RAID 5 basically stripes or distributes data across disks while adding parity check bit to the data that, though, reduces the available disk space, but later on restore data in case of disk failure. Though, RAID 5 data recovery is cost bearing, in IT industry, it is the only recommended data recovery gear to restore corrupted data when drive failure occurs.

Techniques to recover data with RAID5
Techniques of RAID 5 data recovery are:

* Data recovery from an intact array
* Data recovery from a broken array

Data recovery from an intact array
Arrays are considered the logical structure of a system. Any damage to this logical structure results in failure of entire data; so, will be considered a logical damage to the disks. If any file has been deleted from volume (stack of disks), residing in any of RAID5 array, the file can be restored by “unconventional-undeleted-software”. Certain software programs claim that their “undelete-software” is compatible with RAID5 technology and can restore the deleted files, but it is nothing but a trick because simple software can even restore the data or file until the arrays of RAID5 are intact and unbroken.

Data recovery from broken array
RAID5 arrays have a capability to survive one disk failure at a time since it is fault tolerant. If disk failure occurs, the data can be rebuilt or restored using parity bit on any new drive being installed on system. But at times, this technique even fails because sometimes the RAID adapter, due to any technical reason, is unable to swap the corrupt data on new drive. User in such scenario is left with disks containing data, but all inaccessible. Here is when you need strong RAID compatible or capable data recovery software.

The software should be of a kind that it treats all the separate disks a single array. Software should allow the user to add all those disks to the arrays that were part of it, configuring RAID5 parameters like striping and parity bit, etc. As most of the users hold no technical information, they might not configure RAID5 parameters; so here again the software should provide the user the ease to configure the parameters itself. As soon as the parameters are configured, virtual arrays will be recreated, recovering a desired data on disks. Not only will this, but the virtual array also be copied to any other disk for backup or raw storage file.

iRecover Software
Aforementioned features are provided by iRecover software. It configures the parameter itself without involving user and restores the data for its user; moreover, makes a copy of the virtual arrays. The essence of iRecover is that all the process is automated except few steps.