover RAID5 with one of its member disks missing, select all the available drives. Missing data will be reconstructed automatically.
    • The order of disks is reconstructed automatically, you cannot specify it here.
  2. Select the RAID type.
    • If you do not know the type of the array, select everything.
    • For a Windows software RAID5, select "RAID5 (MS/LDM)".
    • For a hardware RAID5, select both "MS/LDM" and "Checkerboard" variations.
    • Avoid selecting RAID5 if you know the array to be RAID0.
  3. Click "Next >>" to start the array analysis

 

Step 4 - RAID layout reconstruction

This part is fully automatic.

 

Step 5 - Select the volume to recover

  1. Select a volume on the array you need to recover.
  2. Click "Next >>"

 

Step 6 - Filesystem reconstruction

This part is fully automatic.

 

Step 7 - Mark files to copy

  1. Mark folders to recover by clicking their corresponding checkboxes.
  2. Click "Next >>"

 

Step 8 - Copy the files

  1. Enter the name of the folder for the recovered files.
  2. Click "Start copying the selected files" to start file retrieval.
 
 
 

Copyright © 2001-2008 Zero Assumption Recovery
[Data recovery forum]
There are currently 72 visitors browsing the site.

 

Special offers

Nightly discount
starts in 1 hour 8 min

Our customers say

This small piece of software, within minutes of downloading, made me the happiest guy in the world. My camera did something weird to my SmartMedia card, rendering it useless. Upon card insertion, the camera and subsequent computers asked if I wished to format the card. I did NOT format the card, because I had just spent 2 hours taking promo pictures for my business in lots of different locations, and figured SOMEbody could figure it out... [...] When I found this program, although it took a minute or two to figure out which "number" went with my USB SmartMedia reader, I clicked a few buttons, and this program went right to work. It took about 5-10 seconds per picture to recover - I was ELATED! Thank you for providing this piece of software for free. I figure the least I could do was come back to say thank you.


Support forum
Latest topics
 
Sitemap