The small box in the corner had everything (the family archives, all of the company's documentation, the lot) until one day a drive would drop out, a rebuild would fail to make progress past 40%, or the entire enclosure would just stop working overnight. Whether it's Synology or QNAP devices, a WD My Cloud, a Buffalo or a Netgear, failed data volumes from throughout South Wales are rebuilt on this workbench.
We will provide you with a free diagnostic for every NAS job. We will give you one fixed price quote in writing prior to commencing any work.
In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. This is true of all our services except for failure of electrical/mechanical components, chip level repairs, DVRs and forensic analysis. Our full price list can be seen at the cost of data recovery page.
When we start working on a NAS job we always try to match the problems you have experienced to the problem(s) which are causing it. These fifteen problems cover nearly all of the issues that come into our workshop.
One drive down is survivable by design, but this is the point at which the whole array is then just one failure away from becoming completely useless.
A second failure occurs during the rebuild; a rebuild puts additional strain on an already tired survivor and can kill it, resulting in the complete collapse of the NAS storage system. This is the classic full scale NAS disaster we see on our bench.
The array logic has failed but the data remains intact and the dashboard is showing red error messages, so it's time to begin reconstructing the volume(s).
The configuration is wiped as part of the setup assistant process. The process can also sometimes make a start on wiping the data.
When the firmware fails in the middle of a flash operation, it leaves behind a healthy array stuck inside a box that will not function due to the failed state of its firmware.
Parity for each block was interrupted when the write operation was terminated by the power cut. As such the members are no longer in sync. The volume then cannot mount as it does not have sufficient information to do so.
A PSU or controller board failure occurs while all the drives' contents remain unaltered. In this case, a virtual rebuild is performed using the members of the array.
Any removed data and snapshots that still exist on the disks can be carved back, as long as the storage they used has not been taken over by new data.
Internet accessible devices can get "locked down" via encryption just like your personal PC, but the snapshot data taken beforehand underneath often survives the attack.
If drives have been pulled and swapped around without labelling them, the right order can still be found, provided you stop making random guesses now.
When a Synology box has been shut off abruptly, the highly flexible configuration may become damaged; these are recovered on a layer-by-layer basis working from the drive images.
The DS220+ and DS923+ are the most common types of Synology bay seen both in local homes and in office environments, and their pools can be rebuilt once the individual drives have been imaged.
Flex volumes on QNAP devices may drop when a member disk fails during an active write; this issue can be resolved by remounting the volume virtually after the disks have been imaged.
WD single bay NAS units can brick after an update, even though there's a perfectly good Linux formatted hard drive installed, which is read natively at the bench.
Buffalo's rackmount and desktop NAS units can lose their RAID configuration information and that means we have to work the RAID structure out again based upon what is written to each of the individual disks in the unit.
NAS (Network Attached Storage) will stripe your data across multiple drives via either RAID or the vendor's variation of RAID (Synology's SHR; Drobo's BeyondRAID), but only to a point in terms of the maths: you can survive losing one hard drive as long as all other hard drives are operational and healthy enough for the rebuild that occurs after losing the first hard drive, and that rebuild is precisely when a second, tired drive lets go. Once we have imaged every member of your NAS set in full (never touching your originals) we then determine the order, block size and offset values from those images and remount your volume virtually prior to copying out even one file.
Just shut the unit off and don't touch that rebuild button again: those "wizards" are making re-initialisation look useful when in fact it is one of the most destructive clicks on the planet. Take the drives out, clearly label each disk by bay number (1, 2, 3 etc.) and then after getting your quote, post the labelled disks to us while keeping the enclosure at home. If the disks will not come out, we ask that you send us the entire NAS. For single drive units such as a My Cloud, simply take apart the outer casing and send us only the bare drive; if you cannot get into the box without using force, please call 0800 689 0668 prior to attempting to break into it.
NAS work is RAID recovery with a vendor dialect on top, and the bench can speak in both languages:
Each of your disk drives is imaged at the same time using dedicated equipment before we begin analysing them, so when it comes to rebuilding, no original drive ever gets reused.
It runs against the images to break down the geometry (order of members, block size, rotation, offsets), then virtually mounts the entire array.
The failed members of a disk group will have to undergo the full hard drive treatment first (heads, firmware, electronics), as they will then be able to be imaged alongside the other working members.
After checking parity and entropy to confirm the solved geometry, it can then extract a file system from the entire reconstructed volume.
SHR, BeyondRAID, flex volumes on QNAP, LVM/mdadm, btrfs and ext4: every vendor's proprietary layers translated back into normal files.
One-bay drive units in the My Cloud mould are opened uneventfully and their Linux-formatted disks are mounted directly.
The units South Wales actually purchases are DS220+ and DS923+ DiskStations and QNAP's TS-253D. Therefore these are the failed pools that we do most of our rebuilds for, and with Drobo gone every single one of their BeyondRAID units now turns into an orphan which only a lab can still read. Irrespective of what badge it may have: turn off power to the unit, write the bay order on the drives, then once you get a quote, send just the drives, not the box, unless the drives will not pull out.
DSM's famous flexibility (ability to work with different configurations) is made up of multiple layers (SHR can combine drives of mismatched sizes into one storage pool; under that are the layers of mdadm and LVM; then comes either btrfs or ext4 on top), so if a DS220+ or DS923+ says the entire storage pool has crashed, then generic data recovery programs see only the damage done to the entire layered architecture. The approach we take to recover each of those systems is to use complete image copies of each of the disks in the array to build up the system from the bottom: determine the SHR layout; remount the file system virtually; and then copy the shared folders off cleanly. All DiskStations and RackStations (two-bay home models through five-bay units) follow this same process regardless of what size mix of disks they used.
X-RAID quietly rearranges a ReadyNAS volume with each upgrade of its capacity by adding an additional "expansion" zone on top of all previously added expansion zones. Therefore, generic software will see complete chaos when trying to understand how these zones were created. We rebuild the zones in the original creation order and then bring up the volume just as the box itself would have. Down at the bottom of the price range, smaller D-Link and Netgear devices create a much simpler trap for users. The drives used in the smaller D-Link and Netgear devices are formatted using a Linux format (ext4 or XFS) which Windows ignores. When a user connects one of these perfectly healthy disk drives to a Windows system, Windows has no idea what type of format was used. Therefore, the disk appears blank and Windows will offer to format it. Do not let Windows format the disk. Every share is still intact and this bench can mount those file systems natively.
Shut the NAS down properly, get a quote, then remove all of the drives and write the number of the bay onto each one (bay 1, bay 2, bay 3...) prior to boxing them up, as the array order is everything at rebuild time. The drives will be moving; the enclosure stays at home, unless the drives can't come out (a sealed single bay enclosure, say), in which case send the whole NAS.
First get a quote over the telephone or use our free on-line diagnostic. The majority of customers then have their media sent to us via post, this is tracked and insured.
Do you want to send a drive from your computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please do not send the complete unit of computer or device with a hard disk drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD) inside. Please remove it and only send the drive itself. For a server, please remove all disks and label them by their bay. We will also not perform removal of internal drives from devices in order to access data. Also, we will not extract data from devices where storage is soldered onto the motherboard (such as T2 and Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops). Additionally, we do not recover data from phones and tablets, only drives that can be removed and sent to us. If you're not sure which kind you have, ring us first.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Clearly mark the parcel with the name Bristol Data Recovery, and when your media has been diagnosed we will call you immediately.
If unsure about what to post, please call us first on 0800 689 0668 (the free phone number), or complete a free online diagnostic.
Diagnostic provided at no charge. Fixed quote. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Start now or call the freephone.