When one or more disks fail, the workload on the others increases and the chances of further failures become pronounced.
To avoid data loss, it’s important not to continue running in ‘degraded’ mode, but to rebuild the array.
Immediate actions
+ Create a RAID structure image before starting the rebuild process
- Don’t attempt to create new RAID on old drives. This will overwrite all your previous data
- If the data can’t be accessed don’t attempt a RAID rebuild. This will lower the chance of a successful recovery
+ Avoid overwriting data. Do not create, copy, move or save any files on the disk
- Don’t remove more than one disk at the same time.
+ Label the drives and matching slots to keep track of sequencing
- Don’t ignore RAID subsystem failures or malfunctions before or during the rebuild
Prepare the array
Label the drives, wires, cables, ports and controller configuration
Connect the controller
Disconnect the member hard drives and connect them to a controller capable of working with separate disks (non-RAID controller or RAID controller in single drive mode)
Calculate parameters
Use RAID recovery software to recovery the array parameters.
Rebuild array
Assuming correct disk order, build the array without initialising the disk according to the array parameters. If unsure of the disk order don’t attempt this.
Write data
Write data to the new array and try to mount the disk in the same operating system. Don’t write data to any member disks of the original array.
Copy back
Rebuild the original RAID and copy the data back
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