Crashed volume, a box that refuses to start, a rebuild gone sideways, shares deleted by accident — whatever hit your Synology, QNAP, WD or NETGEAR, and at any RAID level or on SHR, Btrfs or ext4, we bring the data home. Everything on a NAS lives on a Linux RAID array, so the work is imaging each disk and rebuilding that array off copies — the enclosure itself never needs to run.
$ bdr diagnose /dev/nas → NAS: Synology DS920+ · 4 × 4 TB · SHR → Status: VOLUME CRASHED — disk dropped, Btrfs damaged → Client: confidential · Guildford GU2 8XH $ bdr engineer-working → Member disks: all 4 imaged read-only → SHR + LVM: reassembled off the box → Btrfs: repaired · volume mounted $ bdr verify → ✓ shares — 11.2 TB → ✓ photos + backups — restored → ✓ NAS recovered — data back
Seeing a crashed or degraded volume, a dropped disk, or a NAS that won’t boot? Leave it exactly as it is — no repair, no rebuild, no re-sync. Any of those writes fresh data across the disks and can bury what we’re there to reach, and dropping a NAS disk into a Windows PC only triggers a format prompt. Switch the unit off, note the bay each disk sat in, and phone us. Nothing protects the data like leaving that first attempt to us.
The NAS jobs that land on our bench most run from crashed volumes and boxes that won’t start to corrupt file systems, failed rebuilds, dead hardware, and shares wiped by accident or locked by ransomware.
Whatever the badge on the front — Buffalo, NETGEAR, WD, QNAP, Synology, the lot — and whatever the RAID level, SHR, ext4 or Btrfs beneath it, the target is the same: the array spread across the disks, never the enclosure that housed them.
Drobo, TerraMaster and Asustor units; Buffalo TeraStation; NETGEAR ReadyNAS; WD My Cloud; QNAP running QTS; and Synology with DSM, SHR and Btrfs · SHR alongside RAID 10, 6, 5, 1 and 0 · Btrfs and ext4 · two- and four-bay boxes through eight-bay and rack units, expansion shelves too.
Send the NAS in, or drop it off, for a no-charge diagnostic — note its make, bay count and RAID type — and an engineer scopes it, putting the exact figure in writing ahead of any work.
Give us the basics — make, how many bays, the RAID type, what happened — and an engineer looks it over and comes back with a written quote, usually inside 48 hours.
Each disk, the sick ones as much as the healthy, gets a read-only image on dedicated hardware, so every later step works off copies and your originals are never touched.
A disk that has gone down — heads, motor or board — is taken into the clean-air bench and coaxed back just far enough to image, nothing more.
Working from the images, we reform the array — SHR or RAID — then the LVM layer above it and, on top, the Btrfs or ext4 file system, matching the precise stripe order, block size and parity the box had used.
From the reformed volume we lift out the lot — snapshots, virtual machines, backups, photos, files and shared folders — getting data back even off an array that is degraded or partly overwritten.
Nothing leaves until we have opened the recovered shares and files and confirmed they are whole.
Your recovered data ships back on a clean drive — or a NAS scaled to the volume — set to slot straight back into service.
Ship the NAS or bring it by. Diagnosis comes first, the quote next — and on most jobs it’s no fix, no fee.
Tell us what happened and we’ll get back to you, usually within a working day.
We’ll be in touch very soon. If it can’t wait, call 01483 901310.
What NAS recovery costs follows a simple tier, and you see a free diagnostic plus a quote in writing before anyone touches a disk.
A selection of recent NAS jobs — volume crashes, dead enclosures, failed rebuilds and deleted shares. Identifying details stripped out; every result verified.
One disk had gone and taken the Btrfs volume into corruption with it. Every disk imaged, the array rebuilt, the shares recovered.
Dead hardware, but the disks themselves had come through fine. Straight from those disks we reformed the array and recovered the data.
Neither disk was completely gone. Each was nursed back and imaged on the clean-air bench, and the mirror rebuilt from the pair.
Part of the volume had already been overwritten by the rebuild. We imaged every disk and rebuilt the RAID 6 around the damaged region.
A dead enclosure, but a perfectly healthy disk inside. We pulled the Linux volume straight off it and got everything back.
Barely anything fresh had been written. We rebuilt the original SHR array and volume and recovered the deleted shares.
Send the NAS in for its free diagnostic with the make, bay count and RAID type; an engineer assesses it and confirms the exact quote in writing before any work starts.
Getting your data back starts with getting the NAS — or all its disks — to us. Pack it safely, label the bay order if sending disks, enclose your contact details, and once we've run the free diagnostic we confirm your exact quote in writing before any work begins.
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.
Need a scoped quote first? Describe the NAS, RAID type and fault on the form and an engineer will assess it and reply with a tailored quote.
We’ll be in touch shortly. If it’s urgent, call 01483 901310.
The questions we’re asked most about recovering data from a NAS.
Usually not. On a Synology, that message tends to mean a failed disk or a corrupt Btrfs/ext4 volume, not lost data. We image every disk, reform the array off the copies and recover your shares.
Usually, yes. No power almost always means the enclosure has died while the disks inside are perfectly intact. We image those disks, rebuild the array in software, and recover the data with the box out of the picture entirely.
No — and it can backfire. Everything on a NAS lives on a Linux RAID array (ext4 or Btrfs) that Windows simply can’t read; worse, it may pop up offering to ‘initialise’ the disk, which would wipe it. Don’t let it. Send the disks to us and the array gets rebuilt the right way.
Yes — send all of them, ideally labelled with their bay order, even any that look dead. We rebuild the array from the full set together, and one missing disk can render the volume unrecoverable. Sending the whole unit is equally fine.
It runs on tiers: a two-bay mirror from £500 + VAT, and a multi-bay array — SHR, or RAID 5, 6 and 10 — from £800 + VAT. Each opens with a free diagnostic and a written quote before anything starts.
You always get a free diagnostic and a written quote first. On multi-disk and mechanical work we take a deposit against that quote, with the balance falling due only on a successful recovery.
All of them — Drobo, TerraMaster, Asustor, Buffalo, NETGEAR, WD, QNAP, Synology, you name it. Because the Linux array is what we rebuild off the disks, which badge is on the box seldom changes what we can get back.
That comes down to the strain. Nobody can undo strong modern encryption of the QLocker or DeadBolt sort without the key — we won’t pretend otherwise. What often does work is going after what the malware left behind: older snapshots, anything unencrypted, files it never reached — all of it recovered by imaging the disks and rebuilding the array. Once we’ve run the diagnostic, you’ll get a straight account of what can come back.
Often, yes. Even a rebuild that failed tends to leave most of the original data sitting intact beneath it. We image each disk in its pre-rebuild state and reconstruct the array around the damage, recovering whatever the rebuild never overwrote.
Most wrap up in three to seven working days. Where it lands depends on how many disks are involved, the RAID level, and whether any drive needs mechanical work on the clean-air bench.
Either ship the whole unit, or take the disks out and send them tagged with their bay order — both are fine. Post it fully insured to the Guildford address, or bring it by in person, weekdays 9am to 5:30pm.
Rarely. Whatever the brand, a NAS keeps its data on a standard Linux RAID array, and that array is what we rebuild. The make only shapes the details — SHR on Synology, QTS on QNAP — not whether recovery is possible.
Free to diagnose, priced on a clear tier from £500, and no fix no fee on the majority of jobs — whatever the badge, Synology, QNAP or otherwise, we bring the data back off the box. Get your recovery moving today.