Building multiple virtual copies of RAID in UFS Explorer
In situations when RAID metadata is not available and the exact configuration of RAID is unknown, a data recovery technician often needs to experiment with various parameter combinations to find the one that provides consistent data. Typically, the process involves defining RAID settings, like drives order, stripe size or parity rotation, and rebuilding the configuration many times until discovering the correct layout. However, assembling each possible combination from scratch can be time-consuming, especially when dealing with non-standard RAID types from proprietary systems.
Instead of rebuilding RAID entirely over and over again, UFS Explorer of the Professional and Technician editions allows users to create multiple virtual "copies" from the same source RAID set and then use these copies for RAID reconstruction, without having to modify the initial configuration. With this approach, it becomes possible to create multiple virtual configurations simultaneously and easily compare the results in order to determine the right setup.
The feature is implemented in the software via the "Build a copy of this RAID" tool presented in the main toolbar of the RAID Builder element.
To see how it works, let’s take a look at a possible example of its application. We have a RAID configuration whose metadata has been corrupted during a rebuild attempt, leaving the original parameters undetectable for the software. We have to reconstruct this storage manually, without knowing the precise configuration that that has been used.
We start with a configuration that seems most probable based on the number of drives in the array. We will assemble it in the RAID Builder element using disk images previously made for the original drives.
However, the data on the storage appears to be inaccessible, which may indicate that we’ve chosen incorrect parameters.
We need to open this configuration in RAID Builder once again using the "Edit RAID configuration" option from the storage context menu.
After that, we can go to the main toolbar of RAID Builder and launch the "Build a copy of this RAID" tool.
The program analyzes the RAID layout and generates a duplicate of the initial RAID configuration, which can be processed separately in the software.
By building new copies of RAID, we can try out different combinations of parameters (such as the order of drives, stripe size, etc.), without affecting the RAID configurations we’ve checked earlier.
This way, we are testing different setups to determine which one yields recoverable data.
Once the correct setup has been discovered, we can scan the assembled storage in the program and recover the lost files.
Last update: March 25, 2025