RAID - What is it?

When this technology fails, and because we live in a world increasingly dependent upon data/information, the loss of this precious asset can be annoying to downright devastating.

• Hardware malfunction (e.g. disks, controller, electricity fluctuation etc.).
• Software.
• Transmission error.
• Human error.

These factors lead to the damage and disruption of logical volumes and/or hardware. And most importantly, one's data.

When such failures strike, it's important to get in touch with Imexgro's RAID data recovery service as soon as possible, so that we can diagnose the problem. We will then attempt to ascertain and solve the problem as effectively and efficiently as possible. It is best to cease activity when problems arise, as further damage can very easily take place.

The first step is to book in your media. All media submitted to Imexgro for data recovery must be accompanied by a signed and completed Diagnosis And Recovery Request Form, and can be hand-delivered or couriered to Imexgro's premises with you media. Please see our Packaging / Shipping Instructions page for more information.

A prudent, conservative and learned approach is required to handle such scenarios. This is where we come in – with our proven techniques, protocols, policies and procedures. And most importantly, experience.

We make the recovery of RAID systems a high priority, and ensure that the data is recovered efficiently and effectively.

• RAID 0 (block-level striping without parity or mirroring) provides improved performance and additional storage but no redundancy or fault tolerance (making it not true RAID, according to the acronym's definition). However, because of the similarities to RAID (especially the need for a controller to distribute data across multiple disks), simple stripe sets are normally referred to as RAID 0.
• RAID 1 (mirroring without parity or striping), data is written identically to multiple disks (a "mirrored set"). Although many implementations create sets of 2 disks, sets may contain 3 or more disks.
• RAID 2 (bit-level striping with dedicated Hamming-code parity), all disk spindle rotation is synchronized, and data is striped such that each sequential bit is on a different disk. Hamming-code parity is calculated across corresponding bits on disks and stored on one or more parity disks. Extremely high data transfer rates are possible.
• RAID 3 (byte-level striping with dedicated parity), all disk spindle rotation is synchronized, and data is striped such that each sequential byte is on a different disk. Parity is calculated across corresponding bytes on disks and stored on a dedicated parity disk. Very high data transfer rates are possible.
• RAID 4 (block-level striping with dedicated parity) is identical to RAID 5, but confines all parity data to a single disk, which can create a performance bottleneck.
• RAID 5 (block-level striping with distributed parity) distributes parity along with the data.
• Non-RAID drive architectures also exist, and are often referred to, similarly to RAID, by standard acronyms - several tongue-in-cheek. A single drive is referred to as a SLED (Single Large Expensive Drive), by contrast with RAID, while an array of drives without any additional control (accessed simply as independent drives) is referred to as a JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks). Simple concatenation is referred to a SPAN, or sometimes as JBOD, though this latter is prescribed in careful use, due to the alternative meaning just cited.

• AMD
• Compaq
• Dell
• Gateway
• IBM
• Intel
• Sun Microsystems
• unbranded drives and systems
• And more... (please feel free to enquire)

• Deleted or lost partitions / files (e.g. e-mails, Outlook PST files etc.).
• Accidental formatting of storage media.
• Damaged or corrupted data stored on various storage devices.
• Data from extensively physically damaged storage devices (e.g. Open drive recovery).
• Corrupted Microsoft Office documents and Outlook PST files.
• Virus-damaged files.
• Hardware recoveries: Open drive recoveries.
• The drive no longer recognised by the BIOS after rebooting, despite the platters spinning.
• Operating system not found / missing operating system.
• RAID controller failure.
• Inaccessible boot device.
• RAID device won't boot.
• Incomplete/partial array rebuilds.
• The drive reports bad sectors.
• Single and multiple raid drive failure.
• Multiple drive or component failure.
• RAID device not ready.
• Device not ready, reading drive "X".
• Unable to access drive "X".
• Corrupted parity/data drive.
• Clicking or grinding noises, normally associated with electro-mechanical failure.
• Primary hard disk failure.
• The RAID BIOS recognises the drive but with “rubbish” parameters.
• The RAID BIOS recognises the drive but the data is inaccessible.
• Improper drive or media replacement.
• NTLDR is missing.
• Accidental/intentional deleted partition.
• Corrupt data.
• Fire/Water Damage.
• Formatted, Fdisked, partially re-loaded hard disk drives.
• Media surface damage.
• and more not mentioned above... (please feel free to enquire).