One dead member takes down the whole RAID 0, though going quiet and being erased are two different things. Send us the full set and each disk is copied, the geometry of the stripe is worked out from these copies, and your files are reassembled entirely in software.
No RAID quote is guesswork. Free diagnostic first, followed by one written figure from £500 + VAT depending on how many members make up your array; on logical recoveries, you only pay if we recover your data.
A stripe sends every file out in pieces over all of the members in your array, holding nothing back for emergencies. So the volume only lasts as long as its most unlucky disk.
Each file exists only as fragments spread across all of the disks in your array, so any one disk failure takes the entire volume quiet. The way out is copying the full set of disks and putting the scattered pieces of each file back together in software.
It does not contain any parity or mirror; that's why it's faster. A stripe doesn't have any method of regrowing missing parts of itself, so a patient and disciplined approach to imaging is the only honest way back.
When a controller, bridge or enclosure fails, it frequently leaves a completely sound set stranded; the work then becomes reading each disk, working out how the stripe was laid down, and raising the volume from the disk images.
When re-creating the set, or due to a firmware glitch, the numbers describing how the stripe was built may be lost. Using incorrect values will result in all data reading as noise, so the correct values are recovered from the copies themselves.
Files are interleaved across the disks, so when a single cluster of bad sectors occurs on one disk, hundreds of different files have a bite removed. Hardware made for imaging gathers every readable sector from around the damage.
If format, initialise or repair is pointed at a stripe that has already broken, the on-disk structures a recovery relies on are flattened. If that has happened, stop immediately and remove the power.
There's no duplication of information within a stripe, so each disk contains data that exists nowhere else. Each disk is copied on a hardware imager, with any physically failed member repaired at the head-swap bench first. These copies provide the three elements needed for reconstruction: which disk was where, how large each block was, and where the striping actually starts. The set is assembled in software, a file system is raised over it, and the files come out; no original is ever written to.
Don't expect a striped set to fix itself; a failing disk only gets worse with each spin-up. The better response is unexciting but correct: turn it all off, stay away from "initialise" and "repair", as they write over exactly those records the reconstruction has to read, and get the entire set to us in the condition you found it.
Editing machines, gaming rigs, and small servers or NAS units built for speed over safety all use striped volumes, and they reach this bench from homes and businesses in Norwich, Great Yarmouth, Cromer and across the county. Once you have a quote, all members travel to our Cambridge location together, labelled by bay, via tracked insured post or in the boot of a car 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 items arrive at this bench by insured and tracked post. We recommend getting a quote first, either by telephone or using our free online diagnostic, and once you have received your quote, simply post the item. Post is the steadiest way to move a poorly drive, and a parcel sent from Norfolk typically arrives on the bench within a working day.
Is the drive still bolted inside a laptop, desktop, MacBook, iMac, server or CCTV / DVR recorder? Before sending, remove the hard disk drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD), as we do not accept whole units. From a DVR or recorder, send just the disk. From a server or RAID, take out the disks and clearly label each disk by bay number. A network attached storage (NAS) device may be sent as its disks if they can be removed; otherwise please send the NAS itself. There is only one type of drive we are unable to accept: storage soldered onto a motherboard (e.g. Apple Silicon Macs, extremely thin laptops). In such cases, if the storage cannot be taken out it cannot be accepted. If you are unsure whether you have a removable drive or not, call us before sending anything.
↓ Print the shipping & booking-in form (PDF)
Please mark the parcel for the attention of Cambridge Data Recovery. It takes about an hour and twenty minutes to travel from Norwich along the A11, then two minutes off the A14 at Junction 32. Otherwise you can post it using a tracked service and we will receive it the following working day. We will contact you as soon as we have your drive and it is booked onto our bench.
If you're unsure of what to include in the box, please call us on 0800 689 0668 before sealing it. Or, for a first view on what we can do, you can use our free online diagnostic.