Both halves of the mirror had bad sectors, in different places — so each disk could cover the other’s gaps.
A small business trusted its server to a two-disk RAID 1, taking the mirror to be its backup. The flaw in that thinking showed itself slowly: both drives had been accumulating bad sectors across the same span of time, so when one finally fell out of the array, the one left standing had unreadable patches of its own. With neither drive readable from end to end, the mirror failed and there was no intact copy left anywhere — the very duplication meant to save it had decayed on both sides together.
Taking each drive on its own, we found the same story on both — bad sectors — but with one saving grace: the bad patches didn’t line up. Since a mirror keeps two identical copies, that mismatch is precisely what rescues the job: whatever one drive can’t read, the other usually can, so a full copy can be stitched together from the pair.
Both drives were read on DeepSpar imagers, each giving up all it could while we logged exactly where it stumbled, the PC3000 handling firmware where needed. We then combined the two reads into one, taking each unreadable sector from whichever drive still held it, and out of that came a single complete image of the volume — the gaps in one filled almost everywhere by the other.
From that combined image we rebuilt the file system, made sure the business’s data opened correctly, and returned it on fresh media.
Two failing drives yielded one clean, whole copy, and the business had everything back inside five working days. The overlooked lesson: a mirror saves you when one drive dies out of the blue, but two drives of the same age failing in step give it far less to work with than you’d think — so a RAID still wants a separate backup, and drives still deserve watching for the first hints of wear.
DeepSpar DDI · PC3000 — both drives read and their good sectors combined into one whole image. The originals are only ever read, never written to.
Send us your device for a free diagnostic, and tell us a little about what happened — an engineer will review it and confirm your exact quote in writing before any work begins.
Getting your data back begins with getting the device to us. Pack it up safely, pop your contact details inside, and send it over — once we’ve run the free diagnostic, we’ll confirm your exact price in writing before any work starts.
Posting it? A tracked, insured service is what we’d recommend. Rather drop it in? You’re welcome Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm — just package the device up as above first.
Want a bit more detail first? Fill in the form with more about your issue and an engineer will review it and send you a custom quote.
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Often, yes. Because a mirror holds the same data twice, a sector unreadable on one disk is usually readable on the other; we image both and merge their good sectors into one complete copy. It’s a strong position even when neither disk reads cleanly alone.
From £500 plus VAT, most jobs no fix, no fee, with a fixed quote up front.
Stop using the array and don’t rebuild it — further use can cost you sectors that are still readable. Power it down, label the disks, and send them in so both can be imaged and combined.
Start with an instant online quote, or call and talk it through with us first. You'll have a clear, fixed price before any work begins.