The Mechanism
Physical or mechanical failure is the most common cause of RAID 0 data loss. Because consumer and enterprise drives rely on moving mechanical parts (HDDs) or sensitive flash memory controllers (SSDs), physical degradation is inevitable over time. Common issues include:
- HDD Head Crashes: The read/write head comes into direct contact with the spinning magnetic platter, physically scratching the data layers.
- SSD Flash Degradation: NAND flash blocks wear out, or the drive controller suffers an electrical short, rendering the solid-state drive dead.
- Spindle Motor Seizure: The motor spinning the hard drive platters fails, preventing data from being read.
The Impact on RAID 0
If you have a 3-drive RAID 0 array and Drive 2 suffers a mechanical head crash, 100% of your data becomes instantly inaccessible. Because alternating blocks of files (e.g., Block 1 on Drive 1, Block 2 on Drive 2, Block 3 on Drive 3) are completely missing, the remaining operational drives hold nothing but fragmented, unreadable raw data.
