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R-Studio detects and treats valid software or hardware RAIDs as regular drives/volumes. But what to do if you have only drives or drive images of a faulty RAID? R-Studio can still help you to get the data back provided that the drives necessary for the RAID to operate are working or you have the images of those drives. The number of drives enough to get data back depends on the RAID layout. For example, for a mirror (RAID 1) of two drives, at least one must be valid, whereas for a RAID5 of 3 disks, the number of valid drives should be two.
Working with RAIDs in R-Studio is based on the concept of Virtual volume sets and RAIDs. That is, you can construct the original RAID from its drives and/or drive images in R-Studio and process it like any other device object. Such object can be searched for files, scanned, and files found on it can be recovered the same way as from normal drives/volumes.
Virtual RAIDs can be constructed of any device objects visible by R-Studio, be them hard drives, logical disks, or images.
Please note that virtual volumes and RAIDs are pure virtual objects, and R-Studio does not write anything on the devices from which such objects are created.
Let us start learning how to work with RAIDs in R-Studio with a simple RAID5:
A simple RAID5
Its Parameters:
Number of disks: 3
Objects in R-Studio: SCSI(3:0), SCSI(3:1), SCSI(3:2)
Block Size: 64 kB
Offset: 0
Stripe order: Left Asynchronous (Continuous)
To create such a RAID, we
1. Click the Create virtual volume sets or RAIDs button and select Create Virtual RAID5. The newly created virtual RAID5 object will appear on the Drive pane, and the Parents tab will appear on the R-Studio Main panel.
Check that Apply changes immediately is selected.
2. Drag the objects from which we want to create the RAID5 to the Parents tab.
Then place them in the correct order, that is, SCSI(3:0), SCSI(3:1), SCSI(3:2).
Then specify the correct blocks order and offset (in sectors). As soon as R-Studio detects a valid file system, a new Partition 1 object will appear on the Drive pane. We may process this partition as a real object.
Let us enumerate the files on that partition. Just double-click it, and see the folders/files structure on the virtual RAID5.
We can check that we constructed the RAID5 correctly. Just double-click a graphic file, and R-Studio will show its preview.
Please note that you have to specify all RAID parameters correctly, be it the device order, offset, Block order and size to obtain real data. Sometimes R-Studio may detect an object with a valid file system even if one of the parameters are not correct. So, it is a good idea to preview a file, the large the better, to verify that you have constructed the RAID correctly.
You may also create your own RAID configurations, save them, edit, and then loaded back. If some of the objects are missing, you may substitute them with Missing Disk or Empty Space objects. See R-Studio documentation for details.
Turning Disks On-Line and Off-Line on-the-fly
You may turn the objects in the virtual RAID or volume set on-line and off-line by selecting/clearing the On checkbox on the Parents tab. It may be useful, for example, if you need to see which disk is non-actual in a RAID5.
Actually, when you turn an object off-line, R-Studio substitutes it internally with an empty space object equal to the size of the off-line disk.
Now we can proceed with a more advanced example.
Advanced RAID5
Now we will use the drive images as the objects from which we will create the RAID5
Its Parameters:
Number of disks: 3
Objects in R-Studio:
Block Size: 4 kB
Offset: 64 sec
Stripe order: Custom
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To create such a RAID, we
1. Click the Create virtual volume sets or RAIDs button and select Create Virtual RAID5. The newly created virtual RAID5 object will appear on the Drive pane, and the Parents tab will appear on the R-Studio Main panel.
Check that Apply changes immediately is cleared, as we will do a lot of editing and there is no reason to make R-Studio do anything unless we are through.
2. Drag the objects from which we want to create the RAID5 to the Parents tab.
Then place them in the correct order, that is, I:\Disk1.dsk, I:\Disk2.dsk, I:\Disk3.dsk.
Enter the Block size and Offset on the Parents tab. Do not pay much attention to Block order.
3. Manually enter 9 to the Row count on the Parents tab. Block order will change to Custom.
Enter the strip order in the table on the Parents tab.
Using the keyboard: arrow keys to navigate, digit and p keys to enter the stripe order.
Using the mouse: right-click the cell and select the number or parity from the shortcut menu. If the stripe table is too large, you better use the keyboard to enter the digits.
Corrections: R-Studio will show if some digits are not correct. Navigate to the required cell and enter the correct value. Use the Delete key to clear a cell.
Clear the table: Right-click the table and select Clear all on the shortcut menu.
4. When we finish filling the block order table, click the Apply button on the Parents tab.
As soon as R-Studio detects a valid file system, a new Partition 1 object will appear on the Drive pane. We may process this partition as a real object.
Let us enumerate the files on that partition. Just double-click it, and see the folders/files structure on the virtual RAID5.
We can check that we constructed the RAID5 correctly. Just double-click a graphic file, and R-Studio will show its preview.
You may also create your own RAID configurations using the description file for RAID configurations. See R-Studio documentation for details.
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