Dead PSU · dead board · no lights · boot flash worn out
NAS units die like any other small computer: the power supply gives out, a capacitor on the board fails, the memory goes, a QNAP's boot flash chip wears through, a Drobo's board stops. The drives inside are usually untouched, and the question is not whether the data survives but how the set is put back together without the unit that arranged it. On Synology, QNAP, ReadyNAS and most others, the arrangement is written on the drives themselves in mdadm and LVM metadata, and the set is reassembled from the images without the unit at all. On Drobo the layout is the unit's own and is reconstructed from the images. A single-drive unit is £300 + VAT and a set is £500 + VAT upwards after the free look, fixed in writing.
Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
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| What you see | The usual reason for it | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| No lights at all | Power supply | Supply tested; drives imaged |
| Boots and stops | Board, memory, or PSU under load | Drives imaged; set assembled from images |
| QNAP: boot loop or no system | Worn boot flash | Data partitions assembled directly |
| Drobo: no lights | Drobo board | BeyondRAID reconstructed from images |
| Same model bought; drives migrated; volume missing | A drive with a fault, or the new unit installed | Assembled from images around the damage |
A case number goes on the parcel and a number on every drive the day it is opened, and an engineer settles what has actually happened before anything spins. The unit is examined on its own; each drive is assessed on our own equipment, never in a NAS that will try to rebuild. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.
A dead unit's power supply is tested first, then the board, because a dead supply with healthy drives is a short job. The drives are read on the bench on their own, and the metadata on them describes the set the unit no longer can.
Nothing is worked on live and nothing is rebuilt on the originals. Every drive in the set is imaged sector by sector, the weak ones head by head with the bad areas last, and the SSD cache with them where there is one. From then on the originals are not touched again.
Order, chunk size, parity rotation and the reshape point are read from the drives' own metadata and the array is reassembled in software: mdadm and LVM under SHR, X-RAID and QTS pools; a ZFS pool imported read-only; Drobo's BeyondRAID zones reconstructed. The file system, Btrfs, ext4, XFS or ZFS, is repaired on the virtual volume, and encrypted volumes are unlocked there with the key you supply. Never on the originals.
What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge at all. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have opened the files on a machine of your own.
The unit's boot flash had worn out and it would not start. The four drives were imaged on the bench, the QTS storage pool assembled from the images with its thin volume mapped, and the ext4 file system mounted from the virtual volume. The firm was working again by the Thursday, on a new unit with the recovered data.
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine caseAlmost never. The drives hold the data and, on most makes, the description of how they were joined. The set is reassembled from the images without the unit.
On Synology and QNAP, usually, if every drive is healthy and the order is kept. If any drive has a fault, the new unit tries to repair or reinstall over it. Ask first; the free look is free.
Send it. Its supply is tested, its board may hold an encryption key, and on a Drobo it held the layout.
£300 + VAT for a single-drive unit, £500 + VAT upwards for a set, after the free look, fixed in writing.
3–4 days at the bench for one drive; 5–10 days at the bench for a set.
Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the unit off and the drives in their bays.