Wipe RAID Data Solution for Windows and Mac

Quick Navigation:

• What's RAID?
• Why Do You Need to Wipe RAID Data?
• Destruct RAID Configuration with RAID Management Tool.
• Secure RAID Data Wipe Solution
• Conclusion
• FAQs About Wiping RAID Data

RAID is widely used for servers in business environments. Also, some home users also choose to use RAID to hold their data due to some reasons. Here we want to share some information about RAID, and offer an easy and secure way to permanently wipe RAID data to avoid data leakage.

What's RAID?

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical disk drive components into a single logical unit for the purposes of data redundancy, performance improvement, and increase fault tolerance. RAID is most used in server environments.

RAID comes in different levels, each serving a specific purpose depending on organizational computing and storage needs:

🛡️RAID 0: Utilizes disk striping to provide high data throughput.

🛡️RAID 1: Implements disk mirroring to ensure complete data redundancy.

🛡️RAID 5: Combines disk striping with parity data, offering both high data throughput and data redundancy.

🛡️RAID 6: Enhances RAID 5 by adding an additional parity block, providing protection against double disk failures.

🛡️RAID 10: A combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0, offering higher data throughput along with complete data redundancy.

The RAID controller, also known as a RAID card or RAID adapter, is an integrated circuit (IC) that manages the configuration and operations of RAID storage. In advanced storage management environments, an external RAID controller is typically preferred for managing RAID arrays. This approach is favored over built-in RAID controllers because it allows for RAID configurations that align with organizational storage preferences.

Why Do You Need to Wipe RAID Data?

There are many reasons why a company or a home user wants to permanently wipe RAID data. Here are some of them:

• Destroy RAID data before donate, discard the RAID hard drives.
• Erase RAID Hard Drives for decommissioning.
• Erase no longer needed data on the RAID hard drives.
• Wipe data before replacing old RAID hard drives.
• Don't want to share some files with other people.
• Permanently erase virus infected files or stubborn files.

If you only delete the files that you want to destroy or just format the RAID hard drive, it is not safe. Other people can easily recover the deleted or formatted files from your RAID hard drive with the help of Data Recovery Software. So, when other people can access to your RAID hard drive, they can steal your business data with ease. In this technology times, ID theft, cyber-crime become far more common. If you don't become one of the victims, you should have the solution to permanently erase the data on the RAID hard drive.

Destruct RAID Configuration with RAID Management Tool

The first thing you may think of is to break the RAID configuration directly. It can make the RAID configuration damaged and you cannot access the data on the RAID any more. Here we will show you how to do the job. If you don't have sensitive data on the RAID, this method will be suitable.

This method is very easy and you can do it in any RAID management tool. Here we use the built-in PERC RAID controllers of Dell server as an example. This guide details how you will get it to work to delete the RAID array.

Step 1: Break the RAID array.

Open the PERC configuration Utility, select the Controller, and select the option to break the array. It warn that the virtual disks on the RAID configuration will be deleted, you can click the OK button to confirm it.

Step 2: Configure all the RAID drives independently as RAID0.

To prevent the drives be rebuilt and regain the files, you also need to configure the RAID drives with new RAID configurations, then it's not able to rebuild the RAID back to the old configures. You can just configure each disk as RAID0.

After deleting the old RAID array and reconfigure the drives with new RAID configurations, it can prevent access to the old RAID partitions and files.

However, it's not safe for your data in such a case. Before the RAID was completely overwritten, there is a great chance to recover the files from the old and damaged RAID configured drives with professional data recovery software.

If you there was confidential data on the RAID and you don't want the data to be recovered or extracted by others, you must erase the data from the RAID drives permanently. Normally, it's better to erase the data from RAID with securely data wiping software. Professional data wiping software will write random data to overwrite the space of the RAID drives, make your private or business data unrecoverable by any means.

Secure RAID Data Wipe Solution

DoYourData Super Eraser is a powerful data erasing software tool. It offers secure and complete data erasing solution for wiping data on RAID hard drives. It will wipe the data and use trash data overwrite the disk space of the erased data. So, data recovery becomes impossible, nobody can recover your data. It offers three modes for wiping RAID data for different purposes.

You can use the software to wipe files from RAID flexible in different cases:

Mode 1: Selectively Wipe Files/Folders on RAID

In most cases, you don’t have to destroy all data on the hard drives of RAID. This mode is a good choice! It just destroys the selected files or folders. It is so flexible.

Mode 2: Wipe Hard Drive Partition

This mode will wipe all the data including all the existing files and lost files on the RAID hard drives. It means all your data will be wiped away. It is safe to choose this mode when you are going to resell or give away your RAID hard disk.

Mode 3: Wipe Free Disk Space

In some cases, you want to wipe the deleted/lost data on your RAID hard drive to make data recovery impossible. This mode will keep your existing data safe and only wipe the deleted/lost data on your RAID hard drive.

You can keep your mind in peace. DoYourData Super Eraser will help you wipe all sensitive data on your RAID hard drive. After wiping, the data can never be recovered by data recovery software or manual data recovery service. You should think carefully before you use it to wipe your RAID data. When the erasure process gets finished, the selected data will be lost forever. It also can wipe data on PC/Mac, digital camera, USB drive, external hard disk, etc.

Conclusion

Even after deleting the RAID configurations, format the drives and reconfigure the new RAID with the drives, there is still a great chance to recover the old data from the RAID drives with professional data recovery methods. To ensure the sensitive or confidential data on RAID can be erased permanently, it's essential to wipe the data from the RAID drives using the effective data erasure software, like DoYourData Super Eraser. In this way, the data can be permanently erase and don't worry the data will be recovered in any way.

FAQs About Wiping RAID Data

1. Will the format operation remove the data on RAID permanently?

No. The formatting will only overwrite the old partition with new file system. However, the data on the RAID drives is not removed permanently. The data is still recovery for any professional data recovery software or service.

2. Is the data still recoverable after reconfigure the RAID?

Yes. Even after reconfigure the RAID, it's still able to reconstruct the old RAID configurations with professional data recovery methods, and then get back the lost files from the old RAID.

3. How to recover lost data from RAID?

If data loss happens on RAID, first stop making changes to the RAID to ensure greatest chance of the data recovery. Then download and use the software Do Your Data Recovery to retrieve the lost data. Here's how:

• Launch the software and select the RAID in the list.
• Click the Scan button to search for the lost files from the RAID.
• Once the scan is finished, choose the needed files and recover to another drive.

4. Any way to permanently erase RAID data?

To permanently erase RAID data and prevent data recovery, a reliable data erasure software is needed. DoYourData Super Eraser is such a tool which can erase data securely from RAID and other storage devices. You can follow the guide to wipe RAID data.

• Run the software and change to Wipe Hard Drive mode.
• Choose the RAID from the list and click Wipe Now.
• Select a data erasure standard and click Continue to start wiping.