RAID Recovery Software for NAS and Server Storage
Recover files from inaccessible hardware and software RAID arrays, NAS and DAS devices, and server storage after disk failure, controller damage, accidental rebuild, formatting, or metadata corruption.
The program analyzes RAID metadata stored on the member disks to determine the original array configuration, including disk order, stripe size, offsets, parity layout, and controller-specific parameters.
Detected arrays are reconstructed automatically and displayed as logical volumes ready for analysis. If the metadata is missing, damaged, or insufficient, the integrated RAID Constructor lets you define the array configuration manually or select a preset for a common RAID controller, NAS device, or storage system.
The reconstruction is performed virtually without modifying the source disks. You can scan the resulting volume, preview recoverable files, and save the recovered data to another drive.
Follow this step-by-step example to learn how to identify or configure a RAID array, scan the reconstructed volume, preview recoverable files, and save the recovered data to another drive.
RAID Recovery™ can reconstruct hardware and software RAID arrays, NAS and DAS storage, and recover files when the original system no longer detects, mounts, or reads the volume. Recovery results depend on the RAID level, the number and condition of the available drives, and whether the lost data has been overwritten.
A RAID array may become degraded or inaccessible after one or more drives fail, disappear, or develop read errors. RAID Recovery™ can use the remaining disks, mirrors, and available parity data to reconstruct the array virtually and recover accessible files.
A failed RAID controller, NAS enclosure, motherboard, or server may leave the disks intact while making the array inaccessible through the original system. The member drives can be connected to another computer and reconstructed independently of the failed hardware.
RAID configuration metadata may be damaged by firmware errors, interrupted writes, power failures, or corrupted service areas. The program can analyze the metadata that remains on the member disks or reconstruct the array manually when automatic detection is incomplete.
Starting a rebuild with the wrong replacement drive, initializing the array, reconnecting disks in the wrong order, or applying incorrect RAID parameters can make the volume inaccessible. RAID Recovery™ can test the original layout and reconstruct the array without writing changes back to the source disks.
Files, folders, partitions, or entire RAID volumes may be deleted accidentally while the underlying data remains on the disks. The program scans the reconstructed array to locate surviving file system records and recover data that has not been overwritten.
Quick formatting, unsafe shutdowns, interrupted writes, controller errors, or power failures can damage the file system and prevent the volume from mounting. RAID Recovery™ analyzes the reconstructed storage and searches for files even when the original directory structure is partially damaged.
Software-defined storage may become unavailable after an operating system crash, failed update, boot error, or loss of configuration. RAID Recovery™ can reconstruct Windows Storage Spaces, Linux MD RAID, LVM, and other supported software RAID technologies independently of the original operating system.
Unreadable sectors can interrupt a normal RAID rebuild and place additional stress on the remaining drives. Create images of unstable disks first, then use those images to reconstruct and scan the array while minimizing repeated access to failing hardware.
Moving member disks to a different RAID controller, NAS, server, motherboard, or operating system may leave a valid array unrecognized because RAID formats and configuration parameters differ. The program can reconstruct the original layout independently of the replacement hardware.
RAID Recovery™ combines RAID reconstruction with direct access to physical, remote, virtual, encrypted, and image-based storage. The program identifies storage configurations, reconstructs arrays, accesses snapshots and advanced file system structures, unlocks encrypted volumes, and recovers files from the resulting logical storage.
Whenever a physical disk is connected, a disk image is mounted, or a remote block device is added over SSH, RAID Recovery™ treats it as a complete block-level storage source and automatically reads all available RAID metadata.
The program analyzes metadata from all available sources together. The metadata may identify the RAID level, total number of member disks, original position of each disk, stripe size, start offsets, block order, parity layout, parity delay, disk groups, array size, missing members, and other controller- or manufacturer-specific parameters.
When sufficient information is available, RAID Recovery™ reconstructs the array automatically and displays it as a logical disk ready for file system analysis and data recovery. Missing member disks are added to the reconstructed configuration automatically.
RAID Recovery™ reconstructs standard, nested, and concatenated storage layouts, including JBOD, linear and concatenated arrays, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 1E, RAID 4, RAID 5, RAID 5E, RAID 5EE, RAID 6, RAID 10, RAID 01, RAID 50, and RAID 60.
The integrated RAID Constructor can reconstruct an array when its metadata is missing, damaged, incomplete, or insufficient for automatic detection. It provides automatic configuration search, manufacturer-based search, and full manual configuration.
Each possible configuration can be previewed before it is added as a virtual RAID for file system analysis and data recovery.
Automatic Configuration Search
The program tests possible RAID configurations for the selected member disks and examines the resulting virtual volumes for recognizable partitions, file systems, folders, and files. Valid results are presented as possible RAID configurations for further analysis.
Search by Manufacturer
Manufacturer-based search uses known layouts associated with RAID controllers, motherboard chipsets, operating systems, NAS devices, and storage platforms. Restricting the search to selected manufacturers reduces the number of possible combinations and helps identify the original RAID parameters faster.
Manual RAID Configuration
Manual configuration provides control over the RAID level, disk order, block order, stripe size, start offsets, parity layout, parity delay, disk groups, missing members, and other available parameters.
A live preview helps verify the resulting virtual disk by displaying recognizable partitions, file systems, folders, and files as the configuration changes.
RAID Recovery™ reads RAID metadata written by dedicated controller cards, external storage controllers, and OEM server RAID adapters. When sufficient metadata is available, supported arrays are identified and reconstructed automatically after their member disks, disk images, or remote block devices become available.
OEM Server RAID Controllers
- Dell PERC: H330, H730, H740P, H755, H965i and related PowerEdge RAID controllers.
- HP / HPE Smart Array: P410, P420, P440ar, P840, SR418i, MR416i and related Smart Array, SmartRAID, and MegaRAID controllers.
- IBM / Lenovo ServeRAID: M5015, M5210 and ThinkSystem RAID 530, 930 and 940 series.
- Fujitsu PRIMERGY RAID: D2516, D3116, PRAID EP400i, EP520i, EP680i and related PRIMERGY RAID controllers.
- Intel Server RAID: Intel Integrated RAID, RS25 and RS3 series.
- Supermicro AOC: AOC-USAS-S8iR and related Broadcom/LSI- and Marvell-based AOC RAID adapters.
- NEC: RAID controllers used in Express5800 servers.
- Oracle / Sun: Sun StorageTek and Oracle SG-SAS controller families.
Standalone RAID Controller Families
- Adaptec / Microchip: ASR series, SmartRAID 3100 and SmartRAID 3200 series.
- Broadcom / LSI MegaRAID: MegaRAID SAS 84016E, 9280-4i4e, and 9200, 9300, 9400, 9500 and 9600 series.
- Areca: ARC-12xx, ARC-1883, ARC-1886 and related controller families.
- 3ware / AMCC / LSI: 3ware 9650SE, 9750 and related SATA/SAS RAID controllers.
- Infortrend: EonStor and external RAID storage systems.
- Promise Technology: FastTrak and Pegasus storage families.
- HighPoint: RocketRAID and SSD7000 series.
- Dawicontrol: DC-6xx RAID series.
- LSI SAS / Fusion-MPT: SAS3081E-R and related SAS1068- and SAS1068E-based Integrated RAID controllers.
RAID Recovery™ reads RAID metadata created by motherboard-integrated, firmware-assisted, and host-based RAID implementations. The metadata format is determined primarily by the RAID chipset and storage technology rather than by the motherboard manufacturer.
Supported Technologies
- Intel: Matrix Storage Manager, RST, RSTe, and VROC.
- AMD: RAIDXpert and RAIDXpert2.
- NVIDIA: nForce RAID and MediaShield.
- Adaptec: HostRAID.
- LSI / Broadcom: Embedded MegaRAID and Software RAID.
- HighPoint: HPT and Host RAID.
- JMicron Host RAID: JMB363, JMB366 and related implementations.
- Marvell Host RAID: 88SE9128, 88SE9215, 88SE9230, HyperDuo and related implementations.
- VIA RAID: VT6420, VT6421, VT8237, VT8251 and related implementations.
- Promise FastTrak: PDC202xx, PDC203xx, PDC205xx, PDC407xx and related controllers.
- Silicon Image Medley RAID: SiI0680, SiI3112, SiI3114, SiI3124, SiI3132, SiI3512 and related controllers.
- ITE GigaRAID: IT8212F, IT8213F and related controllers.
- ULi / ALi: RAID implementations.
- SiS: RAID implementations.
- SNIA: DDF and DDF1 metadata.
These technologies are found on motherboards, workstations, and server platforms from ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, ASRock Rack, Supermicro, Tyan, Intel, Biostar, EVGA, ECS, DFI, ABIT, Foxconn, AOpen, EPoX, and many other manufacturers.
When valid metadata is available, the program automatically determines the array type, original disk order, stripe size, offsets, parity layout, and other RAID parameters. If the metadata is missing or damaged, the configuration can be reconstructed manually and verified using the live preview.
RAID Recovery™ identifies RAID metadata and layered storage structures used by commercial NAS devices, enterprise storage appliances, and open-source NAS operating systems.
The program can reconstruct multiple RAID groups, storage pools, nested storage layers, and several valid configurations found on the same set of physical disks, disk images, or remote block devices.
Commercial NAS Platforms
- Synology
- QNAP
- NETGEAR ReadyNAS
- Thecus
- Buffalo
- ASUSTOR
- TerraMaster
- UGREEN
- Western Digital
- Seagate
- LaCie
- Iomega / LenovoEMC
- D-Link
- Zyxel
- QSAN
- Promise
- Infortrend
- Fujitsu CELVIN
- Cisco NSS
- Intel Entry Storage System
- Shuttle OMNINAS
- TRENDnet
Open-Source NAS and Storage Platforms
- TrueNAS CORE
- TrueNAS SCALE
- OpenMediaVault
- Unraid
- Rockstor
Other Linux-, BSD-, ZFS-, and Btrfs-based storage systems can also be reconstructed when they use supported RAID, volume management, and file system structures.
Many NAS platforms combine standard RAID technologies with proprietary or manufacturer-specific storage layouts. RAID Recovery™ identifies these structures, reconstructs their underlying RAID groups, and combines the available storage layers into accessible logical volumes.
QNAP
- QTS RAID groups
- QuTS hero RAID groups
- Triple Mirror
- RAID-TP
- RAID 50
- RAID 60
- Multiple RAID groups within one storage pool
- Storage pools built from several RAID groups
Synology
- SHR-1
- SHR-2
- RAID F1
- RAID TP
- Multiple MD RAID groups
- LVM-based storage pools
- Multiple volumes within the same storage pool
NETGEAR ReadyNAS
- X-RAID
- X-RAID2
- Dual-redundancy X-RAID
- Flex-RAID configurations
- Expandable RAID volumes
TerraMaster
- TRAID
- TRAID+
- Storage pools built from disks of different capacities
Buffalo TeraStation
- Standard RAID groups
- RAID 50
- RAID 51
- RAID 60
- RAID 61
- Nested RAID configurations
Seagate and LaCie NAS OS
- SimplyRAID
- SimplyRAID Dual
- Standard NAS OS RAID groups
Several RAID groups or multiple metadata records found on the same set of disks can be reconstructed and displayed as separate logical storage devices.
RAID Recovery™ reconstructs software-defined storage created by Linux and Windows operating systems. It recognizes both individual RAID or volume-management layers and complex configurations in which several technologies are combined.
Supported structures can be analyzed from physical disks, disk images, virtual disks, or remote block devices connected over SSH.
Linux LVM
- Physical volumes
- Volume groups
- Linear logical volumes
- Striped logical volumes
- Mirrored logical volumes
- LVM RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 4, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10
- LVM Thin Provisioning
- Thin pools
- Thin logical volumes
- LVM snapshots
- LVM structures built on top of MD RAID
Windows Storage Spaces
- Simple spaces
- Two-way mirror
- Three-way mirror
- Single parity
- Dual parity
- Thinly provisioned spaces
- Fixed provisioned spaces
- Storage pools containing multiple physical disks
- Multiple virtual disks within one storage pool
Linux MD RAID
- Linear arrays
- RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 4, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10
- Nested MD RAID arrays
- MD RAID used below LVM
- Multiple MD RAID groups combined into one storage system
Windows Dynamic Disks
- Simple volumes
- Spanned volumes
- Striped volumes
- Mirrored volumes
- RAID-5 volumes
- Multi-disk dynamic volume groups
Windows Storage Spaces Direct
- Two-way mirror
- Three-way mirror
- Single parity
- Dual parity
- Mirror-accelerated parity
- Nested two-way mirror
- Nested mirror-accelerated parity
- Clustered storage pools
RAID Recovery™ recognizes multi-device storage layouts, pools, volumes, datasets, subvolumes, and snapshots created by ZFS and Btrfs.
The program reconstructs the underlying disk configuration and provides access to supported logical storage structures, including data preserved in snapshots.
ZFS Storage Layouts
- Single-disk pools
- ZFS striped pools
- Mirrors
- Three-way and wider mirrors
- Striped mirrors
- RAIDZ1, RAIDZ2, RAIDZ3
- Striped RAIDZ groups
- dRAID1, dRAID2, dRAID3
- dRAID with distributed spare capacity
- Pools containing multiple top-level vdevs
- Pools combining several supported vdev types
- Pools containing special, log, cache, and spare devices
ZFS Logical Structures
- Storage pools
- Vdevs
- Datasets
- Child datasets
- ZVOL block volumes
- Snapshots
- Clones
- Compression
- Native ZFS encryption
Btrfs Storage Profiles
- Single
- DUP
- RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10
- RAID 1C3, RAID 1C4
- Mixed-profile multi-device file systems
- Separate RAID profiles for data and metadata
Btrfs Logical Structures
- Multi-device file systems
- Subvolumes
- Nested subvolumes
- Read-only and writable snapshots
- Compression
- Separate data, metadata, and system allocation profiles
ZFS and Btrfs snapshots can be analyzed as accessible storage states, allowing existing and deleted files preserved in earlier versions to be recovered.
RAID Recovery™ reconstructs hybrid and layered storage configurations that do not follow conventional striped RAID layouts, including Unraid arrays and Apple multi-disk storage technologies.
Unraid Storage
- Arrays without parity
- Single-parity arrays
- Dual-parity arrays
- Independent data disks
- Cache pools
- Multi-device storage pools
- XFS-formatted array disks
- Btrfs pools
- ZFS pools
- Virtual disks used by Unraid virtual machines
Unraid stores complete file systems on individual data disks rather than striping files across all members. When the required data and parity disks are available, the program can reconstruct the missing member and provide access to the file systems stored on the array disks.
AppleRAID
- Striped sets
- Mirrored sets
- Concatenated sets
- Nested AppleRAID configurations
Apple CoreStorage
- CoreStorage physical volumes
- Logical volume groups
- Logical volume families
- Logical volumes
- CoreStorage Fusion Drive
APFS Multi-Disk Storage
- APFS Fusion Drive
- APFS containers spanning multiple physical stores
- Multiple APFS volumes within one container
- Encrypted APFS volumes
- APFS snapshots
RAID Recovery™ can create an exact sector-by-sector DSK image of an entire storage device, an individual partition, or a selected range of sectors. The image preserves the original block layout and can replace the source device during RAID reconstruction, file system analysis, decryption, and data recovery.
When working with failing disks (which contain bad sectors), there are high chances to lose all data altogether while trying to read information from the disk. For safety reasons, it’s better to create a disk copy, as recovering RAID data is a long process that involves multiple operations to access the disk contents.
The program also mounts existing DSK, RAW, IMG, ISO, DriveImage XML, and other one-to-one disk images regardless of their filename extension. Split and multipart image sets are supported.
Forensic Disk Images
- EnCase / EWF: E01, S01, and Ex01 images, including split, compressed, and encrypted variants
- AFF: AFF and AFM forensic images
- AFD: Directory-based AFF images
- AFF4: Physical AFF4 images and directory-based AFF4 containers
Forensic images are mounted as block-level storage sources while preserving their internal segmentation, compression, encryption, and container structure.
Apple Disk Images
- DMG — the standard macOS disk-image container, commonly used for software distribution, portable virtual volumes, backups, and encrypted storage.
- CDR, TOAST, and ISO — optical-disc and CD/DVD master images used to preserve or reproduce the complete contents of optical media. Apple DVD/CD master images commonly use the .cdr extension.
- ASIF — Apple Sparse Image Format, a modern read/write sparse image whose physical size grows according to the amount of stored data.
- Sparsebundle — a growable read/write image stored as multiple band files. It is commonly used by Time Machine for backups over a network.
- Sparseimage — a growable sparse disk image stored in a single file, commonly used for writable or encrypted virtual volumes on earlier macOS versions.
Standard, forensic, and Apple disk images can contain partitions, file systems, encrypted volumes, RAID members, or complete multi-layer storage configurations. After mounting, the structures found inside the image become available for reconstruction and data recovery.
RAID Recovery™ mounts virtual disks and snapshot chains created by desktop, server, and enterprise virtualization platforms. Virtual disks are treated as complete block-level storage sources and can be analyzed for partitions, file systems, encrypted volumes, RAID metadata, deleted files, and other recoverable data.
The program supports fixed-size, dynamically expanding, sparse, differencing, and split virtual disks, together with internal and external snapshot chains. Snapshot chains are resolved into complete virtual disk states, allowing both current and earlier storage versions to be analyzed.
Virtual disks can also contain RAID members or complete software-defined storage systems, including Windows Storage Spaces, Linux MD RAID, LVM, ZFS, Btrfs, and other supported technologies.
Tested Virtualization Platforms
- VMware Workstation, Fusion and ESXi
- Oracle VM VirtualBox
- Parallels Desktop
- Microsoft Hyper-V for Windows and Windows Server
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux with KVM/QEMU
- Proxmox VE
- XenServer
- TrueNAS SCALE virtual machines
- Unraid virtual machines
Supported Virtual Disk Formats
- VMware: VMDK, including flat, sparse, split, delta, and snapshot-related disks
- Hyper-V: VHD, VHDX, AVHD, and AVHDX
- VirtualBox: VDI, VMDK, VHD, and differencing images
- Parallels: HDD and HDS
- KVM/QEMU: QCOW, QCOW2, COW, QED, RAW, and IMG
- Proxmox VE: QCOW2, RAW, VMDK, and storage-backed virtual disks
- VMware ESXi: VMDK and VMFS-based virtual machine storage
- XenServer: virtual disks and snapshot-related storage
Virtual Disk Layouts and Snapshots
- Fixed-size virtual disks
- Dynamically expanding virtual disks
- Sparse virtual disks
- Differencing disks
- Split virtual disks
- Internal snapshots
- External snapshot chains
- Multi-level snapshot chains
- Snapshot descriptor and data files
Snapshot chains are assembled into complete virtual disk states before analysis, preserving the relationship between base disks, differencing disks, and subsequent snapshot levels.
RAID Recovery™ supports volume-level and file-level encryption used by Windows, Linux, and macOS storage systems. Encrypted storage can be analyzed on physical disks, reconstructed RAID arrays, disk images, virtual disks, and supported file system snapshots.
Encrypted Volumes
- BitLocker
- VeraCrypt
- LUKS
- Apple FileVault
- Encrypted APFS volumes
- Encrypted HFS+ volumes
Apple FileVault protection is supported for encrypted APFS and HFS+ storage. When the required password, recovery key, keyfile, or other authentication data is available, the program unlocks the volume and provides access to the file system and recoverable data stored inside it.
File-Level Encryption
- Windows Encrypting File System — EFS
- Linux fscrypt
Encrypted files can be recovered in their original encrypted form without providing decryption credentials. When the required certificate, private key, password, keyfile, or other authentication data is available, the program decrypts the files and saves them in accessible form.
This applies to existing and deleted encrypted files, files located on damaged file systems, and encrypted data preserved in supported snapshots.
After reconstructing the RAID array, storage pool, disk image, or virtual disk, RAID Recovery™ analyzes the resulting file system to locate existing and deleted files, recover damaged directory structures, and preserve supported file attributes.
Supported File Systems
RAID Recovery™ supports FAT, exFAT, NTFS, ReFS, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, XFS, Btrfs, ReiserFS, APFS, HFS+, ZFS, UFS, VMFS, and HikvisionFS.
Compressed and Sparse Files
RAID Recovery™ recovers compressed and sparse files from supported file systems. This includes existing and deleted files, files located on damaged volumes, and files preserved in supported snapshots.
Compressed files are saved in decompressed form. Sparse files are restored to their full logical size, with sparse regions filled with zeros.
Content-Aware Analysis
When file system metadata is missing, overwritten, or severely damaged, the program searches for files by their signatures and internal content.
Content-aware analysis supplements file system recovery and can locate recognizable files even when their original filenames, directory paths, timestamps, and other metadata are no longer available.
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Do I need to know the original RAID configuration before starting recovery?
No. When RAID metadata is available, Hetman RAID Recovery reads it from the member disks and determines parameters such as the RAID level, disk order, stripe size, offsets, block order, and parity layout automatically. If the metadata is missing or damaged, the program can search for possible configurations or let you define the array manually in RAID Constructor.
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Can I recover data directly from a NAS or server over SSH?
Yes. If the NAS or server is still operational and provides SSH access to its physical disks or other block devices, they can be added to the program as remote storage sources. The program analyzes them in the same way as locally connected disks, so the array can be reconstructed without removing the drives from the device.
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Can physical disks, disk images, virtual disks, and remote devices be used together?
Yes. Hetman RAID Recovery can combine locally connected physical disks, sector-by-sector disk images, supported virtual disks, and remote block devices available over SSH in the same RAID configuration. This is useful when some original disks are accessible directly while others have been replaced with images or remain installed in a remote server or NAS.
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What should I do if the program finds several possible RAID configurations?
Preview each suggested configuration before starting a full scan. The correct configuration should display the expected partitions, file systems, folder structure, filenames, and file contents without obvious corruption. If necessary, compare several variants and select the one that reproduces the original storage structure most accurately.
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Can encrypted storage be recovered after the RAID is reconstructed?
Yes. After reconstructing the RAID array or storage pool, the program can analyze supported encrypted volumes and file systems, including BitLocker, VeraCrypt, LUKS, FileVault, encrypted APFS and HFS+ volumes, EFS, and fscrypt. Access to encrypted data requires the appropriate password, recovery key, key file, certificate, or other authentication data used to unlock it.