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NDR / By what it is doing / Disaster recovery

Once it has happened

Disaster recovery for Nottingham. Once it has happened, what we do is get the data off the hardware.

Search disaster recovery and most of what comes back is a plan — backup contracts, continuity retainers, somebody on a monthly fee. None of that is sold here, and if it is a plan the business needs, the people to ring are your own IT team or an MSP. This bench does the part that comes after: a RAID or a server that will not come up, a NAS that has dropped its volume, disks out of a room that took water or heat, a machine that took a spike when the power came back on, shares that came back encrypted after a ransomware incident. Parcels reach us from Nottingham, Mansfield, Derby and Leicester. The look costs nothing, several disks together start at £500 + VAT with that figure agreed in writing first, and on most jobs, if nothing comes off the disks there is nothing to pay. We hand over the files; putting them onto the replacement hardware is your IT people's half of it.

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 the symptom points to.

Not yours? Open the fault finder →
What it looks likeWhat usually causes itWhat that means for you
The server will not come upA controller that has thrown out a second member, or a set that never came back after a power eventLeave it off and label the bays
The NAS boots but the volume has gone, or mounts read-onlyThe array description on the disks disagrees with itself, and the box gives up rather than guessDo not let it re-initialise
A rebuild was started and stopped part wayA second disk gave out under the read load, and parity is now shortStop, and send all of them
Drives out of water or a fire-damaged roomBoards and connectors take it. The platters behind the seal usually do notBag them as found, post today
Files renamed and unreadable, with a note in every folderSomething was on the network long enough to encrypt the shares and empty the snapshotsPull the network lead, leave power on
The power came back hardA spike through the board, and on a shared supply it reaches more than one disk at onceLeave the set powered down
How to pack and post it: wedge it so it cannot move, insure the parcel for what the files are worth rather than what the drive cost, and use a tracked service to the intake lab. The journey back is on us. Would you rather an engineer went through the packing with you before the tape goes on? Ring us. It is all set out on the packing and postage guide.

What decides a multi-disk disaster recovery job.

What a rebuild asks of the disksEvery surviving member is read end to end and parity written back as it goes. On a set that has already put one disk out, that is the hardest reading any of them has done in years, asked at the worst possible moment.
Where a NAS keeps itNot in the box. The array description sits in a superblock on each drive, which is why an enclosure that will not start is rarely the end of the story: the disks come out, and the volume goes back together here.
Water, heat and the mainsA split pipe above a comms cupboard is the mild version. Heat comes next: solder and plastics give out long before an alloy body does, so the board becomes a part to buy in. The mains is the awkward one, because when the power returns it can return hard, and a spike travels down a shared supply into every disk hanging off it.
After a ransomware incidentShares get encrypted at speed, and speed is careless. A snapshot the box still holds, shadow copies nothing got to, originals deleted rather than overwritten, long files encrypted only in stretches — that is what a file list gets built out of. No ransom is paid, and no contact is made.

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 disks arrive labelled

A RAID set or a server travels as bare drives, and each one wants the bay number written on it before it leaves the chassis; a NAS can come whole, power supply and all. Nothing is powered up here, and no controller is asked to make sense of it. Bay order, and whatever was tried already, goes on the notes before that.

Bay order recordedNothing powered up here
03

Every member imaged alone

Each disk is cloned on its own imager, weakest one first, with reads slowed right down where a head is struggling. After that your originals go on a shelf and stay there.

Weakest disk firstSlow reads where heads struggle
04

Rebuilt on the copies

Rather than take the card's word for it, disk order, stripe size and where the parity sits are worked out from the clones. The volume goes back together on those copies, the file tree comes off it, and your own disks are never written to.

Volume assembled from clonesNothing is written back to your media
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

  • One disk goes quietly, the second one is the trouble — a set can run short a member for months with nothing on the front panel saying so. It is the next one giving out that takes the volume with it.
  • A deleted share is not the same as a share that has gone — a wiped folder on a server or a NAS usually leaves its records behind, and a database that will not attach is more often a header or a log problem than a data one. Both are worth a look before anybody rebuilds the volume they sat on.
  • Usually it is the one machine nobody else copied — the workstation under the desk with the drawings on it, the server in the cupboard, the NAS everybody mapped a drive to and nobody ever checked. When that is the job, the disk in front of us is the whole of it, so nothing here is powered on to find out.
  • Water and heat stop at the seal — the board, the connector and the pins take it, while the chamber holding the platters is a separate world and normally reads as it always did. Do not dry anything out, and do not power it on to check.

Very little of this is dramatic work. A controller in a Nottingham engineering office that threw out two members the same Sunday. A rail supplier's server in Derby with the inspection records on it and nowhere else. A QA manager's audit pack in Melton Mowbray, on the machine under the desk. A batch database at a Leicester food plant. A distributor's NAS on Oakham Business Park in Mansfield, read-only since the power came back. Ordinary jobs, and most of them finish as ordinary jobs. What decides it is usually what happened between the fault and the parcel: how many times the set was rebuilt, and how long the disks sat in the wet before anybody bagged them.

One of these, from start to finish.

NG · NTG-2025-1491ON THE LOG ✓

Two members down nine months apart, and the volume still built whole

A four-bay Synology in a joinery works had flagged bad sectors on one member back in January, and the warning emails had been switched off rather than answered. When a second member stopped, the unit came back reporting a failed volume, and somebody had already written the plan on the lid in marker pen: fit a new disk, leave it to rebuild. That was the single thing we would not do. Both failed members took new head stacks, all four were imaged, and the RAID 5 volume was built from the images rather than from the disks.

4 of 4 disks in the set imaged2 head stacks renewed

What helps, and what does damage.

Worth doing first

  • Power the set down and leave it down — no more rebuild attempts, and no re-initialise
  • Write the bay number on each disk first
  • Tell us the controller, the level, and what was tried
  • Send the bare drives; a NAS can travel whole

What makes it harder

  • Running the rebuild once more to see whether it takes this time, which is the commonest way a recoverable set stops being one
  • Swapping disks between bays to find the bad one
  • Letting the card initialise the set
  • Restoring or reinstalling onto the same disks

Answers before you spend anything.

Do you do disaster recovery plans?

No. No backup product, no continuity retainer, no standby kit and nobody on call. If a plan is what the business needs, your own IT department or an MSP is the right phone call. Ours is the bench you ring once it has already happened and the data is sat on hardware that will not hand it over.

Should we rebuild it again?

No — power it down and leave it down. Each pass of a rebuild works the surviving disks from one end to the other and writes parity as it goes. Asking that of a set which is already a member short is asking it at the worst possible moment. Mark the bays, take the disks out, send them as they are.

What does a multi-disk job cost, and how long?

Cards and sticks are £250 + VAT and one drive on its own £300 + VAT, but work of this kind usually involves several disks, and that band opens at £500 + VAT. The look costs nothing, the figure is agreed in writing before anything chargeable, and reckon on three to six working days from the disks arriving. On most jobs, if nothing is recovered you are not billed.

Anything left after ransomware?

More often than the note on the screen suggests. Encrypting a whole network in one night is hurried work, and hurry leaves things behind: a snapshot the box still holds, shadow copies nothing reached, originals deleted rather than overwritten. Nobody here pays and nobody here makes contact.

Start here if the same thing is happening to yours.

The disk inside the computer → Disks pulled out of a NAS → Drives that have been dropped → 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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