Prevention of RAID Failure

Detecting and preventing data problems and subsequent RAID failure before it happens is always better than trying to fix them when they rear their ugly heads. RAID's goal is to increase data reliability, but as we know, technology performance is not always as reliable as we hope it will be, so we should always prepare ourselves accordingly. There are ways for you to prevent the loss of your precious data, and who wouldn't want to avoid the drama of systems mysteriously, leaving us without easy access to our RAID drives. If disaster strikes, contacting RAID data recovery specialists is your best bet, but there are ways in which this tragedy can be prevented altogether. There are reasons as to why so many businesses use RAID. RAID drives have the ability to combine several physical disks into a larger device and boast redundancy and performance improvements. The most common area where we find RAID failure is in the storage subsystem. The most obvious way to prevent the loss of data is to constantly backup your data, not matter how advanced your system. The sooner you realise that data loss can happen to anyone, the sooner you will be able to protect your data from RAID failure. Advanced storage devices are designed to anticipate the possibility of data disasters, but even advanced RAID arrays can face failure. The way in which a RAID drive is supposed to prevent failure is by supplying a level of fault tolerance that will keep your storage subsystem out of danger. There will be times when one of your drives will fail whilst the others in the array are still in perfect working order. It is suggested that you label each drive and cable to make sure that you do not remove a working RAID drive instead of the RAID drive that has experienced the failure. Labelling them will make it easier for you to match them to the port on the controller card as well as to the drive numbers. This may seem unnecessary, but it could be your saving grace in a replacement situation. Another common problem that arises with RAID arrays is that many decide to purchase drives without knowing the manufacturing details. There is the possibility that the drives might all come from the same manufacturing lot if they were all bought together. Using drives from the same manufacturing lot can result in RAID access failure. It is suggested that you implement RAID 6 if you have not done so, which will help you recover from two separate failed drives. In some instances, your RAID drive might be damaged and there is nothing left to do to prevent RAID failure, in which case your only option is to let the professionals take over and recover data lost