As someone who works in a dedicated RAID data recovery department of an established data recovery company I can say that perhaps our single most common type of client is an IT company who has been given the task of recovering an end-user’s vital data from a failed RAID array. The biggest obstacle that I face in getting that data back is not the original RAID failure in the first instance but what has been subsequently attempted in terms of recovering the data before I have been approached.
RAID recovery is necessarily not cheap and it is therefore understandable that people will attempt to recover the data themselves. However they need to understand the risks that they are taking. If you are such a person and are determined to try to recover the data yourself first, then before you do anything else clone each of the hard drives in the array to fresh, healthy drives. This is least will allow you to get professional help if you don’t achieve the results you hope for. If you cannot clone the drives because they have physical problems then you will need professional RAID recovery assistance in any case, similarly if you do not know how to clone the drives without changing the contents of those drives in any way then you should not be carrying out this work.
