One thing to know first
Not an emergency, but don't let anything try to fix it yet.
A device that is silent and cool is not degrading while it sits there, so there is no clock running on the hardware. The risk here is the next action rather than the passage of time: initialising the disk when prompted, letting a repair tool write a new partition table, or reformatting to make it usable will each overwrite the map to your files. Decline every offer to fix, repair or initialise until you know which fault you have.
Often fixable yourself
NAS not showing up
A NAS in this state is very often something you can resolve yourself, at no cost, and this page tells you how before it tells you anything about us. Where that doesn't work, the rest explains what the fault usually is and what recovery involves.
What this usually turns out to be
Two very different things are described the same way. Either the unit is not appearing on the network, which is usually an address or a service problem and has nothing to do with your data, or the unit is up and its volume is not mounting, which means the array is not assembling from its members. The second case is where care matters: the arrangement binding the disks together is stored on the disks, and it is that arrangement rather than any single disk which is most often the thing that has been lost.
An array is a set of member disks plus the arrangement that binds them. Losing the arrangement loses the data even when every disk is healthy.
Cable, port or enclosure faultbetter news
The single commonest cause, and entirely benign. The device behind the failed connection is untouched.
Partition table or boot sector damagebetter news
The drive is healthy and the files are all present, but the index that points to them is corrupt, so the operating system sees unallocated space.
Filesystem the operating system doesn't recognisebetter news
A drive formatted on a Mac, a Linux box, or a NAS will often appear unreadable or empty on Windows while being perfectly intact.
Controller or translation-layer failure
On flash media, the controller that maps files onto the memory has failed. The memory is intact but nothing can reach it without specialist work.
Degrading or failing media
The device is present but cannot complete the reads needed to identify itself. This is the case where time and power do matter.
What to check first on a NAS
- Separate the two cases first. Can you reach the unit's admin page by IP address, or find it with the manufacturer's discovery tool? A unit you can log into has a volume problem, not a network one.
- If you can log in, read the storage manager and record exactly which members it sees and what state it assigns each one.
- Label every disk with its bay number before removing anything from the chassis.
What not to do
Do not accept any offer to create, repair, initialise or recover the volume, and do not reset the unit to factory settings to clear the error. Those actions rewrite the array metadata, and an array whose arrangement has been overwritten is a substantially harder and more expensive job than one that merely failed to assemble.
Try this before you pay anyone
Separate the two faults before touching any disk
- Establish whether the unit itself is unreachable or the volume is not mounting. Try reaching the admin page by IP address, or find the unit with the manufacturer's discovery tool.
- If you can log in, open the storage manager and write down exactly which members it can see and what state it gives each one.
- Photograph the front of the unit and label every disk with its bay number before removing any of them. The disk order is part of the data.
Do not put the member disks into a computer one at a time to check them. A single disk out of an array carries no readable filesystem on its own, so each one will present as unformatted and Windows will offer to initialise it. Accepting that on even one member damages the arrangement that binds the set together, which is usually the hardest part of the job to rebuild.
How recoverable this is
The most optimistic group on this page taken as a whole. A large share are connection or filesystem faults where the data was never in danger, and a good number of those the reader resolves themselves in ten minutes at no cost. The cases that are genuinely media or controller failures are a different job, and the checks below separate them without risk.
What moves it, for your device specifically:
- Whether the device is detected at any level: BIOS, Disk Management, or not at all
- Whether anything has already written to it, including an initialise or a repair
- Whether the underlying media is healthy or degrading
- Whether the array members are all present and spinning, or one has dropped out silently
We will not give you a percentage for your device, and you should be wary of anyone who does. Nobody can know what is recoverable until the media has been imaged and read. What is above describes this class of failure; your drive gets its own answer after an assessment, in writing, at no cost.
What it costs
from $690
RAID, NAS and servers
Arrays rebuilt from the member disks rather than trusting the controller that failed. Any filesystem, including ext4, Btrfs, ZFS and VMFS.
What moves a job within its band: capacity, how much of the media is unstable, whether the filesystem is encrypted, and how much of the drive has to be read before the files you need are reachable. You get one fixed figure after the assessment and it does not move afterwards. If we can’t recover what matters to you, there is no recovery fee.
Other faults on a NAS
Next step
Tell us what failed.
Free assessment. Fixed quote before recovery starts. No recovery, no fee. Sydney drop-off or Australia-wide by tracked post.