If you’re using a RAID 0 array and you experience hard drive failure, your RAID array fails to boot up, or you see the “blue screen of death” when you start up windows, you could be facing the loss of mission critical data.

A RAID 0 array has no redundancy and actually opens users up to three different points of failure: the first drive, the second drive, or the drivers/RAID controller. Unlike RAID 1 and other levels, a RAID 0 array stripes data across two (or more) hard drives, providing faster performance and the ability to hold more data. But it doesn’t provide an automatic back-up of your data.

If one hard drive in a higher level RAID array fails, you may be able to perform a hot swap with a new disk drive to access your mission critical data. Remember, when one drive in a RAID array fails, the others may not be far behind, so it makes sense to ensure all your data back-ups are functioning properly and to replace all the drives in your RAID array. 

If your RAID 0 array fails, your best course of action is to turn off your computer, pull both drives, and call a data recovery service to provide a free price quote and recover your lost data. With data recovered within 48 hours in most cases, you can minimize down-time with fast action. 24 Hour Data has offices in New York, NY, and Dallas, Texas, for added convenience and faster delivery across the country. 

If you want to combine the speed and efficiency of RAID 0 with the redundancy of higher RAID levels, consider RAID 10.