Can all levels of RAID recover data if a drive fails?

I have a flatbed server with four hard drives set up in a RAID configuration. One of the drives is freezing and has become unresponsive.
I was told that if one drive fails, the whole array could stop working.
Is there any way to clone the bad drive and get the system to boot, or will it keep giving me issues no matter what I do?

Tagged: RAID

Raid data recovery

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Jace Elric

Participant

June 2, 2025 at 5:15 am

Not all RAID levels can survive a drive failure. RAID 0 offers no protection—if one drive fails, all data is lost. RAID 1, 5, 6, and 10 provide varying levels of fault tolerance, but even in these setups, a failing or unresponsive drive can cause the system to slow down, freeze, or fail to boot.

If one of your drives is freezing, it’s best not to reboot the system. The drive might fail completely on the next power cycle. Instead, try to clone the failing drive to a new one using tools like ddrescue, HDClone, or Clonezilla. Once cloned, replace the original drive in the array and check if the system will boot or rebuild.

If the system comes back online, back up everything immediately. If it doesn’t, don’t attempt a rebuild unless you’re sure of the RAID settings. Using recovery tools like R-Studio or UFS Explorer may help, or you can send the drives to a professional data recovery service.

Taking the right steps early improves your chances of recovering the data without permanent loss.

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