Thinking about RAID 0 recoveries? Is it really possible? There are a lot of questions that plague in our mind; however, before thinking of recovering the RAID, find its cause. What made it go wrong in the first instance? Two major reasons for the failure of the RAID 0 sector are:

* Non-functionality of any of the RAID 0 member disks,
* Other reason than the failure of the member discs of RAID 0 sector

RAID 0 Error When A Member Disc Fails
RAID 0 holds a non –redundant array structure, so error or failure of proper functionality of any of these renders the entire list useless and data is lost forever. The data, on the rest of the member disks, helps to retrieve some sort of data. Files smaller than a specific size or on the damaged disc cannot be recovered; therefore, RAID 0 recovery is often called impossible.

Failure Due To Other Reasons
Other reasons of failure may be due to controller failures, operator errors, or malfunctioning of the RAID 0 controlling software. Under these circumstances, metadata configuration of the RAID 0 data is just working normally. This kind of condition can be treated easily; by examining the faulty sectors, you can recover the lost data.

RAID 0 Recovery
Recovering can be done by making these to locate the data fragment starting point.

Disc Order
The disk order can be gauged from the log files or the number of the text files with stamps. Tools like the WinHex could be used to determine such signature files. When part of one fragment is found on the next disc, it is tracked and paths where it is found are located; so check what the originating disc was. Tracking the parent disc of any data source is made easier, if a disc viewer tool is used:

* Go for MBR, if there is a hardware RAID
* Boot Sector for a Software RAID 0

Block Size
Use the standard sizes such as in the Windows RAID 0, holding the sector 128 sectors.

Off Set
Finding the offset also enables you to locate the volume of the data fragment and help data recovery.

Recovering Data via Software
Manual recovery is a tiresome practice and it is always easier to use RAID recovery software, saving time and giving more efficient data recovery. Another question that comes in the mind is that, can data be recovered from a formatted RAID 0 disc or not? It depends on the formatting pattern of the drive. In Windows, when formatting is done, the original data still exists in the free space section.