RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. These used to be SCSI drives only and were quite expensive. Over the last years RAID systems are also built with 'normal' hard drives. Quite a few personal computers are supplied with a RAID disk system these days. Before, raid systems were nearly exclusively used in servers only.
A RAID disk installation consists allways of two independent hard disks. These two disks work together, and depending on the way the RAID system is set up, can be seen by system either as one or as two disk volumes.
Raid1: The system sees one disk, even though two physical disks are there. RAID 1 creates a mirror of the data on two or more disks. Raid Data Recovery is an ongoing process which keeps your data very safe. Chances of both drives crashing at the very same time are virtually non existent.
Raid Data Recovery is in the best of cases simply exchanging the defective hard disk and then letting the system duplicate itself on the replaced drive. This is a very simple process, in comparison with normal disk forensics and normal hard drive data recovery wehre ther is only on drive holding the data.
Raid Data Recovery can also get highly complicated, when not a RAID 1 system is used, but a RAID 5 system has crashed. The purpose of a RAID 5 set-up is speed. In RAID 5, data is split up and written on one or more hard disks simultaneously. This speeds up writing and reading, but makes data recovery very complicated.
To put the parts of the puzzle back together demands the know-how and technology of very experienced data recovery experts. If you need RAID data recovery, make sure your hard disks are put into the hand of highly qualified experts who can demonstate that they know what they do. By running the wrong software or tools on such a disk it's possible to finally and irrevocably destroy all data that might otherwise still been available.
The one advantage even of a RAID 5 system is, that not all data of a file or directory is written at the same spot or on the same hard disk. So if just one hard drive is failing, chances are good, that only parts will be totally lost and the larger quantity of the data will be recovered.
RAID can be set up using only hardware or by running a raid software.
Allmost all big hardware manufacturers offer hardware systems: Adaptec, IBM, Dell, Compaq, HP (Hewlett-Packard), AMI .... there are more.
To run software raid is possible with all major operating systems, i.e. Microsoft Windows Servers 2003, 2000 (2K), NT, and the desktop Windows XP, 2000, Mac OS, Solaris, Novell and all Linux versions, ... again also here are more operating systems that offer software RAID.
Raid Data Recovery