Tips to Help Avoid the Need for Data Recovery on Your RAID Array

In today’s business environment, a redundant data array is almost a necessity to increase your computer’s efficiency and speed. When you go to the trouble and expense of setting up a hardware RAID array to make your computers more efficient and accurate, it would be foolish to stop short of protecting yourself from future data loss. Taking these steps now can help you avoid the need to call in a professional data recovery firm in the future.

Save Your Old Hard Drives Until You’re Sure You Won’t Need the Original Data

Often, you’ll be copying information onto your new array from an old hard drive or hard drives. Hold onto the hard drives until you’re certain that the data is securely transferred to your new RAID array and that the whole system is operating properly. If errors or faults crop up in the first few weeks, you’ll still have the original data to work from.

Back Up Your RAID drives Regularly to Tape

Using a RAID array doesn’t absolve you from the need to do regular backups. It’s still just as important to back up your data so you can recover it if something happens to the physical drives or your business. Backing up your drives to tape will make it far easier to restore your data than if you have to bring in an expert data recovery technician to resurrect your RAID.

Do Regular Performance Tests on Your Machines

Far too often, a disk in an array fails and no one notices because the array does what it’s supposed to do – reconstruct the missing data from the other drives in the RAID. Unless someone notices and steps in to repair or replace the damaged disk and restore the data it holds, the system will keep working until a second drive fails and the whole system grinds to a halt. At that point, with the entire system inaccessible, your only safe option is to call in a RAID data recovery specialist.

Don’t Try to Fix an Inaccessible RAID Array

The first reaction many inexperienced techs have when the files on a RAID drive become inaccessible is to try to fix the problem. Unfortunately, that’s almost always the wrong thing to do. Almost anything you do to fix the situation can result in the permanent loss of your important data. If things have gotten to this point, you have no choice but to call in a data recovery specialist to prevent erasing important data from your drive.

It’s always best to prevent data loss, or to plan for an easy restoration of data by backing up your data regularly. Sometimes, though, there’s no other choice but to call in experienced data recovery specialists like those at Fields Data Recovery to recover the data from your failed drives and restore it for your use.