Coventry Data Recovery is the UK’s leading expert in advanced RAID failure diagnostics and forensic computer recovery. With 25 years of professional experience handling mission-critical enterprise systems, we specialise in damaged or overwritten RAID 0 arrays, particularly those hosted on high-performance servers such as the HP ProLiant DL380.
In this case, our client reported a catastrophic RAID 0 failure caused by an improper array rebuild attempt. One of the drives in the 2-disk RAID 0 configuration was rebuilt incorrectly, destroying parity alignment and rendering the array unmountable. Critical business data—such as staff working hours, payroll information, and client records—was rendered inaccessible, with previous recovery attempts via BIOS access and SATA/SCSI cloning proving unsuccessful.
🔍 Common Causes of RAID 0 Array Failure
RAID 0 arrays offer performance benefits but no redundancy. They are particularly vulnerable to:
- Rebuild or overwrite attempts on a single disk (destroys array synchronisation)
- Bad sectors or surface degradation on one or more disks
- Incorrect drive order or stripe size assumptions
- Accidental initialisation or partition loss
- Controller metadata corruption
- Logical corruption due to power loss or system crash during writes
🔧 Our Technical RAID 0 Recovery Process
1. Disk Stabilisation and Write Protection
- All RAID member disks are individually imaged using hardware-level forensic imagers with write-blocking enabled.
- Drives with bad sectors or read instability are handled using sector-by-sector cloning with adaptive re-reading techniques.
2. Detection of Drive Order and Stripe Parameters
- Using low-level signature analysis, we reverse-engineer:
- Disk order in the array
- Stripe size and offset
- Interleave patterns specific to HP Smart Array or Smart PERC controllers
3. Handling Bad Sectors and Incomplete Clones
- Drives exhibiting degraded read performance are handled using deep-scan sector reconstruction.
- Clone gaps are mapped and flagged, enabling us to perform partial data reconstruction in regions unaffected by damage.
4. Virtual Array Reconstruction
- Using proprietary RAID reconstruction software, we build a virtual image of the RAID 0 array with corrected parameters.
- This step compensates for the rebuild attempt which rewrote the RAID metadata, replacing it with manually validated alignment.
5. Logical File System Repair
- File system integrity (typically NTFS in HP Windows Server deployments) is repaired using raw data carving and MFT (Master File Table) reconstruction.
- Essential business files such as
.xls,.xlsx,.pdf,.docx,.mdb,.csvand.xmlpayroll records are validated and verified against CRC and file structure.
6. Data Export and Delivery
- Extracted data is transferred to a secure destination medium, encrypted upon request.
- A structured file tree is restored, maintaining original directory hierarchy for ease of re-integration into operational systems.
💽 Supported RAID Controllers and Interfaces
We recover data from all major HP ProLiant RAID environments including:
- HP Smart Array P400 / P410 / P420 / P440 series
- RAID configurations over SCSI, SAS, SATA, and SSD backplanes
- File systems: NTFS, ReFS, ext3/ext4, HFS+, XFS
💼 Why Choose Coventry Data Recovery?
- 25 years of forensic-level RAID data recovery
- Dedicated RAID lab with HP ProLiant systems for testing and controller emulation
- Non-destructive data handling
- Fully ISO-compliant secure environments
- Specialists in recovery after failed rebuilds and overwritten metadata
⚠ RAID 0 Data Lost After Failed Rebuild?
If your HP ProLiant RAID 0 server no longer mounts in Windows, BIOS cannot detect a valid volume, or your data appears corrupt or unreadable, stop all recovery attempts immediately. Continued use can lead to further data overwriting or loss. Our engineers can recover your critical files even when standard methods have failed.
Coventry Data Recovery – The UK’s Leading Forensic Computer Recovery Experts
📞 Contact us today for a free diagnostic evaluation.