Software for Bitstream Cloning of Raid 5 Array

[bunty]

Hi all friends.

Often I get requirement to make sector by sector clone of Raid 5 array ( hardware raid Entire disk volumes)
( for deleted recovery or encrypted recovery etc)
Raid volumes are intact in such cases , asking customer to ship entire server is not practical ,nor removing all drives / imaging individually and again rebuilding raid is not practical.
Only solution is to make clone of raid through USB external disk or on SATA disk.
How you guys manage this task ? Is there any self booting software built purposefully which will identify raid configuration and make clone of entire disk on target media?
Thank you

[lcoughey]

If it is a hardware RAID, you could get the client to reboot the server with a Live Linux USB and use ddrescue or hddsuperclone to clone the RAID to a drive. However, most modern RAID setups tend to be with large drives, making it difficult to have a single drive on which you can make the clone.

[bunty]

Hi lcoughey
Thanks. But then what is the solution for this issue? We cant directly work on server hard disk and anyhow it must be cloned.
At least smaller raid 5 servers can be cloned ( nowadays more than 2 TB USB hard disks are available , it will be slow process although)
I am looking for a purpose build and updated software which will identify Raid controller ,configuration automatically and give indications of volume size ,cloning progress , cloning log etc.

[lcoughey]

When it comes down to it, if the value of the data is less the cost of shutting the server down and getting proper drive clones, is it really worth your time?

[bunty]

Shutting down server & cloning individual hard disk and again rebuilding raid is not so simple and efficient method . I am sure not everyone is doing this odd procedure for deleted recovery (its definitely worth in case of crashed raid recovery)