Hello everybody!
Watch this video to find out how to recover data from a hardware RAID 5 built with the
help of Windows Storage Spaces on a Windows Server 2019 operating system.
I’m going to show you what to do if you can’t access your information in such an
array after reinstalling the operating system or after a disk failure.
As we know, Windows Server features an integrated technology to let you create a hardware RAID
system and protect your data.
This function is used to keep your files intact in case one or several disks fail (and naturally,
the number of those unlucky disks depends on the array configuration).
However, issues related to data loss in Windows Server systems do not always boil down to
a mere disk failure: other possible causes may include software errors, incorrect settings,
damaged metadata, accidental formatting or removing files and so on.
No matter what happened, but with any these things you still end up losing some important
information, and wondering how to get your files back.
You’ll need to use a specialized utility to restore the lost information from the damaged
RAID system.
Try Hetman RAID Recovery.
This utility supports data recovery from almost all existing RAID types, and the lost information
will be back in a moment.
It works perfectly with all popular file systems, fixing errors in the hard disk logical structure
and recovering the disk contents.
Reinstallation of the operating system or a hardware error
Errors in the work of the operating system, for example, those you may encounter during
the update process can cause a critical error, after which your system just refuses to boot
again.
And the only option left for you is to reinstall it.
But what should you do with the RAID system and all the information that is still inside
it.
After the operating system is reinstalled, it may have problems with recognizing the
drives, and display them in the Disk Management as “foreign.”
First of all, try importing them.
Right-click on the disk, then select “Import foreign disks”, choose a group and click
OK.
In the next window, the system will list the volumes it has found on the disks, so click
OK to confirm it.
After that, all disks will appear in the File Explorer.
There could be situations when the import operation fails and some arrays remain inaccessible
- just like this RAID 5 system.
One more scenario is when a hardware failure or another emergency damaged a part of metadata,
or there is a never-ending process of resynching which makes the disk unavailable for read
and write operations.
Similar results occur when you accidentally remove a part of the data or format the disk.
If any of these nasty things happened to your system, keep calm and use Hetman RAID Recovery.
It will scan the disks automatically and display all the information about disks and arrays.
As you can see, the program has identified this array’s properties easily.
All you have to do is to scan its disks and recover your data.
Right-click on the disk and select Fast scan; if the Fast scan can’t find the information,
then go for Full analysis.
When the scan is over, select the files you want to restore, click Recovery, specify the
directory where you’d like to save the files, and click Recovery again.
In the end, you will find the recovered files in the folder you have chosen.
If one disk fails If one or several disks failed and the recovery
program is unable to identify the array properties, use the RAID Constructor tool.
Select Manual mode, Next, and provide all the information you know about your disk array.
RAID type, block order and size, select the disks that your storage system mused to consist
of and specify their order, add empty disks for the missing ones by clicking on this button.
After you’ve filled in all the properties you know, click Next.
The RAID system will appear in the Drive Manager.
Right-click on it and start the scan.
Select the files you want to restore, and click Recovery.
Even if more than one disk is damaged, the program can recover the files which are still
on the disk, but a part of the data can be damaged because for this RAID type, losing
more than one disk is critical.
Actually, the maximal number of disks that can be missing (with your data still intact!)
is determined by four types of resiliency supported by Storage Spaces, and they are
as follows: - Simple resiliency (stripe) require all disks
to be available, - two-way mirror and parity types can compensate
the absence of one disk, - three-way mirror types can keep on working
even if they lose two disks at the same time.
If more disks are missing than the storage configuration can handle, the files can be
damaged or inaccessible due to lack of redundancy data.
In this case, recovering all and every lost file is very difficult.
Your best precaution against massive data loss should be backing up important data regularly,
so keep that in mind.
That is all for now!
Hopefully, this video was useful.
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Thank you for watching.
Good luck.