A single dead member takes a whole RAID 0 quiet, though quiet and erased are two different things. Send the complete set and each disk is copied, the geometry of the stripe worked out from those copies, and your files reassembled entirely in software.
No RAID quote is guesswork. Free diagnostic first, then one written figure — from £500 + VAT by member count, logical recoveries under no fix, no fee.
A stripe hands every file out in pieces across the whole set and holds nothing back for emergencies, so the volume lasts precisely as long as its unluckiest disk.
Every file exists only as pieces spread over all the disks, so a single failure takes the entire volume quiet. Copying the full set and putting the scattered pieces back together in software is the way out.
There is no parity and no mirror; that absence is what bought the speed. A stripe has no means of regrowing a piece of itself, which leaves patient, disciplined imaging as the only honest route back.
A failed controller, bridge or enclosure regularly leaves a completely sound set marooned. The work then becomes reading each disk, working out how the stripe was laid down, and raising the volume from the copies.
Re-creating the set, or a firmware hiccup, can erase the numbers that describe how the stripe was built. Rebuild with the wrong ones and the data reads as noise, so the correct values are recovered from the copies themselves.
Because files are interleaved, one cluster of failing sectors on one disk removes a bite from hundreds of separate files. Imaging hardware collects every readable sector from around the damage.
Point format, initialise or repair at a stripe that has already broken and the on-disk structures a recovery leans on are flattened. If that has happened, stop there and take the power off.
Nothing in a stripe is duplicated, so every disk holds material that exists nowhere else. Each one is copied on a hardware imager, with any physically failed member repaired at the clean bench beforehand, and the copies then give up the three things a reconstruction needs: which disk sat where, how big each block was, and where the striping actually starts. The set is assembled in software, a file system is raised over the result, and the files walk out. No original is written to at any point.
Nothing about a striped set repairs itself, and a disk that is starting to go loses a little more every time it is asked to spin up. The right response is a boring one: switch the lot off, keep away from anything labelled initialise or repair, because both of them write across the very records a reconstruction has to read, and get the whole set here in the state you found it.
Editing machines, gaming builds, small servers and NAS units set up for speed rather than safety — striped volumes reach this bench from households and businesses in Norwich, Great Yarmouth, Cromer and across the county. Every member travels together to our Cambridge location, by tracked insured post or in the boot down the A11. RAID recovery and NAS recovery tell the longer story, and the prices are on the data recovery cost page.
Every member copied, the layout worked out, the files handed back — diagnosis free, figure in writing.
Most of what reaches this bench arrived by tracked, insured post. It is the steadiest way to move a poorly drive, and a parcel posted in Norfolk is usually on the bench the next working day.
Is the drive still bolted inside a laptop, desktop, MacBook, iMac, server or CCTV / DVR recorder? The hard drive or SSD needs to come out first, and only the bare drive travels — taking drives out of machines is not something we do here. Storage soldered to a motherboard (Apple Silicon Macs, one or two very thin laptops) is the single thing beyond us: if it will not come out, it cannot come in.
↓ Print the shipping & booking-in form (PDF)
Mark the parcel for the attention of Cambridge Data Recovery. From Norwich it is about an hour and twenty down the A11, then two minutes off the A14 at Junction 32 — or next working day by tracked post. You hear from us as soon as it is booked onto the bench.
Unsure what to put in the box? Ring 0800 689 0668 before you seal it, or run the free online diagnostic.