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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.

When people search for disaster recovery, they usually find a plan: a backup service or a continuity retainer, usually someone who charges on a monthly basis. None of that is being sold here. If the business wants a disaster recovery plan, then your own internal IT department or an external managed service provider (MSP) is the best place to go. This bench does what happens afterwards: a RAID or server that will not boot, a NAS where a volume has disappeared, disks taken out of a room that took water or too much heat, a machine that took a spike when the power came back on after an outage, shares that came back encrypted after a ransomware attack. We receive parcels from areas including Nottingham, Mansfield, Derby and Leicester. There is no charge to assess whether your data can be recovered. The cost for a set of disks starts at £500 + VAT, and this is agreed in writing before the work begins. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. After your data has been retrieved, we hand it to your IT department, who then load it onto the new hardware.

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 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 an array that never came back after a power eventLeave it off and label the bays
The NAS boots but no longer recognises the volume, or it mounts read-onlyThe array description written on each drive does not match, so the box gives up rather than guess which is correctDo not let it re-initialise
A rebuild was started and stopped part wayThe read load was too much for a second disk, and now parity is shortStop, get a quote, send all of them
Drives out of water or a fire-damaged roomConnectors and boards take it. The platters inside the sealed unit normally don'tBag them as found, get a quote, post today
Files renamed and unreadable, with a note placed in every folderSomething was on the network long enough to encrypt all the shares and remove the snapshotsPull the network lead, leave power on
The power came back hardA power surge through the board, and on a shared supply it reaches several disks at the same timeLeave the set powered down
How to pack and post it: ring 0115 8220606 first, or use our online form, to get a quote. Hold the item securely, make sure the insurance covers the value of what is inside, and select a tracked delivery option to Manchester, where the intake lab receives the parcel. Return postage is covered by us. Would you like help from one of our engineers with wrapping it before you tape the package? Call us. Find all the details in our packing and postage guide.

What decides a multi-disk disaster recovery job.

What a rebuild asks of the disksEach surviving member of the set is read from the beginning through to the end, and parity is written back as it goes along. For a set that has already lost one disk, this is likely the toughest read that any one of them has had to endure in years, and it happens at exactly the wrong time.
Where a NAS keeps itNot in the box. Each disk has a superblock containing the details of how it was configured into the volume. So if an enclosure fails to start up, that is rarely the end of it: the disks are removed from the failed enclosure, and the volume is recreated from them here.
Water, heat and the mainsA broken pipe above a comms cupboard is the least dangerous type of damage. Heat comes next (solder or plastics will give out before the alloy body of the disk does), and then the board is just another part to buy in. Then power. When the power is turned back on after being off for a while it can come back hard. Since all the disks get their power from the same supply line, a surge through that line passes to each disk on it.
After a ransomware incidentEncryption happens fast enough to be careless. There may still be a snapshot inside the box, shadow copies nothing got to, files that were deleted instead of overwritten, large files encrypted only in pieces, and a list of files is built from those pieces. No ransom is paid, and no contact or communication is initiated.

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 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
02

The disks arrive labelled

Once a quote has been received, a RAID set or server is sent to us as separate bare disks, each with its bay number labelled on it before it leaves the chassis. Disks from a NAS are sent too, labelled by bay, if they come out. If it is not feasible to remove them, the entire NAS can be sent along with its power supply. Nothing here is turned on, so no controller attempts to interpret anything. Bay numbers, along with anything already tried, are noted before that.

Bay order recordedNothing powered up here
03

Every member imaged alone

Each disk is cloned on its own imager, the weakest disk first, with reads deliberately slowed down wherever a head is struggling. Once the clones exist, your original disks are placed on a shelf where they stay.

Weakest disk firstSlow reads where heads struggle
04

Rebuilt on the copies

Instead of depending on what the card says, the order of the disks, stripe size and position of parity are calculated from the clones. The volume is constructed from the clones and the file tree is extracted from it. Your original disks are never written to.

Volume assembled from clonesNothing is written back to your media
05

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 first disk goes quietly, the second one causes the trouble: a set can be down a member for months without any sign on the front panel. It is the next disk going bad that brings the whole volume down.
  • A deleted share is not the same as a share that has gone: if a folder is wiped on your server or NAS, the system typically leaves its records behind, and a database that will not attach is more often a header or log problem than a data one. Both should be looked at before anybody rebuilds the volume they were stored on.
  • Usually it is the one machine nobody else copied: a workstation under a desk with the drawings on it, a server in a cupboard, the NAS everyone mapped a drive to and never checked. When that is the job, the single disk in front of us is everything, so nothing here is turned on just to find out.
  • Water and heat stop at the seal: the circuit board, connector and pins take the damage, while the chamber holding the platters is essentially another world and will probably read as normal. Do not attempt to dry anything out, nor turn it on for testing.

Very little of this is exciting work. A controller at an engineering office in Nottingham that dropped two members on the same Sunday. A server belonging to a rail supplier in Derby, holding inspection records that existed nowhere else. A QA manager's audit pack in Melton Mowbray, sitting only on the machine under the desk. A batch database at a food plant in Leicester. A distributor's NAS on Oakham Business Park in Mansfield, read-only since the power came back. Most of them finish like the routine jobs they are. What makes the difference is usually what happened between the fault and the parcel: how many times the set was rebuilt, and how long the disks sat wet before someone finally 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

In a joinery works, a four-bay Synology flagged bad sectors on one member in January, and the warning emails were switched off instead of answered. When a second member stopped, the unit reported a failed volume, and someone had already written the plan on the lid in marker pen: fit a new disk and let it rebuild. That was the one thing we would not do. Both failed members took new head stacks, all four members were imaged, and the RAID 5 volume was built from the images rather than the original 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-initialising
  • Write the bay number on each disk first
  • Tell us which controller, which level, and what you've done so far
  • Get a quote, then send bare drives; NAS disks too if they come out

What makes it harder

  • Rebuilding again to see whether it finally completes, the most likely way a recoverable set becomes an unrecoverable 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. There isn't a backup product, a continuity retainer, a standby unit, or anybody on call. So if you want a disaster recovery plan, call your own IT department or your MSP. We're the people you call after it happens and the data is sitting on hardware that won't give it up.

Should we rebuild it again?

No: power it down. Don't try another rebuild. A rebuild reads all of the remaining disks from beginning to end and writes the parity as it goes. Ask that of a set that is already a member short? That would be the worst possible timing. Label the bays. Take the drives out. Get a quote, then send them as they are.

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

Cards and sticks are £250 + VAT and a single drive £300 + VAT, but work like this usually involves several disks, so the price typically starts at £500 + VAT. The assessment itself is free. The figure is agreed in writing before anything chargeable, and allow three to six working days from the disks arriving. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data.

Anything left after ransomware?

More often than the note on the screen suggests. Encrypting an entire network in one night is rushed work, and rushed work leaves things behind: a snapshot the box still holds, shadow copies nothing reached, original files deleted instead of 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. 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