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 (the assessment before it is free). Four basic shapes cover nearly everything that turns up: a unit boots into its own screen but has no storage pool. A rebuild has stopped once a second bay showed amber. A firmware update was performed that left the array unavailable. An HP shelf has a controller that no longer recognises any of the member disks within it. Regardless of which of these four you have, we clone all your disks read-only first and then we read your array configuration from the clones. If any file systems need to be repaired at this point we do so using the clones rather than what you posted. Sets come in from Nottingham, Derby, Beeston, Loughborough, Lincoln and Mansfield.

Only pay if we recover your data, 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
0115 8220606

What a QNAP's symptom points to.

Not yours? Open the fault finder →

What is happening	What usually causes it	What that means for you
The unit boots, but the storage pool does not appear	The array description on the disks is damaged; the blocks underneath it are not	Power it down and post the disks
A rebuild halted with a second bay amber	The oldest disks in the box were asked to read all sectors at once	Off at the wall now
The volume mounts read-only, then disappears again	A faulty file system sits on top of an otherwise solid set	Comes back, as a rule
One bay is amber and the shares still open	A member has fallen out and nothing is protecting what remains	Get a copy made today
A firmware update finished and the array never returned	The box, not the disks: the members behind it are intact	Send the drives, labelled by bay
A drive put into a PC reads as unformatted	Windows can't see a Linux array and wants to initialise it	Say no, then leave it alone

How to pack and post it: get a quote first. Movement kills a damaged drive, so you need to pack it rigidly. Insure the package for what the files are worth, not how much the disk cost. Then put a tracked label on the package for the intake lab. We pay for the return postage. If you like, ring before sealing your package so that we can check your packing is adequate. The whole process is outlined in our packing and postage guide.

Where a QNAP set actually stops.

QNAP TS and TVS unitsMost of this work arrives in desktop (two-bay) or rack (eight to twelve bay) boxes, under a desk or in a comms cabinet. Beneath the web interface sits a typical Linux disk array with a volume manager and a file system above it. This 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 use their own controllers, and each member keeps an account of the set it belongs to. Send the hard drives with their bay number marked on them, and the card, the backplane and the chassis can stay in place.

Pools, snapshots and iSCSIA QNAP builds a good deal on top of the raw disks: storage pools, thin volumes, snapshots and iSCSI LUNs that may be handed out to other machines. Any one of these layers can fail without affecting what sits beneath it, and identifying which layer has failed is typically the bulk of the work on a unit that boots to an empty pool.

What we never doWe don't do anything here to rebuild, import or re-create a pool, and no firmware goes near the drives you sent. Those are all writes, and each write takes away from what we can do. There's one read for each member, then it's set aside. Every repair is done on an image, so if we take the wrong path there, it costs us an afternoon and costs you nothing.

From the parcel arriving to the files going home.

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

Your case number is assigned when the item is received. Then an engineer works out what went wrong (no charge). At this point, you receive a basic summary of which parts are recoverable and which are not. You also receive a single written quote for the price of the recovery. Accept the quoted price or turn it down, and there is no obligation to pay anything.

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

The box and the disks are told apart

Each drive goes onto a write-blocked port, where it is read on its own rather than through a board that doesn't work any more, including whichever one the unit said was bad. That tells us whether the enclosure has failed or the disks inside it. A QNAP whose board or firmware has given out, but with six sound members behind it, is less of a problem than the front panel would have you believe.

Each disk read on its ownWe name the part that failed

Cloned before anything is assembled

Copies come first. The difficult areas are copied in short runs after the remainder of the surface has been done, and each step from then on happens on an image. Nothing is ever written back onto the drives that came out of your bays, at any time.

Images made before anything elseYour own drives stay untouched

The array read back, then the file system

Bay position, stripe size, the offset where the data starts and the volume layer on top of this are stored on the member disks themselves by the QNAP, so the box is not needed to put any of it back together. The set is assembled over the images, made available read-only, and the file system is repaired there. Next, shares, databases and mail stores are opened on the bench; a directory listing showing a file name does not tell you whether that file can actually be opened.

Assembled over the imagesOpened here before it travels

The file list comes before the bill

A complete file list will be provided before any invoicing. Simply say "yes" or "no" to what we found: yes means it is billed, no means it is not, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. What we find is posted to you on media purchased specifically for your case, at no additional cost to you. We consider the process complete once you have opened those files yourself on your own computer.

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 failed power board, a dead fan, a firmware update that never completed, and a QNAP showing an empty pool with all six drives in good health behind it. That is the cheapest version of this job, and the free assessment tells you which version you have before a price is agreed.
Nothing punishes a set as severely as a rebuild. When a rebuild runs, each remaining drive has to read every sector. The members were put into the bays at the same time, bought together and carrying the same hours. So when a second bay begins to show amber during a rebuild, it is not simply misfortune. The weakest disk left in the set has just been asked to do the heaviest work of its life.
Windows can't read the disks of a QNAP. Each member carries a Linux array with a volume manager and a Linux file system above it, so a desktop sees an empty disk and prompts you to initialise it. Many people see this message and conclude that their disks are finished. They are not; refusing that prompt is the single most useful thing anyone can do on this page.
Number each bay before pulling the disks. We read the order the drives sat in from the disks themselves. Even so, knowing which disk was in which bay, and an honest record of everything attempted so far, helps us put the set back together as quickly as possible. Send every drive, the bad one included: more often than not, the "bad" drive holds the most current copy of the blocks you want.

What decides one of these jobs: how much of each member's data is still readable; whether the pool was re-created after it disappeared; how long a rebuild was allowed to run; and whether any of the data was encrypted. Switch a unit off with every disk still in place and the options stay as wide as possible. Add a spare, let a rebuild run, try the firmware twice and restart it overnight, and you have narrowed them a great deal, though you are still told which files sit in the missing space before you pay anything. Encryption needs your key. We focus on recovering data from storage and do not take phones or tablets. Pricing for RAID, NAS and server work is from £500 + VAT, confirmed in writing once the free assessment is done. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data.

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 a 20-year library of nesting files, grading sets and product photography on a four-bay QNAP underneath the cutting table. An update finished, the unit restarted and the storage pool did not show up: no shares, no volumes, four green bays and an empty screen. The QNAP was shut down that day, and the four drives arrived numbered 1 to 4. All four cloned without issues, which told us the trouble was the box, not the set. The array description was read off the images, and the volume was built above them and brought up read-only. Every share opened. Three days, parcel to parcel, and the patterns went back on a new drive, organised exactly as the cutting room had always organised them.

100% copied sector by sector3 days between arrival and return

What helps, and what does damage.

Worth doing first

Turn the unit off as soon as a bay turns amber
Number each disk as it comes out of its bay
Send every drive, including the one marked bad
Tell us what has been done with the unit so far

What makes it harder

Starting another rebuild with a member missing
Running a firmware upgrade 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?

Almost certainly, yes. A QNAP keeps its own record of the set (member order, stripe size, where the data starts, the layer above it) on the disks, and it is that record which gets damaged far more readily than the blocks below. An empty storage pool on a unit whose bays are all green describes what the box can no longer read, not what is on the platters. Turn it off. The disks can stay in their bays, and we take copies before putting anything back together.

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

Mostly just the drives. Remove the disks and number them as you go, so bay four has bay four written on it. If the disks won't come out, send the entire NAS, switched off, with its adapter. Also include any drive the NAS marked bad; it typically has the latest copy of the blocks you're trying to recover. Get a quote before sending anything, by phone on 0115 8220606 or with our quote form. We don't collect, so post it, tracked and insured, to our intake lab at Manchester Data Recovery, Peter House, Oxford Street, Manchester M1 5AN, or drop it off there Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment needed. Insure the parcel for the value of the data 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 on top of it; a Windows machine can read neither, so it offers the only thing it knows how to. The disk was not blanked, and there is no damage. Agreeing to that prompt writes a new structure across the front of the disk, and what could have been a routine job becomes an awkward one. If this has already happened, tell us: it simply moves the order of the work around rather than ending it.

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

From £500 + VAT is the published rate for RAID, NAS and server work, and you can see it here without having to ring to ask. The free assessment comes first, followed by a written quotation; nothing is chargeable until you confirm that figure. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Typically, a multi-disk set needs three to four working days from the parcel arriving to the files leaving again on new media, urgent cases move up the queue, and we cover the postage 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. It gives you a file listing of what opened and what did not, along with the cost of finishing the job, in writing, before anything chargeable begins. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Do not switch the drive on until you have that listing.

0115 8220606

Get a quote, then send it Posting it to Manchester

Disks, cards and whole machines

Start with what it is doing

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The price, and what happens next