A QNAP NAS ran two drives as RAID 0 for speed — a layout that keeps no redundancy at all — and went down when a member developed a fault. With striped data, both disks have to be readable. We repaired and imaged both, then reconstructed the stripe to recover the data.
The QNAP had been set up as RAID 0 across two drives to get the fastest possible storage for large video projects — and it held the only copy of them. When one drive developed a fault the whole volume went offline at once. RAID 0 offers no protection, so a single failing member takes everything with it, which is why the unit was powered down immediately and both drives brought in together.
RAID 0 splits data into stripes and spreads them across the drives with no parity and no mirror — it exists purely for speed and capacity. The trade-off is total: every file is interleaved across both disks, so if either becomes unreadable, the stripes stored on it are missing and the data can't be assembled. Recovering a failed RAID 0 therefore depends entirely on getting both members readable; there's no redundancy to fall back on. That makes careful imaging of the faulty drive the whole game.
The healthy drive was cloned in full. The faulty drive was assessed — its fault diagnosed and addressed in controlled clean-air conditions — and then imaged adaptively, securing the healthy majority first and working patiently over the weak areas to recover as many of its stripes as possible. The more of the faulty drive that could be read, the more of the striped data could ultimately be reassembled, so this stage was where the effort went.
With images of both drives, the RAID 0 layout was reconstructed: the stripe size, the disk order and the offset were derived from analysing the raw data and confirmed against known file-system structures. The stripes were then reassembled in the correct order into a single volume, the file system rebuilt, and the video projects and archives extracted. Where a small number of stripes from the faulty drive couldn't be read, the affected files were identified precisely.
Files were opened across the recovered set to confirm they were usable, then returned on fresh media. About 94% came back — a strong result for a no-redundancy array with a physically faulty member. We were direct about the lesson: RAID 0 is fast but fragile, effectively doubling the risk of loss, and anything kept on it needs a real, separate backup.
Clean-air physical repair of the faulty member · adaptive imaging · RAID 0 stripe, order and offset reconstruction. Physical work and imaging carried out in-house in Belfast.
Send it to us for a free, no-obligation diagnostic. We’ll tell you what can be recovered and put a fixed price in writing before any work starts — and on most jobs, if we can’t get your data back, there’s nothing to pay. Post your device in, or drop it to us by appointment.
It depends on getting the failed drive readable, since RAID 0 keeps no redundancy — the data is striped across both disks. If the faulty drive can be repaired and imaged, even partially, we can reconstruct most or all of the volume. Send both drives, labelled with their order.
No — RAID 0 is built for speed, not safety. It has no redundancy, so any single drive failure takes the whole volume down. If you use it, keep a separate backup of anything important.
RAID and multi-disk recoveries start from £500 plus VAT, with a fixed written quote after a free diagnostic. Physical repairs carry a deposit toward parts and bench time.