One failed disk and a resync gone wrong left the volume unable to mount. We rebuilt it from drive images, well away from the box itself.
A design studio’s Netgear ReadyNAS had lost a disk and then, during the resync, sank into a degraded state it never recovered from — the volume simply wouldn’t come up. Everything the team shared was held on it.
We left the live array well alone and looked at each drive on its own. One member had died; the other three were fine in themselves but jointly carried an array the failure had dragged into a degraded, won’t-mount condition. The rule with any multi-drive box never changes — image everything first, rebuild somewhere else — because touching the original hardware is exactly how a recoverable mess turns into a lost one.
Each drive came out and was cloned on its own, the dead one on a DeepSpar to coax out whatever a dying disk still holds, with the PC3000 ready for firmware snags. From those clones alone we rebuilt Netgear’s X-RAID arrangement in software — putting its configuration back, re-laying the array — then brought up the btrfs file system to draw the data out. Not a byte was written to the drives, so the rebuild added no risk to the data at all.
Once the volume was back, we made sure the studio’s projects, client assets and archives every one opened properly, then shipped the lot back on fresh media.
The studio’s entire shared store — live projects, client assets, archives — was back after seven working days, its original drives never once written to. The thing we say about every NAS holds here: redundancy sees you through one dead disk, but it isn’t a backup, because a whole array can fail in any number of ways at once.
DeepSpar DDI · PC3000 — each drive cloned, then the X-RAID and btrfs layers reassembled from the clones, off the box. The drives are read only, never written to.
Get the device to us for a free diagnostic and a quick note on what went wrong — an engineer looks it over and puts your exact quote in writing before anything is started.
The route to your data starts with the device reaching us. Box it up securely, tuck your contact details inside, and send it across — after the free diagnostic, we put your exact price in writing before a single step is taken.
Sending it by post? Go with a tracked, insured service. Prefer to bring it round? Our door is open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm — just pack the device as described above beforehand.
Prefer to get a sense of things first? Complete the form with a bit more about the fault and an engineer will look it over and send back a tailored quote.
We’ll get back to you soon. Anything pressing, call 01483 901310.
Yes — ReadyNAS, Synology, QNAP, whatever the make. Every disk is imaged read-only and the X-RAID, SHR or btrfs volume rebuilt off the unit, never on the originals, so nothing is put at further risk.
It starts at £500 plus VAT; most jobs are no fix, no fee, with a fixed written quote up front.
No — a resync or rebuild on a degraded array is precisely when most data goes. Switch the unit off, remove the disks marked in their order, and send them across.
Kick off with an instant online quote, or ring us and talk it through first. Either way you’ll know a clear, fixed price before any work starts.