Trying to save a RAID 5 is the quickest way to kill it. Another forced rebuild puts a tremendous amount of wear and tear on already exhausted disks, and choosing a "repair" option can overwrite the metadata. That is why we capture all members of your RAID 5 before doing anything else, then solve the array in software and never write to the originals.
No RAID quote is guesswork. First a free diagnosis, then one written quotation, from £500 + VAT depending on the number of members, and on logical rebuilds you only pay if we recover your data.
This is exactly what RAID 5 was designed to handle: one dead disk. However, everything that happens after that is what keeps our RAID 5 recovery bench busy. These are the endings that server rooms throughout North Yorkshire send us.
In comes the replacement for the failed disk. The rebuild process forces each of the remaining disks to work for extended periods of time (hours). Then, one of those remaining disks gives up before the rebuild completes. In short, a degraded RAID 5 becomes a failed RAID 5 within an afternoon: this is by far the most common RAID 5 emergency we see on this bench.
Controllers, host bus adapters (HBAs) and backplanes tend to fail more catastrophically than the disks they manage. All members of the RAID 5 group may be perfectly healthy, but the volume stays offline until the original layout and parity are read back off the disks themselves.
A disk that has been down for weeks is a snapshot of your system as it was at that moment. If you force that disk back online, the controller will interleave old stripes with new ones, poisoning parity across all members of the array.
Parity can cover for a bad sector on one member, but if two members have bad sectors in matching places, there will be gaps in the data that nothing can fill. Every weak area of every disk is imaged around before a single stripe is put back together.
Options to recreate, initialise or repair can quietly overwrite the metadata which defines where your data lives. If someone has already pressed one, the pressing stops now.
It takes a long time to add a new disk to a RAID or change the RAID level. If the process is interrupted by a power cut, a system crash or lost patience, the set is stuck in limbo between two layouts and cannot be mounted as either.
No original member ever spins in a live array again. RAID 5 data recovery here starts with every disk going onto a hardware imager; any physically failed members visit the repair bench first. Then the whole examination runs on the images, to work out the correct order of the members, the stripe geometry, the rotation and the direction of the parity. A virtual copy of the array is built from this information, and your files are copied from the virtual copy while the original disks remain untouched on the shelf as a last resort.
The illusion of doing something productive by placing a spare back in and allowing the controller to attempt once again is the most dangerous action you can perform on a set where all redundancy has already been exhausted. Another rebuild will hammer the weakest disks at their weakest point, so when the next failure occurs, what was once a routine RAID recovery becomes a long and delicate process. Once a rebuild stalls or starts throwing errors, this is your signal to cut the power and walk away: the array will keep.
The majority of the RAID recoveries landing here carry the working life of a small firm: Dell PowerEdge and HP ProLiant servers, the odd home-built tower, and NAS units from Synology, QNAP and Netgear, all travelling along the A64 from York, Selby, Malton, Thirsk and Northallerton. Once you have your quote (0800 689 0668 or the free online diagnostic), take the disks out, each labelled with its bay number (a NAS that won't give up its disks can travel whole), and they reach our Leeds lab the next working day by tracked delivery. Or it's forty-odd minutes' drive to reception, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment necessary, and an array that has taken a business down can move to the front of the queue. The wider services are covered under RAID recovery and NAS recovery, with the figures on the data recovery cost page.
Shut down the system, get your quote, box up every member, and the entire array will be rebuilt in software, with a written quote before any work is done.
Get a quote first, by calling us on 0800 689 0668 or using our free online diagnostic tool. After receiving your quote, tracked and insured post is how nearly every job reaches us: it is the fastest and safest way to get your drive to our lab in Leeds. There's no collection service, so the parcel is yours to send, or you can hand it in at the Leeds lab's reception.
Is the hard drive or SSD still inside a machine, such as a laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV/DVR system or server? Please remove the hard drive or SSD from the machine first and then post just the bare drive by itself; we do not provide a service for removing drives from devices. For a server or RAID, send every disk, each clearly marked with its bay. For a NAS, send its disks labelled by bay if you can remove them, otherwise send the NAS itself. We cannot work on storage soldered to the motherboard (e.g. Apple Silicon Macs, T2 Macs and certain slim laptops): if it doesn't come out, it can't come in. If you are unsure whether your storage is removable, call us before sending.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Once you have your quote, send your package addressed to Leeds Data Recovery (about a 40 minute drive from York on the A64 & A1(M) or next working day if you want to send it using trackable post). We will contact you as soon as we have taken delivery of your package and put it in line to be worked upon.
Can't figure out what to pack? Ring 0800 689 0668 first, or try our free online diagnostic tool.