Reading Data Recovery — UK No.1 RAID-0 Data Recovery Specialists (25+ years)

From two-disk stripes to 32-disk high-throughput arrays, our RAID-0 recovery workflow is engineered for cases where there is no parity safety-net. We stabilise every member drive, take hardware-level images, virtually reconstruct stripe geometry (order, rotation, stripe size, offsets), then repair the upper storage stack (volume manager, file system, iSCSI/VMFS, databases) on read-only clones. Originals are never written to. Package each drive in an anti-static bag inside a padded envelope or small box with your details; you can post or drop-off—we’ll provide a free diagnostic.

Our engineering workflow (what we actually do)

1. Forensic intake & isolation – Photograph cabling and slot order; export controller/NAS configs; block all writes; inventory any encryption (BitLocker/LUKS/SED).
2. Stabilise & clone each member – Hardware imagers (PC-3000, Atola, Deepspar) with current-limited power, per-head zoning for HDDs, admin-command imaging for NVMe/SSD; PCB/ROM swaps, head-stack/motor work, or SSD FTL reconstruction happen before cloning.
3. Virtual RAID-0 assembly – Infer order/rotation/stripe size/offsets by correlation and entropy scoring; build a read-only virtual block device across images.
4. Logical rebuild – Reconstruct containers (LVM, mdadm, Storage Spaces, CoreStorage/APFS, ZFS/Btrfs zvols) and file systems (NTFS, XFS, EXT, ReFS, HFS+, APFS, exFAT); repair iSCSI LUNs/VMFS/VHDX/VMDK.
5. Verification & delivery – SHA-256 manifests, targeted sample-open tests (critical files first), and secure hand-over.

Important reality (RAID-0): if any member’s user-data area is unrecoverable, file recovery is limited to fragments that do not intersect those missing stripes. Our job is to maximise readable surface through mechanical, electronic and firmware work, then map and salvage everything that remains.

Widely used NAS brands in the UK (with representative popular models)

1. Synology — DS224+, DS423+, DS723+, DS923+, DS1522+, RS1221(RP)+, RS3621xs+
2. QNAP — TS-233, TS-464, TS-873A, TVS-h674, TS-1253U-RP
3. Western Digital (WD) — My Cloud EX2 Ultra, PR4100, My Cloud Home Duo
4. Buffalo — LinkStation 520, TeraStation 3420/5420/5820
5. NETGEAR — ReadyNAS RN214/RN424, RR2304, RN528X
6. TerraMaster — F2-423, F4-423, T9-423, U4-423
7. ASUSTOR — AS5304T (Nimbustor 4), AS6704T (Lockerstor 4), AS6508T
8. LaCie (Seagate) — 2big Dock, 5big (business lines)
9. iXsystems — TrueNAS Mini X/X+, TrueNAS R-Series
10. LenovoEMC/Iomega (legacy) — ix2/ix4, px4-300d, px12-450r
11. Thecus (legacy) — N2810, N4810, N5810PRO
12. Drobo (legacy/discontinued) — 5N/5N2, B810n
13. D-Link — ShareCenter DNS-327L, DNS-340L
14. Zyxel — NAS326, NAS542
15. QSAN — XCubeNAS XN3002T/XN5004T, XN7008R
16. Promise — Vess R2000 (NAS roles)
17. HPE StoreEasy — 1460/1560/1860
18. Dell (PowerVault NX) — NX3240/NX440
19. Nexsan (StorCentric) — UNITY 2200/3500 (NAS roles)
20. Seagate (legacy NAS) — BlackArmor, NAS Pro

Widely used “RAID-0-capable” rack/server platforms (representative models)

1. Dell PowerEdge — R650/R750/R740xd, T440
2. HPE ProLiant — DL360/380 Gen10–11, ML350 Gen10
3. Lenovo ThinkSystem — SR630/SR650, ST550
4. Supermicro SuperServer — SYS-1029/2029/1114 families
5. Cisco UCS C-Series — C220/C240 M6
6. Fujitsu PRIMERGY — RX2540 M6, TX2550 M5
7. ASUS Server — RS520/RS720-E11
8. GIGABYTE Server — R272/R282
9. Synology RackStation — RS1221(RP)+, RS3621xs+
10. QNAP Rackmount — TS-873AU-RP, TS-1253U-RP, TVS-h1288X
11. Promise VTrak/Vess — E5000/R2000
12. Nexsan — UNITY/E-Series
13. NetApp FAS/AFF (NAS roles) — FAS27xx/AFF A250
14. Dell PowerVault NX — NX3240/NX440
15. HPE StoreEasy (rack) — 1660/1860

75 RAID-0 issues we recover — with the lab method we use

Format: Problem summary — How we resolve it (technical)

Disk / media failures

1. Single member shows bad sectors — Per-head adaptive imaging (outer→inner), skip-on-timeout; map unreadable stripes to estimate file impact; salvage intact files and partials.
2. Two (or more) members with read instability — Interleave short-block passes across members to capture complementary sectors; consolidate images; reconstruct virtual set.
3. Head crash on one member — Donor head-stack swap; immediate low-stress imaging; any irrecoverable regions become “dead stripes”, we export only files not intersecting them.
4. Motor/spindle seizure — Platter migration to matched donor; servo alignment; clone; reconstruct stripe map.
5. Translator corruption (0 LBA access) — Regenerate translator from P/G-lists; clone; resume array build.
6. Firmware module damage (SA corruption) — Patch/restore SA modules, adjust adaptive parameters, then image.
7. SMR member stalls — Disable on-the-fly relocation on the clone; sequential imaging; merge into set.
8. Shingled disk after power loss — Reverse and head-map passes to maximise capture; accept CMR-like surface where possible.
9. SSD retention loss — Temperature-assisted multi-read with majority-vote; escalate to chip-off + ECC/XOR/FTL rebuild; reinject image.
10. SSD controller SAFE mode — Vendor admin imaging; failing that, raw NAND + L2P reconstruction.
11. NVMe thermal throttling / surprise removal — Admin-command imaging with throttle control; rebuild namespace image; rejoin set.
12. Bridge board failure (USB-SATA in DAS) — Bypass bridge; direct SATA/SAS imaging; correct any 4Kn/512e exposure mismatches.
13. Media contamination (dust/water event) — Mechanical remediation, platter cleaning, then conservative imaging.

Electronics / PCB / power

14. PCB burn / TVS diode short — ROM transfer; donor PCB fit; current-limited spin-up and clone.
15. Preamp failure (silent drive) — HSA swap (matched donor); image per-head; rebuild.
16. Repeated spin-up/down (power fault) — Power rail conditioning; staged imaging windows; consolidate image.
17. NVMe subsystem power-loss — Controller-assisted recovery; repair metadata; export namespace image.

Controller / HBA / enclosure

18. HBA exposes wrong sector size — Normalise 512e↔4Kn in virtual layer; realign GPT/partitions before FS work.
19. Backplane SAS link CRC storms — Rehost members on stable HBA; image with CRC counters; assemble from clean images.
20. Stripe cache misreport (firmware quirk) — Find true stripe by correlation peaks; ignore controller metadata claims.
21. USB dock truncates end-of-disk metadata — Re-image via proper HBA; recover tail area; correct offsets.
22. RAID BIOS “initialise” started — Stop all writes; carve prior signatures; rebuild pre-init stripe map from content analysis.

Human / operational errors

23. Wrong disk removed — Reconstruct real order by stripe correlation; identify which image represents the formerly good member.
24. Members shuffled during DIY test — Programmatic order/rotation discovery; lock valid permutation.
25. Accidental quick format on the array — Ignore new FS headers; recover prior volume/container; replay journals on image.
26. Partition table overwritten — Rebuild GPT from backups/tail; verify against file system superblocks.
27. Accidental re-create of the RAID-0 with new stripe — Infer old stripe/offsets; virtually assemble legacy geometry; ignore new headers.
28. Clone made after failure (bad source) — Quality-gate third-party image; re-clone originals with correct timeouts and head-maps.
29. DIY write attempts to “fix” — Contain damage; timeline analysis; carve pre-write regions preferentially.

Geometry / stripe problems

30. Unknown stripe size — Sweep 16–1024 KiB; choose size with highest cross-member correlation and contiguous file signatures.
31. Unknown rotation — Test left-/right-synchronous/asynchronous rotations; pick layout maximising sequence coherence.
32. Offset mismatch per member — Detect start-of-data via FS signatures; align members accordingly.
33. Interleave changed by firmware update — Find epoch with consistent correlation; assemble that generation.
34. Heterogeneous drive LBAs — Normalise geometry to smallest member; mask OOB areas; adjust mapping.
35. Byte-order/endianness oddities (platform migration) — Byte-swap virtual device; re-validate signatures .
36. SMR reshaping after enclosure swap — Treat as capture problem; stabilise and re-map; then logical rebuild.

Volume managers / file systems atop RAID-0

37. NTFS MFT/$Bitmap divergence — Replay $LogFile, rebuild indexes, recover orphans; export.
38. XFS dirty log / AG B-tree damage — Log replay on image; rebuild from secondary superblocks.
39. EXT4 journaled crash — Journal replay on clone; carve residual inodes/dirs; rebuild trees.
40. ReFS epoch mismatch — Mount consistent epoch; extract intact dataset.
41. APFS container faults — Rebuild container superblocks/OMAP; mount volume groups read-only.
42. HFS+ catalog corruption — B-tree rebuild from alternate nodes; verify files by open-test.
43. LVM PV/VG/LV metadata loss — Carve LVM headers; reconstruct VG map; activate LVs read-only.
44. Windows Storage Spaces (striped) degradation — Parse NB metadata; reconstruct slab mapping to a single virtual disk.
45. CoreStorage/Fusion (Mac) split-tier striped — Re-link logical volume groups; repair HFS+/APFS inside.
46. ZFS zvol on top of RAID-0 — Import pool on images; export zvol; mount inner FS.
47. Btrfs single-profile with COW damage — Use btrfs restore to extract subvolumes/snapshots without mounting rw.

NAS-specific (QNAP / Synology / others)

48. QNAP (mdadm+LVM+Ext4) pool header mismatch — Select coherent superblocks by event; rebuild LVM; mount extents.
49. QNAP thin iSCSI LUN corruption — Carve LUN file; loop-mount; repair the inner FS (NTFS/VMFS/etc.).
50. QuTS hero (ZFS) striped data vdev faults — Import read-only; copy datasets/zvols; mount inner FS of zvols.
51. Synology SHR “Basic/RAID-0” volume damage — Recover md sets; compute mapping; extract files from EXT4/Btrfs.
52. NAS OS reinstall wrote new headers — Carve and prefer prior headers by generation; assemble legacy layout.
53. NAS expansion created new stripe geometry — Choose generation with consistent file signatures; assemble that epoch.
54. SSD cache poisoning data path — Bypass cache; recover from HDD tier only; rebuild logically.

Virtualisation / application layers

55. VMFS datastore (ESXi) header damage — Rebuild VMFS metadata; enumerate VMDK chains; mount guest FS and export.
56. Hyper-V AVHDX chain broken — Repair parent/child map; merge snapshots; mount VHDX.
57. KVM qcow2 overlay missing — Recreate overlay mapping with base; salvage guest file system.
58. Exchange/SQL on striped volume after crash — Replay ESE/SQL logs on image; dump mailboxes/tables.
59. Veeam repository (striped ReFS/XFS) issues — Rehydrate block store by hash; reconstruct backup chains.
60. CCTV NVR on RAID-0 cyclic overwrite — Carve H.264/H.265 GOPs; reconstruct multi-camera timelines; report overwritten gaps.

Encryption / security

61. BitLocker over RAID-0 — Unlock with recovery key or VMK; mount decrypted image; proceed with FS repair.
62. LUKS/dm-crypt over RAID-0 — Open with passphrase/header backup; map decrypted device; mount read-only.
63. Self-Encrypting Drives (SED) in the stripe — Unlock each member via PSID/User; image plaintext; assemble virtual set.

Edge cases & tricky faults

64. Snapshot-heavy Btrfs export stalls — Use btrfs restore without mounting; extract subvolumes directly.
65. Time Machine sparsebundle on RAID-0 damaged — Rebuild band catalogs; extract versions; ignore corrupt bands.
66. Cloud sync pushed encrypted payloads to NAS — Restore prior cloud versions/recycle bins; map back to shares.
67. 4Kn/512e mix within the stripe — Normalise sector sizes in the virtual device; realign partitions.
68. Controller switched to different interleave policy — Correlation-based inference of the original policy; assemble accordingly.
69. Tail metadata truncated (short-clone) — Re-clone with full LBA; rebuild GPT/FS tails; continue logical repair.
70. Duplicate disk GUIDs after hot-swap glitch — De-duplicate by UUID+event counters; drop stale twin.
71. Silent RAM corruption on NAS — Use FS checksums (Btrfs/ZFS) and file-open validation to select good blocks.
72. Qtier/tiering mismatch recorded pre-failure — Rebuild tier maps; extract by logical extent order (not physical).
73. Dirty shutdown during large sequential write — Repair FS journals; salvage contiguous file ranges first.
74. Third-party “recovery” rewrote headers — Forensic diff; revert to older header copies; assemble with correct offsets.
75. Member replaced with smaller capacity — Cap geometry to the smallest LBA in virtual device; mask OOB; salvage what aligns.

Why Reading Data Recovery

• 25 years of complex RAID-0 cases for home users, SMEs, enterprises and public sector.
• Full-stack capability: mechanical (head-stacks/motors), electronics (PCB/ROM/firmware), logical (LVM/FS/VM/DB).
• Controller-aware, forensically sound workflow; read-only virtual reconstruction; originals untouched.
• Extensive donor parts and advanced imagers to maximise readable surface—the key to RAID-0 outcomes.

Next step: Place each drive in anti-static bags inside a padded envelope or small box with your contact details/case reference and post or drop-off.
Contact our Reading RAID engineers today for a free diagnostic.