RAID 5 Recovery

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Automatic RAID 5 recovery

In addition to manual RAID 5 recovery, there is always an option to try a special tool to recover RAID configuration parameters. There are both paid and free RAID recovery software.

To recover RAID 5 you need to determine the following parameters:

• block size,
• disk order,
• start offset,
• parity position and rotation,
• first delay and parity delay, for RAID 5 with delayed parity,
• how spare blocks are located on the array, for RAID 5E and RAID 5EE.

As one can see, it is required to recover a lot of parameters. Manual RAID recovery is a rather complicated task taking a very long time. Typically, RAID recovery tools are quite good at this task - see RAID recovery software comparison for more detail. Thus, to recover RAID 5 parameters automatically you need to:

1. Disconnect member disks from the controller and connect them to the PC's motherboard directly.
2. Launch a RAID recovery tool.
3. Either feed the recovered configuration back to the controller, or use the recovered configuration along with data recovery software.