Every badge, and what runs underneath
NAS manufacturers we recover. The dashboard is the maker's. The drives are Linux.
Nearly every NAS is a small Linux computer that joins its drives with the kernel's own software RAID and puts ext4, Btrfs or XFS on top; the exceptions run ZFS, or in Drobo's case a layout of their own. The badge decides the names and the dashboard, the dialect the unit fails in, and the events that have hit that brand's owners. The method underneath is the same: every drive imaged, the set rebuilt from the images, the file system repaired on the virtual volume. Find your brand below. A single-drive unit is £300 + VAT, any set is £500 + VAT upwards, and four bays, rack units and larger arrays start at £1,250 + VAT, with the figure in writing after the free look.
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Which badge runs which stack.
A to Z, every brand with a page.
Not on the list? Tell us the badge →Why the badge matters less than what was clicked.
Two things decide how a NAS job turns out, and the make is neither of them. The first is what has actually failed: a drive, two drives, the unit, the file system, the boot flash, or somebody's access to the internet-facing login. The second is what was done about it between the failure and the parcel: a rebuild attempted on a set whose survivors were the same age as the drive that died, a check or repair run against a damaged volume, a reinstall that put a fresh system over the drives, a factory reset that did what it said, a set moved to another unit that offered to initialise it.
The pages here are organised by brand because that is what you know, and written around the stack underneath and the events that have hit that brand's owners, with dates and sources, because that is what the bench needs and what the forums get wrong. Each says which of the maker's own remedies is safe and which is not: Buffalo's instruction to format the drive on E22, TerraMaster's advice to reset and format after ransomware, Synology's Recoverable, Netgear's Remove inactive volumes.
None of the makers runs a recovery laboratory. Synology's own note on a crashed pool is that it can no longer be repaired by the user; QNAP's one documented exception was its Qlocker assistance in 2021, which formatted an external drive and came with no guarantee; Netgear left the NAS business in 2022 and Drobo's parent was liquidated in 2023. The route back is the bench, and it is a good one.
The questions that come up first.
My brand is not listed. Can you still recover it?
Yes. If it is a Linux box with drives in it, it is on this list in every way that matters. Tell us the badge and the model on the form; the free look reads the layout from the drives.
Does the brand change the price?
No; the number of drives does. A single-drive unit is £300 + VAT, any set is £500 + VAT upwards, and four bays, rack units and larger arrays start at £1,250 + VAT.
Which brands encrypt?
Synology, QNAP, Asustor and TerraMaster offer folder or volume encryption you turn on; Buffalo's and ReadyNAS's encrypted units use a key; TrueNAS encrypts datasets. None encrypts by default, and every one needs the key you set.
Should I use the maker's own repair first?
Only if every drive is healthy and you have a backup. On a set with a weak drive, the repair reads the bad sectors that finish it. The free look here costs nothing and says which you have.
Not on the list?
Tell us the badge and the model. If it is a Linux box with drives in it, it is on the list in every way that matters, and the first look is free.