RAID 5 was intended to provide redundancy good read/write performance, and a relatively high amount of disk space compared to the drive capacity. When it crashes, however, it can be very frustrating and potentially dangerous to assess the damage without the correct tools.

And when we say 'crashes', we mean in general that it has become inaccessible, the server won't boot, or maybe the server will boot but it's starting to go through an extensive 'chkdsk' or 'fsck' process. (If that's happening, your data might actively be being overwritten!)

Or perhaps the drives and/or controller cannot figure out how they all fit together to form a cohesive array. Is it better to connect the drives back up to the controller and run its software, which is a slow and uncertain process full of rebuilds that may or may not work, and that may or may not be damaging your company's sensitive data?

Well.. It boils down to this: if you are at all uncertain, and the data is at all important, it would be a good idea to contact us now. Click here to find out how.