A photography studio's six-bay Drobo offline after two members failed at once — one of them mechanically. Head-stack work on the casualties, then the proprietary array rebuilt outside the enclosure.
A wedding photography business lost access to its six-bay Drobo when two disks dropped out within a short period of each other. The dashboard reported the volume as unavailable, and one of the failed disks was audibly grinding — a scraping, cyclical noise rather than the sharper click of a head park. On the unit sat years of client albums, raw files and delivered edits, much of it work that could never be reshot.
The grinding disk was never powered again after arrival. Opened under filtered clean air, it showed a failed head-stack with visible surface scoring on the affected platter — the noise had been the sliders dragging where they should have been flying. The second failed member was electrically sound but had accumulated enough unreadable sectors that the Drobo had ejected it from the pool. The remaining four disks were healthy. Drobo's BeyondRAID is not a standard RAID level, so the layout could not be assumed — it had to be derived.
The mechanically failed disk was fitted with a matched donor head-stack and imaged in short, controlled passes, prioritising the regions the volume needed most; a scored platter will not give up everything, and pushing it simply widens the damage. The second casualty was imaged with aggressive retry limits and skipped regions logged. All six members were then imaged read-only, and the Drobo layout — block distribution, redundancy pattern and the metadata that maps blocks to the logical volume — was reconstructed from those images rather than from the appliance, which was never asked to rebuild anything.
Recovered images were verified by opening them, with raw files checked against their embedded previews and the folder structure matched to the studio's own catalogue so missing items could be named rather than merely counted. Files that fell within the scored region of the crashed platter were reported individually.
About 95% of the volume returned, including the complete client albums and the overwhelming majority of raw originals. The shortfall was concentrated where the head crash had scored the platter surface — damage that predated our involvement and could not be undone. The studio delivered its outstanding client work. The wider lesson was blunt: a redundant unit is not a backup, and a NAS that has already lost one disk is running without a safety net until that disk is replaced.
For a NAS or a Drobo, either the whole unit or the disks in bay order is fine — but the bay order matters, so label them before they leave. Don't run a rebuild, don't reinsert a disk that has been ejected, and if any disk is making noise, leave it powered down. NAS and RAID recovery starts from £500 +VAT; physical drive-level work carries a 50% deposit, with the balance due only on success.
Get the device to us for a free diagnostic and a quick note on what went wrong — an engineer looks it over and puts your exact quote in writing before anything is started.
The route to your data starts with the device reaching us. Box it up securely, tuck your contact details inside, and send it across — after the free diagnostic, we put your exact price in writing before a single step is taken.
Sending it by post? Go with a tracked, insured service. Prefer to bring it round? Our door is open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm — just pack the device as described above beforehand.
Prefer to get a sense of things first? Complete the form with a bit more about the fault and an engineer will look it over and send back a tailored quote.
We’ll get back to you soon. Anything pressing, call 01865 593000.
Usually yes. The disks are removed, imaged read-only and the array reconstructed outside the enclosure, so a failed NAS controller or power supply stops being the obstacle. Proprietary layouts such as Drobo's BeyondRAID are derived from the images rather than read from the appliance.
Either is fine for a NAS — the unit itself or the disks in bay order. If you remove them, label each one with its bay number first, because that order matters for reconstruction. Don't run a repair or rebuild from the NAS interface before sending.
NAS, RAID and server recovery starts from £500 plus VAT, confirmed in a written quote after a free 48-hour diagnostic. Where physical drive work is required we take a 50% deposit, with the balance due only on a successful recovery.
Kick off with an instant online quote, or ring us and talk it through first. Either way you’ll know a clear, fixed price before any work starts.