Data Recovery Weekly

If you recover RAID and need to create a RAID image file, you should create the image files of the member disks rather than the whole array. Generally, it is not possible to restore the original array state using a RAID image file. As for RAID0, the original state can be restored by writing the image to the array provided that the controller's settings (and thus the array parameters) have not been changed. If the controller's settings have been changed between reading and writing the image file, then image file data doesn't go to the original place on the member disks. For RAID5 it is not enough to have a RAID image file of the entire array even if the controller's settings have not been changed. This is because the parity data is not written to the image file. If the array works properly, the parity data is not used, but for the RAID recovery you need the parity data. A RAID5 consisting of 3x1TB disks contains 3TB of raw data (with parity), while the array image file ...

A disk image file - an exact copy of all the disk content - is the first thing that a data recovery lab makes. When recovering data at home it is often not reasonable to create a disk image file. Having the disk image file stored aside makes recovery more safe. If the fix gets wrong, the image file provides the backup to try again. If the disk is physically damaged, a disk image file allows you to perform the recovery independent of the mechanical conditions. Almost any data recovery software can create a disk image file and in most cases to load a disk image file that was created by another tool. The significant disadvantage is that creating a disk image file takes a long time and requires a lot of free disk space. When using read only data recovery software given that the drive is physically OK, the risk of further data damage is negligible. Read only recovery itself requires free space at least equal to the size of the data being recovered; if a disk image file is used, you should ...