The main purpose of Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks is to store files on a combination of hard drives. In a company, it might be documents and their backups; at home, it might be movies, photos, app distributions, and other valuable files.
The main goal when configuring a RAID on several disks is to improve the convenience of storing and working with data. The volume on local hard drives will be significant if the total amount of data is large enough. The files will be held on a single storage unit rather than on different hard drives separately.
For high-load operations where fault tolerance is critical, software RAID cannot correctly operate, so hardware RAID with an array controller is required. The more hard disks are installed, the faster the redundant array will be.
If the volume is low, you can use two or more HDDs in RAID 0. If there is a need to boost fault tolerance, depending on the load on the disks, RAID configurations 5 or 1 can be used.
RAID Array Water Damage
Water damage causes severe problems to computer systems and can cause significant data loss. Modern media storages are very sensitive to moisture and contamination. Water flooding collapses both the mechanical and electronic components of hard drives and other storage devices. A large number of electronic components are exposed to destruction and corrosion within a few days.
Damage is most severe if water enters the sealed compartment that protects the magnetic head drive, platters, and other susceptible components. It is beneficial to work in specialized facilities to restore devices in such situations safely.
Therefore, in order to have the highest chances of recovering information, we recommend that, as soon as it becomes possible to access water damaged hard drive, you urgently contact the services of professionals. You can get certified assistance in recovering data from a disk that has been exposed to moisture in our data recovery laboratory. PITS Global Data Recovery Services provides professional data retrieval solutions even for severely damaged media storage.
Our skilled data recovery engineers will safely restore your vital files and transfer them to you confidentially. By working in an ISO Certified Class 10 Cleanroom, our experts make sure that the smallest dust particles will not damage sensitive parts of the data storage devices.
Water Damaged Hard Drive Recovery
Recently, we received a RAID 0 array consisting of 2 hard disk drives for data recovery. The customer said he spilled water on the hard drives, and the array stopped showing up in the operating system. As the RAID 0 is based on disk mirroring, his backups became inaccessible.
Water drive failures can cause immediate damage to the hard drive, and noticeable corrosion can occur within a few hours. Successful data recovery mainly depends on the actions taken immediately after the damage. The hard drive must be wrapped in an antistatic bag before being sent to the data recovery lab.
The client contacted our customer service, and after consulting with them, he decided to proceed with an emergency data recovery. So that the drive will not have severe corrosion, this option is for the clients who need to access their vital documents as soon as possible. The process takes from 8-48 hours.
Our data recovery technician received the drive and started diagnostics right away. To avoid serious damage to the plates, the engineer removed the device from the water and wiped it with a lint-free towel. In order not to damage the hard drive by static electricity, he had to grind it.
The drive can never be dried the device with heat, compressed air, or electrical appliances. High heat can damage the electronics board, which is especially sensitive to water.
Redundant Array of Independent Disks Restoration
The water was dried from the magnetic platters, and the data recovery expert started to extract data to assemble the RAID array further. He successfully accessed the data and transferred them to a new hard disk drive.
By emulating the work of the RAID controller, the engineer assembled the array and accessed the files. But he noticed that all drives were corrupted and seen as RAW files. He had to decrypt them and restore the files and files system to their initial NTFS format.
RAW is a file system not recognized by OS drivers. This format makes it impossible to perform any operations with the partition file reading. Error checking and defragmentation are not available. Using our cutting-edge file decryption key codes, the technician restored the files system and accessed the files. The customer reviewed the results and approved them via remote file verification. His data was sent back to him, and the case was successfully finished.
Contact PITS Global Data Recovery Services at (888) 611-0737, or submit your case by filling out the form.