Recover lost data and files from a RAID on an Xserve

Data recovery from a RAID typically requires a lab worker but Disk Drill can scan and discover what data is recoverable on each individual hard drive in the RAID.
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Recover lost data and files from a RAID on an Xserve
If you have lost data or files from a RAID on an Xserve Apple Server, data recovery can be complicated and difficult. Apple Xserve usually runs RAID 5, still supporting RAID levels 0, 1, 3, and 0+1. Usually, if it's just one disk failing in a standard RAID 5 setup, the server may still continue to operate. Data recovery becomes essential when it's a second drive that fails. Additionally, data may be lost due to incomplete firmware upgrades, RAID controller failures, etc. If you have a drive from Apple Xserve and your files and folders, or even partitions, need to be recovered from it after a failure of any kind. Feel free to try our amazing do-it-yourself data recovery solution, Disk Drill. Read on to find out how exactly it can be done.

Complete Disk Drill Installation

As we are going to recover lost data from the external drive that used to be part of Xserve RAID array, you can save the downloaded Disk Drill application to your Mac's main system volume. Follow this link to download Disk Drill, double-click the disk image and then drag the Disk Drill icon to the Applications folder on your Mac.
  • 1Download Disk Drill
  • 2Drag to Application Folder
  • 3Launch Disk Drill

Launch the App

After downloading and installing, open Disk Drill and select the enhancements you require. Once you have downloaded Disk Drill to your Mac, launch the app to get started. You may be asked what additional options you wish to install. Uncheck all the boxes, as you should not install anything additional data recovery enhancements at this time.

Get Ready to Scan Your RAID Drive

Once Disk Drill is open, you will see a list of drives (both internal and external). Click on the volume that used to be in your RAID to scan it. Remember, Disk Drill will look at each drive individually from the RAID. If you are looking to recover a lost partition, be sure to select the whole volume, not just an individual partition.

Scan the Volume

Next to the volume you wish to scan, click the “Recover” button. Disk Drill will do a complete scan of the Xserve RAID volume, proceeding with each relevant scanning algorithm one by one.
Learn more about the best Mac data recovery software
If you have a partition that has become lost or corrupted, it will use the “Universal Partition Search” function to find and attempt to repair it. If the partition headers have not been overwritten by other data and the disk does not have any physical damage in those sectors, the chances of locating the lost partitions and parts of RAID data are high. Scan the Volume

Recover Your Data from Xserve RAID

If Disk Drill finds any recoverable data on your RAID drive, you will see it listed in the scanning results, and you just need to choose a destination drive to recover your Xserve data to. To complete recovery, please follow the instructions to upgrade to Disk Drill PRO. Verify that found data is recoverable by previewing the items that represent your lost files and folders. Recover Your Data from Xserve RAID

Have You Considered Our Data Protection Features?

If you’re worried you might have to go through Xserve data recovery on your Apple MacBook in the future, check out Disk Drill’s data protection features: Guaranteed Recovery and Recovery Vault. With these options turned on, restoring data from Xserve RAID will be a breeze.
Data Protection Features

Recover Your Lost Xserve files

If you’re looking for files, not partitions, you can review the sorted and grouped list of files found on the scanned RAID drive. In case they don't have their correct filenames, you may need to preview each one by clicking the preview (eye) icon.
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You can narrow your search by sorting the files by size, date and file type. Once you have found your lost data, you can proceed with upgrading to Disk Drill PRO and recovering your files. Recover Your Lost Xserve files

Deep Scan And Supported File Formats

When Deep Scan analyzes a drive for lost data, the actual file system the drive is formatted into is not important. In fact, the disk may have no file system or it may be completely lost.
Deep Scan reads the disk differently and tries to locate any scavengable data, no matter if it previously resided on FAT, NTFS, or other system.
Once a known data pattern is recognized, the files get reconstructed. Here are just a few samples of formats Deep Scan works with: .jpg, .doc, .psd, .pdf or .xls, etc.
Check out the full list of formats

Disk Drill is ready to start the recovery

Disk Drill 3
Your Emergency Xserve Data Doctor for Mac OS X
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  • Graham Jones, Sophos
    Disk Drill is the only true Mac-style software for data recovery and data protection. And it’s exactly what I was looking for
  • thegraphicmac.com
    I tried to recover the DMG file for Firefox, which I intentionally deleted for the purpose of testing, using the Recovery Vault. Clicking the Recover button quickly placed the file on my desktop, and opening and installing Firefox worked perfectly. James Dempsey