Defining a RAID manually

ZAR has been discontinued

After about twenty years, I felt ZAR can no longer be updated to match the modern requirements, and I decided to retire it.

ZAR is replaced by Klennet Recovery, my new general-purpose DIY data recovery software.

If you are looking specifically for recovery of image files (like JPEG, CR2, and NEF), take a look at Klennet Carver, a separate video and photo recovery software.

In case the parameter set is known, it is reasonable to setup the array manually, rather than have a program to perform an automated processing.

Member disks, adding and ordering

First of all, you need to set up array members. This is simply done by adding disks one by one with an appropriate button. The ordering of drives is significant, so make sure you have it matching the actual order of the disks in the array.

In case one disk is missing from a RAID5, click "Add parity" and the corresponding regenerated drive will be added automatically.

Array members, offsets and sizes

Once the member disks are identified, the location of the data on these disks should be defined. For each member disk, enter two values:

Start identifies the LBA on a storage device at which the array data starts.
Size is the number of sectors in the array component.

A hardware RAID typically uses the same values across all the member disks.

Array configuration

Parameters in this section control the array address translation. You need to specify the Array Type (be careful not to confuse Checkerboard and LDM variations of a RAID5) first.

For a striped array (RAID0 or RAID5), enter the Block Size.

RAID5 arrays require parity start and rotation defined.

For a RAID5 with delayed parity you need to specify parity delay in stripes and the number of stripes in the first block.

Once you are done with the configuration, click OK. The array you have just specified will be added to the list of the available devices under the "Reconstructed RAID" section and ZAR will switch to the "Data Recovery" mode.