How to Recover Data from an Inaccessible RAID Volumes?

Summary: This post mentions the reasons that may result in the accessible RAID volume. It also discusses various ways to recover data from inaccessible RAID volumes. The best option to get back your crucial business data from RAID volume is by using Stellar RAID recovery tool.

Why Raid Becomes Inaccessible?

RAID or Redundant Array of Independent Disks is a way to logically combine two or more disks into a single array. This logical arrangement of disks facilitates data redundancy and faster input/output speed. However, RAID volumes are vulnerable to failure due to logical issues, resulting in inaccessible RAID.

A RAID volume may become inaccessible due to reasons, such as human errors, malware infection, software-related issues, disk-related problems, server crash, bad sectors on disk, etc.

If your RAID volume becomes inaccessible, we’ve discussed below the ways to fix the inaccessible RAID volume and to recover the data. The best and easiest to way to recover data from RAID volume is by using an advanced RAID recovery software.

Methods to Recover Data from Inaccessible RAID Volumes

Here are some effective methods to recover data from inaccessible RAID volume:

1. Use Disk Management Utility

A RAID volume becomes inaccessible, if the system fails to assign a drive letter to it. If this is the case, open Disk Management utility and check if all the volumes have drive letters assigned to them.

If not assigned, follow the steps given below to assign a drive letter and access RAID data:

Step 1. From Disk Management utility window, right-click the RAID volume to which you need to assign a drive letter, and choose Change Drive Letter and Path.

Step 2. Click Add and select a drive letter from the dropdown.

Step 3. Click OK and then again click OK.

Step 4. Check if the RAID volume is now accessible.

If you’re able to access the volume, back up the data immediately.

2. Run CHKDSK Command

In case the RAID volume becomes inaccessible due to corruption, you need to fix the issue and restore data. For this, you can use CHKDSK, a command line utility, to fix RAID partition corruption issues and then restore the data.

[WARNING]: Using this method may result in data loss.

Follow the steps given below to run CHKDSK command on inaccessible RAID volume:

Step 1. Open Command Prompt as an Administrator.

Step 2. Type the command chkdsk /f /r x: and press the Enter key.

Where, x is the drive letter.

Step 3. Check if the issue is fixed and the RAID volume is accessible.

If you’re still unable to access the data on volume, follow the next method.

3. Use RAID Volume Recovery Tool

An effective RAID recovery software for data recovery technicians, like Stellar Data Recovery Technician can easily recover data from a corrupt or error throwing RAID volume. It can restore RAID volume, even if it is deleted or missing (not visible in Disk Management utility).

You can use this tool to recover data from software as well as hardware RAID. The software supports data recovery from RAID 5, RAID 0, and RAID 6 arrays configured on windows systems. It can recover RAID data from all RAID brands, including DELL, IBM, hp, BUFFALO, Lenovo, etc.

You don’t need a RAID controller to recover data by using the software. Also, you don’t need to provide the RAID parameters to recover data. The software automatically builds virtual RAID and identifies the RAID parameters.

Here are the steps to restore corrupt, deleted, or missing RAID volume and recover data by using the software:

 Step 1. Connect the RAID disks to a Windows system as standalone disks.

Step 2. Install Stellar Data Recovery Technician software on the system and launch it.

Step 3. From the main menu, select All Data and click Next.

Step 4. Choose RAID Recovery and click Scan.

Step 5. Based on your RAID setup, choose RAID 0, RAID 5, or RAID 6.

 Step 6. Select and then arrange the RAID disks in Move hard drives up/down for disk order box.

Step 7. Select the RAID parameters from Select RAID Parameters section.

Step 8. Click Build RAID. 

Step 9. Choose the RAID constructed by the software and click Show Volume List. You’ll be able to see a list of all RAID volumes, including the inaccessible one.

Step 10. Select the inaccessible RAID volume and click Scan. The tool then scans the affected volume and fetches the data/files from it.

Step 11. Select the files you need to save and click Recover.

Step 12. Browse a location to save the recovered RAID volume data.

Watch the video on “How to recover deleted files for Windows?” with the help of Stellar Recovery Software

By following the above steps, you would recover RAID data from inaccessible RAID volume.

Stellar Data Recovery Services

In the exact opposite case of the software not being able to even find the recoverable files in the first place, the user should again contact the Stellar Data Recovery Service Provider only as the data loss case is out of the hands of the software. The Stellar Raid Data Recovery services can recover the data from an inaccessible RAID volume in the most severe cases of physical damage to the storage media.

Conclusion

Virus attack, disk corruption, bad sectors, volume deletion, etc. make the RAID volume inaccessible. As a result of this, you lose access to all the crucial business data stored on the volume. If you’re in such a situation, you can follow the methods, such as running CHKDSK command or try assigning a new drive letter to the volume to restore RAID volume data.

However, if the RAID volume becomes inaccessible due to deletion, severe disk damage, or any other critical reason, use a RAID recovery software, such as Stellar Data Recovery Technician. This software recovers data from lost, deleted, or corrupt RAID 0, 5, and 6 arrays.