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NDR / Devices and media / QNAP RAID and NAS recovery

Specialist · QNAP NAS units and HP arrays

Nottingham QNAP RAID recovery. A volume that will not mount is bench work, not another rebuild. Switch it off.

From £500 + VAT for RAID, NAS and server work, and the assessment before it is free. Four shapes cover nearly everything that turns up: a unit booting to its own screen with no storage pool on it; a rebuild that halted once a second bay went amber; a firmware update that ended with the array unseen; an HP shelf whose controller no longer recognises the members in it. Whichever of the four you have, each disk is cloned read-only first, the array description gets read back off those copies, and any file system repair happens on copies too, never on what you posted. Sets come in from Nottingham, Derby, Beeston, Loughborough, Lincoln and Mansfield.

No files back, no bill — on most jobs Free diagnosis first, then a single price, in writing Parcels come in from Derby, Lincoln and Loughborough

Ask an engineer, and the first look is free
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What a QNAP's symptom points to.

Not yours? Open the fault finder →
What is happeningWhat usually causes itWhat that means for you
The unit boots and the storage pool is not thereThe array description on the disks is damaged; the blocks underneath it are notPower it down and post the disks
A rebuild halted with a second bay amberThe oldest disks in the box were all asked to read every sector at onceOff at the wall now
The volume mounts read-only, then disappears againA file system fault sitting above a set that is otherwise soundComes back, as a rule
One bay is amber and the shares still openA member has dropped out and nothing is protecting what is leftGet a copy made today
A firmware update finished and the array never returnedThe box, not the disks — the members are intact behind itSend the drives, labelled by bay
A drive put into a PC reads as unformattedWindows cannot see a Linux array and offers to initialise itSay no, then leave it alone
How to pack and post it: movement is what finishes a damaged drive, so pack it rigid, cover the parcel for what the files are worth rather than what the disk cost, and put a tracked label on it for the intake lab. We cover the journey back. If you would rather someone checked your packing first, ring before the box is sealed. The whole method is on the packing and postage guide.

Where a QNAP set actually stops.

QNAP TS and TVS unitsThe desktop and rack boxes that carry most of this work — two bays under a desk, eight or twelve in a comms cabinet. Underneath the web interface sits an ordinary Linux array with a volume manager and a file system above it, which is why a set goes back together here from images without the box it came out of.
HP arrays and Smart Array controllersProLiant servers and MSA shelves, where the controller keeps its own account of the set on the members themselves. Send the disks with their bay order written on them and the card, the backplane and the chassis can all stay exactly where they are.
Pools, snapshots and iSCSIA QNAP stacks a good deal above the raw disks: storage pools, thin volumes, snapshots, and iSCSI LUNs handed out to other machines. Any one of those layers can fail while everything beneath it stays intact, and telling them apart is most of the work on a unit that boots to an empty pool.
What we never doNo rebuild is started here, nothing is imported, no pool is re-created, and no firmware goes anywhere near the drives you sent. All of those are writes, and each write takes an option away. Each member is read a single time and then set to one side; every repair happens against an image, so a wrong turn there costs us an afternoon and costs you nothing.

From the parcel arriving to the files going home.

Jobs already finished →
01

Booked in the day it arrives, and the first look is on us Free

Your device picks up a case number the day it arrives, and an engineer then establishes what has genuinely gone wrong — at no cost, and ahead of everything else. Two things come back to you together: a plain account of what can be lifted and what cannot, and one fixed figure in writing. Agree to that figure, or turn it down and pay nothing.

The first look is freeOne fixed figure, in writingNo charge at this point
02

The box and the disks are told apart

Each drive comes out and goes onto a write-blocked port, where it is read on its own terms instead of through a board that has stopped working — including whichever one the unit had marked bad. That answers the question the front panel cannot: has the enclosure failed, or the disks inside it? A QNAP whose board or firmware has given out, with six sound members sitting behind it, is a smaller job than the front panel makes it look.

Each disk read on its ownWe name the part that failed
03

Cloned before anything is assembled

Copies come first. Difficult regions are taken in short runs with the rest of the surface safely down before they are attempted, and from that point every step of the work happens against an image. Not one byte is written back to the drives that came out of your bays, at any stage.

Images made before anything elseYour own drives stay untouched
04

The array read back, then the file system

Bay order, stripe size, the offset at which the data begins and the volume layer above it are all recorded by the QNAP on the members themselves, so the box is not needed to reassemble any of it. The set gets built over the images, brought up read-only, and the file system repaired there. Shares, databases and mail stores are then opened on the bench: a file name in a directory listing is no evidence that the file will open.

Assembled over the imagesOpened here before it travels
05

The file list comes before the bill

The file list reaches you before any invoice does. Say yes and it is billed; say no and it is not — and on most jobs, if nothing comes back there is nothing to pay. Whatever comes off goes home on media bought in for your case, carriage at our end. Nothing here is closed until you have opened those files on your own machine.

Nothing is charged until you agree the figureNew media, bought in for your jobWe pay to send it home

What comes in most often

  • The enclosure gives out more often than the disks do — a power board, a fan that has stopped, a firmware update that never finished, and a QNAP will show you an empty pool with six healthy members sitting behind it. That is the cheapest version of this job, and the free assessment tells you which version you have before a figure is agreed.
  • Nothing punishes a set harder than a rebuild — finishing one means reading every sector of every surviving member, and those members went into the bays together, out of one batch, carrying the same hours. So a second bay turning amber part-way through is not misfortune. The weakest disk still standing has just been handed the heaviest task of its life.
  • Windows cannot read a QNAP disk — the members carry a Linux array with a volume manager and a Linux file system above it, so a desktop sees a blank drive and offers to initialise it. A great many people decide at that point that the disks are finished. They are not, and refusing that prompt is the single most useful thing anybody does on this page.
  • Number the bays before you pull anything — member order is read back off the disks here, but a written note of which drive sat where, and an honest account of what has already been attempted, decides how quickly the set goes together. Send every drive, the one marked bad included: it frequently carries the newest copy of the blocks you care about.

What decides one of these jobs: how much of each member will still read; whether the pool was re-created after it vanished; how long a rebuild was left running; and whether anything was encrypted. Switch a unit off with every disk still in place and the options stay at their widest. Fit a spare, run a rebuild, try the firmware twice and restart it overnight, and they narrow a long way — though you are still told which files sit in the gaps while there is nothing yet to pay. Encryption needs its key from you. We handle storage and nothing else, so no phones and no tablets. The band for RAID, NAS and server work is from £500 + VAT, confirmed in writing once the free assessment is done, and on most jobs you pay nothing whatever unless your files are actually back.

One of these, from start to finish.

NG · NTG-2026-1991ON THE LOG ✓

A four-bay QNAP that came back from a firmware update with no volumes

A pattern-cutter in Ilkeston kept twenty years of nesting files, grading sets and product photography on a four-bay QNAP under the cutting table. An update finished, the unit restarted, and the storage pool was simply not there — no shares, no volumes, four green bays and an empty screen. It was switched off that afternoon and the four disks arrived numbered one to four. All four cloned straight through with nothing awkward on any of them, which told us what the trouble was: the box, not the set. The array description was read off the images, the volume assembled above them and brought up read-only. Every share opened. Three days, parcel to parcel, and the patterns travelled back on a new drive, arranged the way the cutting room had always arranged them.

100% copied sector by sector3 days between arrival and return

What helps, and what does damage.

Worth doing first

  • Switch the unit off the moment a bay turns amber
  • Number every disk as it comes out of its bay
  • Send every drive, including the one marked bad
  • Tell us what the unit has already been asked to do

What makes it harder

  • Starting another rebuild with a member missing
  • Running a firmware update on a set that is already short
  • Re-creating the storage pool to see whether it returns
  • Agreeing when Windows offers to initialise a disk

Answers before you spend anything.

The unit powers up and the volume has gone. Are the files still on the disks?

Nearly always, yes. A QNAP keeps its own account of the set — member order, stripe size, where the data begins, the layer above it — written onto the disks themselves, and it is that account which gets damaged far more readily than the blocks underneath. An empty storage pool on a unit whose bays are all green is a description of what the box can no longer read, not of what is on the platters. Switch it off. The disks can stay in their bays, and copies get taken before any of it is put back together.

Do I post the QNAP itself, or just the drives?

Either, and the shape of the unit decides it. A desktop box is light enough to travel whole with its adapter, switched off, and nothing is given up by doing that. A rack unit is heavy, so take the disks out instead, numbering them as you go so that bay four is labelled bay four. Include any drive the unit had written off; that one is often carrying the freshest version of the blocks you want. Nothing is collected and there is no counter, so everything arrives by post — use a tracked service, and cover the parcel for the value of the files rather than the hardware.

I put one disk in a PC and Windows says it needs formatting.

Say no, and take it back out. A QNAP member carries a Linux array with a volume manager and a Linux file system above it, none of which a Windows machine can read, so it offers the only thing it knows how to offer. The disk is not blank and it is not damaged. Agreeing to that prompt writes a new structure over the front of the drive and turns a routine job into an awkward one, so if it has already happened, say so — it changes the order of the work rather than ending it.

What does this cost, and how long does it take?

From £500 + VAT is the published band for RAID, NAS and server work, and you can read it here without ringing to ask. The free assessment happens first; a single figure in writing follows it; nothing chargeable begins until you have said yes to that figure. Where nothing comes back, most jobs carry no charge whatever. A multi-disk set usually needs three to four working days between the parcel arriving and the files leaving again on new media, urgent cases are moved up the queue, and we pay the carriage back to you.

Start here if the same thing is happening to yours.

The disk inside the computer → Clicks, ticks and beeps → The disk is not detected → The full device list →

Switched off, a drive cannot get any worse.

The look costs nothing. What comes back to you is a file list — what opened, what did not — plus one figure to finish the job, in writing, before anything chargeable begins. Most jobs carry no fee at all unless the data comes back. Leave the drive switched off until you have that list.

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