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ADR / Sorted by symptom / Data after a disaster

The part that follows

Disaster recovery, London. Not sold by the month. The job is lifting data back off the hardware afterwards.

There are two types of trade that answer to that phrase, and only the second one is ours. The first sells what you have arranged beforehand: copies held somewhere else, a contract, hardware that sits idle as a spare. None of that is sold here, so if that is what you came for, your IT department or a managed provider is the right call. The second type of trade begins on the morning in which your pre-arranged solutions failed to meet your needs. That is a server or a RAID system that will not start, a NAS reporting no volume, disks removed after they suffered damage from either water or excessive heat, a machine hit by an electrical surge upon the restoration of electricity, or shares encrypted by a malicious actor using ransomware. Hackney sends much of that type of work, the council's own economic development plan identifying some 98% of businesses located within Hackney as either micro or small, with the founder acting as the IT department too. On the other hand, Canary Wharf tends to send the other type of work, where the media is encrypted and the first question is whether recovering it would breach a compliance obligation. Work involving multi-disk recovery is published at £500 + VAT and upwards, the look that sizes the job is provided free of charge, and on most jobs you only pay if we recover your data. You will receive your files back; it is your responsibility, or your systems people's, to restore those files to new hardware.

Only pay if we recover your data, on most jobs A free look first, then one figure in writing Media posted in from Croydon, Ealing and Camden

Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633

What the symptom usually means.

Different fault? Try the finder →
How it shows itselfThe usual reason for itWhere that leaves you
Server that never bootsThe controller has removed a second member, or the RAID set will not come back after a power eventLeave power off and mark the bays
NAS boots, but the share is gone or is read-onlyThe disks no longer agree on the layout, so the NAS reports an error rather than guessDo not let it initialise
A rebuild was started, and stopped part way throughA second disk failed while reading under load, and parity only ever covered oneStop, and send every one
Disks recovered after water damage or extreme heatWater and heat damage the connectors and boards; behind the seals, the platters usually remain intactBag them as found, get a quote first, then post today
Folders renamed and unreadable, with a note left beside each folderSomething encrypted the shares and stayed long enough to empty the snapshotsRemove network cable; leave power on
Nothing since the power returnedA spike through the board, and all disks on a single supply are affectedEntire set should be switched off
Packing it and posting it: get a quotation first (either via the telephone or with our online form), then make certain it is adequately padded so that it does not move around when it travels, and post it tracked and insured to our Guildford intake lab, or take it directly to us there, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed). We cover the postage costs for the trip home. Would you prefer to discuss packing the item with one of our engineers prior to sealing the package? Please call us. All aspects of how to pack and post it are detailed within the guide to packing and posting.

What decides a job of this size.

The load a rebuild puts on themThe entire surface of all the remaining disks is read, with parity recomputed and rewritten as the read progresses. For a set that has already lost a member, these disks have not seen such heavy usage in years, and now they see it at the worst time possible.
Where the array is describedNot in the enclosure. Every drive has a description of its own in a superblock, so a box that won't start is rarely where the matter finishes; the drives are removed and the volume is reassembled here instead.
Water, heat, mains electricityThe gentle version is a pipe that splits above a comms cupboard. Heat is worse, since solder and plastics fail long before an alloy casing does, and the board then becomes a part that has to be sourced. Worst to plan around is the mains, since electricity returns more roughly than it leaves, and a single spike travels along a shared supply into every disk on it.
Once ransomware has been throughShares get encrypted fast, and fast work is careless work. A snapshot the unit kept, volume shadow copies the software did not reach, originals unlinked rather than overwritten, long files encrypted only in stretches: a recoverable file list is put together from leavings like those. No payment is made from here, and no approach is made to anybody.

From the box arriving to your files going back.

Work we have closed →
01

Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free

As soon as your parcel arrives here, an engineer assigns a case number that same day, prior to determining what has really failed, which is the first thing done and costs you nothing. In addition to a note of what can and cannot be recovered from your drive, you will receive at the same time the fixed, written price for restoring what can be recovered. You can accept this quote, or decline it, which will result in no further obligation on your part and nothing owed to us.

Nothing to pay for lookingA single figure, put in writingNothing owed at this stage
02

Disks arrive bay-numbered

A server or a RAID set travels as bare drives, with their bay numbers written in marker before they leave the chassis; take the disks out of a NAS the same way if possible, otherwise the whole NAS may come, power supply included. Nothing is switched on here and no controller is invited to interpret anything. Bay order, and whatever has already been tried, is written down prior to touching any disk.

Bay order noted firstNo disk is switched on here
03

Each member cloned on its own

Each disk goes onto an imager of its own, the weakest first, with the read rate dropped right back wherever a head is labouring. Once the clones exist, your own drives are shelved and left alone.

Weakest member firstReads slowed where a head labours
04

Assembled over the clones

The order of the members, the stripe size and the parity rotation are all derived from the clones rather than believed from the card. The volume is put back together over those clones, the file tree is read out of it, and not one write reaches your drives.

Volume built over the copiesYour media is read, and only read
05

You see the file list before you pay

You will see what has been recovered as a list first, after which a bill exists. Accepting the list means that a bill will be issued. Rejecting the list means that a bill will not be issued, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. The recovered data travels from here back to you via new media purchased specifically for your project, with the cost of postage paid by us. Your case is not resolved (i.e., "closed") until you personally view the files on a computer of your own.

No charge until you accept the figureFresh media, supplied with the jobThe post home is ours

What arrives most often

  • It is the second failure that shows: a set can run a member short for months without the front panel ever mentioning it. The next disk to stop takes the volume with it.
  • A deleted share and a share that is simply gone are different problems: deleting a folder from a NAS or a server generally leaves the metadata describing it in place, and a database refusing to attach is far more often down to its header or its log than to the pages themselves. Look at both before the volume beneath them is rebuilt.
  • Most of the time it’s just the one machine nobody has bothered to replicate, like a workstation under someone’s desk holding all the drawings, a server in a cupboard or a NAS that everyone has mapped but no-one has ever opened. Where that is the job, the disks in front of us represent everything there is to be recovered, so nothing here will be turned on to see whether we can recover it.
  • The seal is where things stop: the pins, connectors and boards are exposed and take the brunt of any damage, while the housing the platters rotate within is sealed against any such thing happening and usually reads afterwards just as it did before. Do not try to dry it or power it up to test it.

Almost none of this is dramatic work. The actual hardware involved is very run of the mill too: a practice server in Clerkenwell that carries model files for a live project, a NAS holding the imaging in the basement of a Harley Street building, a studio desktop array out of an archway at Hackney Wick, or even the solitary workstation in a family business based in Whitechapel that nobody ever copied anything from. Most of these would normally end up as routine jobs. In nearly all cases it is what happens between the failure occurring and reaching the post office that determines which becomes something far less routine: how many times somebody attempted a rebuild, and how long a wet disk was left in a cupboard before anyone decided to bag it.

One job, followed all the way through.

LDN · ADR-2025-2891JOB LOGGED ✓

Nine months between the two failures, and the volume still came back whole

A joinery workshop outside Barnet had a four-bay Synology DS418 running above the bench, with RAID 5 across four 4TB drives, and for several years its fan pulled sawdust off a mitre saw. From January onwards one of the four members was logging bad sectors. Instead of answering the error messages, someone disabled email alerts. Nine months later another member failed, and the system indicated that the volume had failed. Across the top of the lid was already written in marker pen “new disk in”, “let it rebuild”, and that was the one instruction we refused, in writing. Both of the failing members’ head stacks were replaced, all four disks were imaged, and the volume went back together using those images.

All 4 members imaged first2 head stacks replaced

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Switch the set off and keep it off; do not allow it to continue attempting to rebuild, and do not initialise it
  • Label each disk with its corresponding bay number
  • Specify what controller it uses, its RAID level, and what has already been tried
  • Get a quote first, then post only the bare drives. If possible remove the disks from a NAS too (labelling them by bay), otherwise please feel free to send the whole unit

What sets us back

  • Initiating the rebuild again on the possibility that this pass may complete, by far the most common single reason a set ceases to be recoverable
  • Swapping disks between bays in an effort to isolate which member has failed
  • Allowing the card to perform initialisation on the set
  • Restoring or reinstalling onto those exact same disks

Questions answered before you commit.

Do you sell a disaster recovery plan?

No. Nor anything close to one: no backup software, no disaster recovery contract, no spare hardware stored, no out-of-hours rota. A plan is worth having and someone should be selling you one, either your own IT department or any third-party managed service provider. This number is the one to contact afterwards, when all that remains is the only surviving copy, sitting on hardware that refuses to yield it.

Shall we let it rebuild again?

No. Switch it off, and keep it off. Rebuilds read every surviving member from start to finish and write parity as they travel past, which is the highest amount of activity those disks have experienced in years, and it comes at precisely the worst moment imaginable, with one member missing. Label the bays, remove the disks and get a quote first (either by phone or with the form), then send them exactly as they are or drop them off at our Guildford intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed).

What does work of this size cost, and how long?

This webpage falls into our multi-disk category, which starts at £500 + VAT. To compare: a card or a stick costs £250 + VAT and a single drive costs £300 + VAT. There is only one price, given to you in writing, and chargeable work on our part begins only once you agree to it. Generally speaking, three to six working days after we receive your parcel is normal. On most jobs, you only pay if we recover your data.

What survives a ransomware incident?

Generally considerably more than the message displayed on the screen suggests. Encrypting a network during the hours of darkness is rushed, and rushed is sloppy: a snapshot kept automatically by the unit itself, volume shadow copies never reached by the encrypting software, original files unlinked rather than overwritten. These are the types of things a file list will be compiled from. No payment is made from here.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

The drive inside the machine → Disks taken out of a NAS box → Dropped and knocked drives → Every device we take →

Nothing gets worse while the power is off.

It doesn't cost you anything for us to look at it. All we do is give you a breakdown of what opened and what did not, plus a single fixed price to complete, written down before you agree to let us continue. On most jobs, you only pay if we recover your data. Please don't turn on the drive until you get that breakdown.

0203 0868633

Get it assessed Sending it to Guildford