Maidenhead Data Recovery – No.1 RAID 5 & RAID 10 Recovery Specialists (25+ Years)

No redundancy? Wrong level. Wrong rebuild? Wrong day.
When a RAID fails, the margin for error is tiny. For 25+ years we’ve recovered RAID 5 (single parity) and RAID 10 (striped mirrors) for home, SMB, enterprise and public sector—from compact NAS to dense rack servers.

Talk to our RAID engineers for a free diagnostic today. We use forensically safe workflows (image-first, read-only), capture full configuration metadata, and never write to originals.

Platforms & Vendors We Recover

• Appliances/NAS: Synology, QNAP, Netgear, Buffalo, WD, TerraMaster, Asustor, Thecus, Drobo, LaCie, LenovoEMC/Iomega, Zyxel, TrueNAS/iXsystems, HPE MicroServer, Ugreen, and more.

• Rack servers / controllers: Dell EMC (PERC), HPE (Smart Array), Lenovo/IBM (ServeRAID), LSI/Avago/Broadcom MegaRAID, Adaptec (Microchip), Areca, HighPoint, Promise (VTrak/Pegasus), Supermicro, ASUS, Gigabyte, Cisco UCS, Fujitsu, etc.

• Member disks: Seagate, Western Digital (WD), Toshiba, Samsung, HGST, Crucial/Micron, Intel, SanDisk (WD), ADATA, Kingston, Corsair, Maxtor, Fujitsu (HDD/SSD/NVMe).

Widely-Deployed UK NAS Brands (Representative Models)

We recover all makes/models. The list below reflects common units we see in UK cases (consumer → SMB → enterprise).

1. Synology – DiskStation DS923+, DS423+; RackStation RS1221+

2. QNAP – TS-464, TVS-h674; rack TS-1277XU-RP

3. Western Digital (WD) – My Cloud EX2 Ultra, PR4100

4. Asustor – Lockerstor AS6704T, Nimbustor AS5202T

5. TerraMaster – F4-423, T9-423

6. Buffalo – TeraStation 3420DN, 7120r

7. Netgear – ReadyNAS RN424, 4312X

8. Drobo (legacy) – 5N2, B810n

9. LaCie – 2big NAS, 5big Network (legacy)

10. LenovoEMC/Iomega – ix4-300d, px4-300d

11. Thecus – N4810, N5810PRO

12. Zyxel – NAS542, NAS520

13. TrueNAS (iXsystems) – Mini X, R10 (CORE/SCALE)

14. HPE MicroServer – Gen10 Plus (DIY NAS)

15. Ugreen – NASync DXP4800/6800

Rack Servers/Arrays Commonly Configured for RAID-5/10 (Representative Models)

1. Dell EMC – PowerEdge R740xd/R750xs; PowerVault/Unity disk shelves

2. HPE – ProLiant DL380 Gen10/Gen11; MSA SAN arrays

3. Lenovo – ThinkSystem SR650/SR630

4. Supermicro – SuperStorage 6049/6029 families

5. ASUS – RS720-E10 series

6. Gigabyte – R272/R282 families

7. Fujitsu – Primergy RX2540

8. Cisco – UCS C240 M-series

9. Huawei – FusionServer Pro 2288H

10. Inspur – NF5280 series

11. Synology – RackStation RS4021xs+

12. QNAP – TS-1677XU, TS-1232XU-RP

13. Promise – VTrak E-Series

14. Areca – ARC-1886 family (with JBODs)

15. NetApp – FAS/AFF used with host-side RAID10 LUNs in some deployments

Our RAID-5 / RAID-10 Recovery Workflow (Engineer-Grade)

1. Intake & Preservation – Photograph chassis/bays; record port map; dump controller NVRAM; label disk WWNs/SNs. Originals are quarantined post-imaging.

2. Hardware Imaging (each member) – PC-3000/DeepSpar/Atola with head-maps, adaptive timeouts, reverse passes; per-disk bad-block maps; current-limited power.

3. Parameter Discovery – Detect RAID level, order, stripe/chunk size, parity rotation (RAID-5), mirror pairs (RAID-10), start offsets, 512e/4Kn, and any HPA/DCO truncation.

4. Virtual Assembly – Build a read-only virtual array from images; brute-test permutations; validate against filesystem anchors (GPT, NTFS $Boot/MFT, EXT/XFS superblocks, Btrfs).

5. Parity/Mirror Strategy

   • RAID-5: Solve stripes with a single missing/weak member using parity; reconcile inconsistent regions across rebuild breakpoints.

   • RAID-10: Select the best half per mirror set (freshest/good image); reconstruct the RAID0 over surviving halves; handle hole mapping where a mirror set is fully lost.

6. Logical & Application Repair – Rebuild GPT/MD/LVM, fix NTFS/HFS+/APFS/EXT/XFS/Btrfs; repair VMFS/ReFS; re-index media containers (MP4/MOV/MXF) and DBs where feasible.

7. Verification & Delivery – Hash manifests; sample-open critical assets; export via secure download or client-supplied media.

40 RAID-5 & RAID-10 Failures We Recover — and How We Do It

A) Member Disk Hardware (HDD/SSD/NVMe)

1. Head crash (HDD) → Donor HSA swap; migrate ROM/adaptives; per-head imaging; integrate into parity/mirror logic.

2. Spindle seizure / motor fault → Platter/hub transplant; full clone; resume parity/mirror reconstruction.

3. Severe media defects → Multi-pass imaging with dynamic timeouts; reverse LBA; map unreadables; RAID-5 parity fills single-member gaps; RAID-10 relies on opposite half.

4. PCB/TVS short / preamp failure → TVS/regulator repair or donor PCB + ROM; if preamp dead, HSA swap; image.

5. SA/translator damage (HDD) → Patch SA modules; rebuild translator; unlock LBA; resume clone.

6. SSD controller brick → Vendor/test mode; if package-based: chip-off, ECC/XOR/FTL rebuild; image plaintext LBA space.

7. NAND wear / high BER → Voltage/temperature tuning; BCH/LDPC soft-decode; multi-read majority voting.

8. SED/encryption on member → Requires valid keys; unlock then image; ciphertext is unusable without keys.

B) Controller / Metadata / Topology

9. RAID controller failure → Image all members directly; parse controller metadata; virtualize the array (PERC/Smart Array/MegaRAID/Adaptec/Areca).

10. Lost configuration / foreign import → Derive parameters from on-disk metadata; avoid writing configs; assemble virtually and verify FS integrity.

11. Wrong disk order re-insertion → Permutation testing; parity-consistency checks (RAID-5) and directory coherence to lock order/offsets.

12. HPA/DCO on one member → Remove/pad in copy; realign to stripe boundaries.

13. 512e/4Kn mismatch across members → Normalise sector geometry in virtual layer; maintain chunk alignment.

14. Cache module/BBU failure → Accept lost write window; parity reconcile; run logical repair on the reconstructed volume.

C) Parity / Mirror Specific

15. RAID-5 single drive failed → Clone all; assemble degraded; verify; proactively extract (avoid URE during live rebuild).

16. RAID-5 rebuild abort (URE on survivor) → Clone survivor with UREs; parity-solve stripes; only stripes with two missing elements are at risk.

17. RAID-5 dual failure (beyond tolerance) → Deep-image both “failed” disks; parity-solve where at least one contributes per stripe; quantify any unrecoverable stripes.

18. Parity write-hole (unclean shutdown) → Stripe audit; recompute parity from data; correct parity in the virtual set; then logical repair.

19. RAID-10 one disk per mirror failed → Use the good half of each mirror; rebuild the RAID0; typically full recovery.

20. RAID-10 both disks in a mirror failed → Hole-map that stripe region; recover unaffected files fully; partials flagged; targeted carving around holes.

D) Rebuild / Migration / Expansion Issues

21. Rebuild to hot spare failed mid-way → Image all members incl. spare; compute rebuild cut-over; mix pre/post stripes accordingly.

22. Online capacity expansion incomplete → Detect stripe-width transition; reconstruct pre-/post-expand segments; merge data views.

23. Level migration glitch (5→6 or 1→10 in stages) → Identify migration epoch; simulate pre/post layouts; extract best-consistency image.

24. Controller firmware bug corrupting parity → Identify anomaly pattern; recalc parity; override virtually; validate with FS checks.

25. Stale disk reintroduced → Content diff per member; prefer freshest blocks; exclude stale regions; rebuild accordingly.

26. Mixed array sets (drives swapped across arrays) → Group by metadata/WWN; assemble each set separately; verify.

E) File System / Volume

27. GPT/MBR wiped → Signature scan; rebuild partition map virtually; mount RO; extract.

28. NTFS $MFT/$LogFile damage → Rebuild from mirror/bitmap; carve when needed; preserve timestamps/paths.

29. EXT4/XFS journal corruption → Journal replay or safe repair on clone; XFS xfs_repair -L as last resort; copy-out.

30. Btrfs (Synology) degraded/metadata issues → Assemble MD/LVM; btrfs restore/select-super; read-only mount; extract.

31. VMFS datastore on RAID → Rebuild array; mount VMFS; export VMs; if VMFS corrupt, carve VMDKs and re-assemble.

32. ReFS on Windows servers → Export via read-only tools; recover integrity streams; copy to new target.

F) Virtualisation / Stacked RAID

33. Guest software RAID inside VMs → Recover VMDK/VHDX; assemble guest MD/dynamic RAID from images; mount guest FS and extract.

34. iSCSI/NFS LUN files on NAS → Rebuild NAS RAID; locate LUN containers; mount inside; recover guest FS.

35. Storage Spaces over hardware RAID → Parse pool metadata; map logical→physical; reconstruct virtual disk; recover NTFS/ReFS.

36. ZFS pool on RAID10 shelves → Clone members; import RO; roll back to consistent TXG; copy datasets.

G) Operations / Human Factors

37. Wrong disk replaced / good disk pulled → Use image of the wrongly removed (fresh) disk; exclude truly bad; re-assemble.

38. Unsafe shutdown loops → Stabilise power/thermals; image first; parity reconcile; run FS repair only on clones.

39. Malware/ransomware on RAID volume → Reconstruct volume; decrypt with keys if available; else recover pre-encryption snapshots/versions/unallocated.

40. Post-failure “DIY” attempts (initialise/re-create) → Ignore new labels; search for original metadata/deep FS anchors; assemble to pre-change state.

Why Our Outcomes Are Strong

• Imaging-first discipline: originals are never a workspace.

• Controller-agnostic virtualisation: we reconstruct arrays without the original controller.

• Parity/mirror analytics: stripe-by-stripe validation to pick the best data source.

• Filesystem fluency: NTFS/EXT/XFS/Btrfs/VMFS/ReFS/APFS/HFS+ repair on top of the rebuilt array.

• Transparent reporting: bad-block maps, stripe health, and hash manifests provided with deliverables.

Send-In / Drop-Off

Remove the disks (label the exact bay order) or ship the entire chassis if you prefer. Pack drives individually in anti-static bags with padding; place everything in a small box or padded envelope with your contact details. Post or drop off—both accepted.

Ready to start?

Contact our Maidenhead RAID engineers for a free diagnostic.
We’ll stabilise the media, reconstruct the array virtually, and extract your data with maximum completeness and integrity.