A disk failure left a ReadyNAS volume offline - recovered by imaging the members and rebuilding the array off the hardware.
A design agency's Netgear ReadyNAS dropped a disk and afterwards the volume refused to come back online, taking the studio's shared project store with it. ReadyNAS units lay their data out using X-RAID across the disks with a btrfs file system on top, and once that array is degraded and won't mount, trying to repair it in place — or worse, reinserting or replacing disks and letting it attempt its own recovery — is the quickest way to lose the lot.
We assessed each disk individually rather than touching the live array. One member had failed, while the others were healthy but held an array that had been knocked into a degraded, unmountable state by the failure. As with any multi-disk system, the safe path is to copy every disk first and do the actual reconstruction away from the original hardware.
Each member was removed and imaged individually — the failed one on a DeepSpar Disk Imager to pull the maximum from a struggling drive, with the PC3000 for any firmware-level work. From the images we reassembled the X-RAID array in software, recovered its parameters and rebuilt the layout, then mounted the btrfs file system to read the data out. Working from images meant the original disks were never written to, so there was no risk of the reconstruction itself causing further loss.
From the rebuilt volume we confirmed the agency's projects, client assets and archives opened correctly, then returned everything on fresh media.
The agency's full shared store — active projects, client assets and archives — was recovered and returned after seven working days, with nothing written to the original disks. The wider point is the one we make about every NAS: redundancy protects against a single disk failing, but it is not a substitute for a backup, because the array as a whole can still go down.
DeepSpar DDI · PC3000 — imaging and recovery carried out in-house. Every job is imaged before any recovery work begins, and the original media is never written to.
Send us your device for a free diagnostic, and tell us a little about what happened — an engineer will review it and confirm your exact quote in writing before any work begins.
Recovering your data starts with getting the device to us. Pack it safely, add your contact details, and send it over — after we run a free diagnostic, we’ll confirm your exact price in writing before any work begins.
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Yes — Synology, QNAP, Netgear and others. We image every disk read-only and rebuild the SHR, X-RAID or Btrfs volume away from the box, never on the original disks.
From £500 plus VAT, no fix, no fee on most jobs, with a fixed written quote first.
No — a rebuild is when most data is lost. Power it down, remove the disks labelled in order, and send them to us.
Start with an instant online quote, or call and talk it through with us first. You'll have a clear, fixed price before any work begins.