NAS data recovery for Synology, QNAP and TrueNAS

Most Synology data recovery and QNAP data recovery jobs start the same way. The NAS reports a problem, and someone tries to fix it from the admin page. Asustor and TrueNAS units fail the same way. These are the cases we see most:

• Degraded or crashed volume. “Degraded” means a disk dropped out and the volume is running without redundancy. “Crashed” usually means more than one member has problems or the volume metadata is damaged. Either way, the data is still on the disks until something writes over it.
• Failed rebuild after a disk swap. One disk fails, you insert a new one, and the rebuild stops partway or a second disk drops out. A rebuild is the heaviest read the remaining disks will ever do. If one of them was already weak, that is when it gives up.
• SHR. Synology Hybrid RAID lets you mix disk sizes by building several RAID sets across partitions and joining them into one volume. When it breaks, there are several layers to put back, and every one has to line up.
• A firmware update gone wrong. A DSM or QTS update stalls, the unit stops booting, or the volume shows as missing afterward. The data partitions are usually still intact. Reinstalling the operating system or resetting the unit is not the fix.
• Ransomware. Shares get encrypted over the network, and sometimes snapshots are deleted too. What can be recovered depends on what the attack left on the disks.

Most of the damage we see on NAS units happens after the first fault, during well-meant repair attempts. The steps below keep your options open.

• Power the NAS down. Use the admin page if it still responds. Don’t keep rebooting it hoping the volume mounts.
• Label every disk with its slot number before you pull anything: bay 1, bay 2, and so on. A photo of the bays helps too.
• Don’t click Repair, Initialize or Create Volume. Initializing writes new metadata over the old.
• Don’t swap bays or reorder the disks to see if that helps.
• Don’t put the disks in a new NAS. A new enclosure may see a foreign set and offer to initialize it.
• Don’t start another rebuild, and don’t run chkdsk, fsck or recovery software on any member.
• Write down what happened and in what order: which disk failed first, whether a rebuild started, and what the NAS showed.

Bring every disk from the NAS, including the ones that still look healthy. Parity and stripe order are spread across the whole set, so the failed disk alone is not enough. Bring the enclosure too if you can. It helps us confirm the model, firmware and layout.

Here is what to have ready:

• All disks, labeled by slot
• The NAS enclosure, if possible
• The volume password if the volume was encrypted. We can reconstruct an encrypted volume, but we can’t unlock it without your key.
• A short note: NAS model, RAID or SHR type if you know it, number of disks, which one failed, and whether a rebuild started
• The folders that matter most, so we check those first

All recovery work happens at our head office and lab, 10015 Old Columbia Rd, Suite B 215, Columbia, MD 21046. Walk in Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Our Tysons, VA office at 8300 Boone Blvd, Suite 513 is by appointment. You can also ship the disks to us free both ways. Pickup is available too; call or use the form for details. On-site diagnostics are also available, call for details.

NAS recovery is a read job, not a repair job. We never rebuild on your original disks. Every step after cloning happens on copies.

• Free evaluation. We identify each disk, check its condition and tell you what the job involves. You get a fixed quote before any paid work.
• Clone every member. Each disk is imaged with hardware that retries gently, including disks the NAS marked failed. A clicking disk still holds blocks the others don’t have. Disks that need physical work are handled in our clean room.
• Reconstruct the volume from the clones. We work out disk order, stripe size and parity, then rebuild the RAID or SHR layers in software, followed by the filesystem on top: Btrfs or ext4 on Synology and QNAP, ZFS on TrueNAS.
• Recover the files. We check the folders you named on the assembled volume and copy them off.
• Verified delivery on new media. You get your files on new media, checked against the list you gave us.

RAID and NAS jobs usually take 3–7 days after all disks arrive.

Evaluation is free. You get a fixed quote before any paid work. No data, no charge: if we can’t recover the files you need, you don’t pay a recovery fee. DiskDoctor has been recovering data since 1991, with more than 15,000 cases recovered, a 95% success rate and an ISO 9001 certified lab.

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