More RAID 5 sets are lost while trying to save them than in the original fault, as one more rebuild is loaded onto worn disks, or one repair option writes over the records. With RAID 5 data recovery here, that gamble is gone. Each member is copied before any other action is taken, the array is worked out in software, and no writes are made to any of your own disks.
No RAID quote is guesswork. A free diagnostic first, followed by one written figure from £500 + VAT based on the number of disks, and on logical rebuilds you only pay if we recover your data.
One failed disk is the one failure a RAID 5 is intended to survive. It is what happens in the hours after that fills our RAID data recovery service diary, and Norfolk server rooms send us all six of these.
A new disk goes in, and the controller then reads each of the other disks from beginning to end for many hours. Then one of the tired disks stops. An array that was simply degraded at breakfast is dead by tea time, and nothing else on this bench comes close for frequency.
Backplanes, host adapters and controllers usually fail long before their disks do. There is nothing wrong with the members themselves; however, the volume does not appear until the layout and parity are read directly off the platters.
A disk that dropped out two weeks ago is exactly what the array looked like two weeks ago. Once brought back online, the controller begins mixing that stale picture into the current stripes and corrupting parity throughout the entire array while it does so.
Parity quietly covers a bad sector on one drive. Bad sectors at the same locations on two drives leave a gap nothing can fill, so every weak area on every member is imaged around before a stripe is put back together.
Options labelled re-create, initialise and repair can overwrite the very records that describe where your files live, with no real warning. If one has already been pressed, that is where the pressing stops.
Adding a disk or converting RAID levels takes many hours of continuous work. Interrupt it (a power cut, a crash, someone losing patience) and the set is left between two layouts and readable as neither.
No disk of yours is ever put back into a running array here. Everything starts with each disk going onto a hardware imager, and any member that has a physical fault goes to the head-swap bench before that. After that point, all the work is done on the images. Disk order, stripe size, rotation and the direction the parity moves through the array are all worked out from the images, the volume is assembled virtually on top, and your files are taken off that virtual assembly. The original disks stay on a shelf, untouched, as the fallback nobody expects to need.
Putting in a new spare and letting the box try again feels like taking control of the situation. On a set that has already used up its redundancy it is about one of the most hazardous things you can do: a rebuild leans on the weakest disks at the worst possible time, and one more disk failure turns what was a fairly routine RAID data recovery into one that is slow and delicate. If your rebuild has stalled or keeps filling the log with errors, turn off the power and walk away. The array will not get any worse while it sits still.
Much of the RAID data recovery that comes in here is the complete working life of a small business: Dell PowerEdge and HP ProLiant servers and the odd tower someone has built for themselves, along with Synology, QNAP or Netgear units, from businesses in Norwich, Thetford, Dereham, Attleborough and King's Lynn. The disks travel to our Cambridge location, about an hour and twenty minutes on the A11 or one working day by tracked post, and when a company is sitting idle we can bring their set up to the front of the bench. RAID recovery and NAS recovery cover the rest of it, and all costs can be found on our data recovery cost page.
Power everything down, package up every member, and we will put the set back together in software. A written quote comes first.
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.