What began as a straightforward disk swap became a total array failure, with a filing deadline only days away — recovered without writing to the disks even once.
A Guildford accountancy firm saw a routine repair devour its main server. Four disks ran in RAID 5 — an arrangement that shrugs off one lost disk, because parity spread across the set lets a missing member be rebuilt. One disk duly failed; in went a replacement; the rebuild started — and then, short of finishing, a second disk gave way. With two gone the array dropped offline, carrying off the firm’s SQL databases and accounts, and a filing deadline was only days away.
We see this often and dread it for the client, because a failed rebuild is the very point at which most data vanishes for good: run it again and you write straight over the disks you still need whole. Inspecting the drives individually, one was genuinely on its way out with a run of unstable sectors, while the others read fine but held an array knocked out of step by the halted rebuild. From here one rule overrides all others — not a single further rebuild on the original disks.
Each drive came out and was copied on its own behind a write-blocker, the failing one on a DeepSpar to rescue as many good sectors as possible without tipping it over the edge, the PC3000 handling anything needing firmware work. Nothing was reconstructed until the full set of copies sat safely in hand, and even then only in software, nowhere near the hardware. The copies told us the array’s geometry — the block size, the order of the drives, the way parity wound across them — and from that we assembled a virtual array; the parity balanced and the file system sprang back to life.
From the rebuilt array we confirmed the SQL databases and accounts files were intact and opened as they should, then returned them on fresh media.
Everything came back whole, and with time in hand before the deadline — five working days from first to last, never a single write to the original disks. What we hammer home to every RAID user: the moment an array fails, stop, and let no one run a rebuild until the disks are imaged — because that rebuild is what, more than anything, turns a savable case into a lost one.
DeepSpar DDI · PC3000 — each member imaged behind a write-blocker, the array then rebuilt virtually from the copies. The original disks 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, and it’s among the most frequent jobs we handle. Every disk is imaged read-only — the rebuild never re-run on the originals — the array’s geometry worked out, and the whole thing reconstructed virtually from the copies. A failed rebuild is recoverable, so long as nothing further is written to the disks.
It starts at £500 plus VAT; most jobs are no fix, no fee, with a fixed quote up front — and a round-the-clock emergency service is on hand for servers that are down.
No — running the rebuild again is the commonest cause of permanent loss there is, because it overwrites the data you still need. Stop, take the disks out marked with their bay order, and send them over.
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.