Message first
What the NAS is saying, and what to do tonight. The dialects differ. The first move does not.
A NAS says what is wrong in its own dialect: a Synology says Crashed or Degraded, a QNAP says Unmounted, a ReadyNAS says Volume dead, a Buffalo blinks E14, a WD goes red, a TrueNAS says the pool cannot be imported. Underneath, they are all describing one of a handful of things, and the right first move is the same for every one of them. Find yours below. A single-drive NAS is £300 + VAT, a set is £500 + VAT upwards, fixed in writing after the free look, and on most jobs no data means no bill.
Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
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What the dashboard says, or what the lights and the network say.
Rather begin with the kind of unit →What the dashboard says
Synology volume crashedSynology's own note: you can no longer repair it yourself. The data is usually intact; the pool is rebuilt from images→Synology storage pool degradedOne drive down, the pool still readable. Copy what matters, then power down; do not fit a new drive→Synology system partition failedDSM's copies are out of step. Harmless on healthy drives; a warning on weak ones→QNAP volume unmountedA state, not a verdict. Do not run Check File System before the drives are imaged→QNAP Deadbolt and QlockerRansom page on the login, .deadbolt files or 7z archives. Pull the cable; snapshots and deleted originals→ReadyNAS volume deadNever click Remove inactive volumes. The X-RAID set is rebuilt from images→What the lights and the network say
WD My Cloud red lightDrive or boot, rarely the photographs. Content unavailable after an OS 5 update is the classic→My Book Live wipedThe June 2021 remote reset. The data area usually survives beneath it→Buffalo E14, E16, E22The manual says format the drive on E22. Do not, if the files matter→NAS not showing on the networkCable, IP, one reboot; then the LEDs. If they show a fault, stop there→Beeping, orange or red lightsWhat each make's lights and beeps mean, and which ones mean power down now→ZFS pool will not importDo not use -F. The pool imports read-only from images at an earlier transaction→The one rule under all of them.
Every message on this page is the unit's way of saying that a drive has dropped out, the file system has stopped making sense, or the system that ran it all has gone. None of them means the data is gone. What loses the data is what happens next: a rebuild that reads every sector of a survivor that is nearly as worn as the drive that failed, a repair that writes to a file system it does not fully understand, a reinstall that puts a fresh system over the drives, a factory reset that does what it says.
So the first move is the same whatever the dialect. Copy anything critical that is still readable, once, and only if the unit is still serving it. Then power it down, write the bay number on each drive before it comes out, and send the set. The bench images every drive, rebuilds the set from the images, and repairs the file system on the virtual volume, where nothing can be lost by trying. The pages above say the same thing in each make's own words, and add what its own manual gets wrong.
The questions that come up first.
Is a crashed volume really unrecoverable?
Synology's note says you can no longer repair it yourself, which is different. The drives usually hold the data intact; the pool is reassembled from images on the bench.
The NAS is degraded but still working. Should I keep it on?
Long enough to copy the files that matter, then power it down. Every hour on a degraded set is an hour a second drive can fail, and the rebuild is what usually finds it.
Can I use the maker's repair or check?
Only when 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.
What does it cost?
A single-drive NAS is £300 + VAT; any set is £500 + VAT upwards; four bays, rack units and larger arrays from £1,250 + VAT. Fixed in writing after the free look.
Not on the list?
Copy out what the dashboard says, or photograph the lights, and send it with the form. An engineer places it faster than any menu, and asking is free.