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RDD / Every kind of member drive / NAS drives as members

ST8000VN004 · ST10000VN0004 · WD40EFAX · WD80EFZX · HDWG480 · Synology · QNAP · TrueNAS

NAS drives as RAID members. IronWolf, Red and N300, out of the box and on the bench one at a time.

The drives in a Synology, a QNAP, a TrueNAS box or an Unraid server are NAS drives: Seagate's IronWolf and IronWolf Pro, WD's Red, Red Plus and Red Pro, Toshiba's N300. They sit between desktop and enterprise, with error recovery tuned for a small RAID and, on some, a history: the WD Red EFAX drives WD sold as NAS drives without saying they were shingled, which stalled rebuilds until the class action settled in 2021; the 10TB IronWolf drives on SC60 firmware that timed out on cache flushes until SC61 fixed it in 2019; the IronWolf and Exos drives sold as new in 2025 with tens of thousands of hours in their FARM logs. This page is for the drive itself, imaged so the set can be rebuilt or the array reassembled; the unit as a whole belongs to our NAS site. One NAS drive imaged is £300 + VAT after the free look, fixed in writing, 3–4 days at the bench.

Free first lookOne fixed figure in writingNo data, no bill on most jobsReturn postage paid

Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
0800 6890668

Power down. Label every slot before a drive comes out. Do not rebuild while a second drive is flagged. Do not clear or import a foreign configuration. Do not initialise, reformat or PSID-revert anything. A rebuild reads every sector of every surviving member, and on a set whose drives were bought together it is where the second failure is found. Nothing on the drives gets worse while the server is off.

NAS drive symptoms, and how long each gives you.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →
Dropped from the pool; the NAS wants to repairOne slow read. Image it before anything rebuilds.Do not delay
Clicking in the bayFailed heads. Power down.Do not delay
Rebuild stalled at n per cent on an EFAX driveThe shingled drive cannot keep up, or its translator has gone.Do not delay
Volume shows blank on an SMR driveTranslator fault. The data is there; the map is not.Do not delay
Two IronWolf drives dropped weeks apartSame batch. Send both.Do not delay
New drives showing thousands of hours in FARMSold as used. Not a fault, but the set is older than you think.Everyday job
Packing it and posting it: power the server or shelf down, write the slot number on each drive with a marker before it comes out of its carrier, and keep it in the carrier. Send every member from the set where the set is the job, or the one failed member where the set is healthy and you want it imaged for the rebuild. Each drive travels in an anti-static bag inside its own padding, in a box with nothing able to move. Send the controller only if we ask for it. Insure the parcel for what the data is worth rather than the price of the drives, and use a tracked service. The posting address is not printed anywhere on this site; it arrives by email in reply to the form, with a booking sheet to print; the sheet inside the parcel is what matches it to your enquiry when it is opened. Or hand the sealed parcel in at the nearest of ten drop-off points, your name on the outside and the sheet inside; say where you are on the form and it comes by email. We pay the postage home either way. The whole of it is written up on the guide to packing and posting.

Where it lives, and what fails.

WD Red EFAX and shingled recordingIn April 2020 it became public that the WD20EFAX to WD60EFAX drives were drive-managed SMR, sold as NAS drives. They keep a map of where the data really is, they stall on the random writes of a rebuild, and when the map fails the drive looks blank. Repaired on the bench before imaging.
The 10TB IronWolf timeoutST10000VN0004 and ST10000NE0004 drives on SC60 firmware timed out on cache flushes under load, dropping out of ZFS and Synology sets; Seagate's SC61 firmware fixed it in 2019. A drive on SC60 that dropped out is usually fine.
Drives sold as new, 2025Used Exos and IronWolf drives with SMART reset and tens of thousands of hours in the FARM log were sold as new through the early months of 2025. Check the FARM log on any new Seagate drive; a set built from them is older than its receipt.
The unit and the driveThis page images the drive. The set it came from, the SHR or X-RAID layout, the Btrfs or ZFS on top, and the reasons not to press Repair are on our NAS site, and the same bench does both.

Model strings, and what they tell us.

Describe yours to us →
Model string What it is What it means on the bench
ST8000VN004IronWolf 8TBThe commonest NAS drive on the bench
ST10000VN0004IronWolf 10TBSC60 firmware timeouts; SC61 fixes healthy drives
WD40EFAXWD Red 4TB, drive-managed SMRTranslator faults; slow rebuilds
WD80EFZXWD Red Plus 8TB, CMRUltrastar-class mechanics
HDWG480UZSVAToshiba N300 8TBMG-class mechanics; loud, reliable

From the parcel arriving to your files going back.

Work we have closed →
01

Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free

A case number goes on the parcel and a number on every drive the day it is opened, matched to the slot you wrote on it. An engineer settles what has actually happened before anything spins: the interface, the sector format, the firmware, the security state, and what the controller was saying when it stopped. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.

Nothing to pay for lookingA single figure, put in writingNo rebuilds, no imports, no resets
02

The drive on its own bench

A member drive is read on the equipment its interface needs: a SAS imager for SAS and NL-SAS, a SATA imager for enterprise SATA, a terminated SCSI or Fibre Channel controller for the legacy drives, a PCIe adaptor for NVMe. It is never put back in a server, and never in a controller that will try to rebuild. Drives that answer at full speed are imaged; drives with weak or failed heads go to the clean bench, where matched donors are fitted and the service area repaired before a sector is read.

Read at its native interfaceFailing heads to the clean bench
03

Imaged once, at its native sector size

Every drive is imaged sector by sector, head by head where it needs it, with the bad areas last. Drives with 520- or 528-byte sectors are imaged as they are and the extra bytes stripped from the image, never the drive. Self-encrypting drives are unlocked on the imager with the key you supply. From then on the originals are not touched again.

Head by head, weak areas lastNative sector size preserved
04

The image, and the set

Where the set is healthy and one member was the job, the image goes back to you on a fresh drive, sector-identical, ready to rebuild from. Where the set is the job, every member is imaged and the array reassembled in software from the images: order, chunk size, parity rotation and the reshape point read from the drives' own metadata, the file system repaired on the virtual volume, never on the originals. The array work is covered in full on our RAID array site, and it happens on the same bench.

One member: a sector-identical image on fresh mediaA set: reassembled in software from the images
05

You see the file list before you pay

What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge at all. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have opened the files on a machine of your own.

No charge until you accept the figureFresh media, supplied with the job3–4 days at the bench

What arrives most often

  • Image before the NAS repairs. The dropped drive is usually readable; the repair reads every sector of the survivors and finds the next one.
  • EFAX is SMR. A rebuild onto or from a shingled drive can take days and stall; a stalled one should be powered down, not restarted.
  • SC61 on healthy drives, never on a failed one. The firmware update prevents the timeout; it does not repair a drive that has failed for other reasons.
  • Send the drive, or the set. One drive comes back imaged for the rebuild; a set with two drives down goes to the NAS bench and is reassembled from images.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · RDD-2026-0554JOB LOGGED ✓

Two ST8000VN004 drives from a four-bay Synology in SHR, one dropped during the repair, and a business's shared drive on the set

The first drive had failed heads; the second dropped during the repair with pending sectors. The owner powered down. Both were imaged, the first after a head swap on the clean bench and the second slowly with its weak areas last, and both images went back on fresh drives with the SHR set reassembled from them on the NAS bench.

100% of both members recovered6 days here, and back by post
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine case

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Power the NAS down and number the bays
  • Send the dropped drive, or the set if two are down
  • Copy the model string and firmware revision
  • Say whether the drives are EFAX

What sets us back

  • Pressing Repair with a second drive flagged
  • Restarting a stalled rebuild on an SMR drive
  • Updating firmware on a failed drive
  • Buying replacement drives without checking their FARM logs

Questions answered before you commit.

Is this the page for my Synology?

For the drive out of it, yes. For the unit, the SHR layout and what the dashboard is saying, our NAS site covers it in full; the same bench does both.

Is WD Red Plus SMR?

No. Red Plus and Red Pro are CMR. The EFAX-suffixed Red drives of 2 to 6TB are drive-managed SMR.

Should I update my IronWolf to SC61?

On healthy 10TB drives, yes. On a drive that has failed, no; the update writes and does not repair.

What does it cost?

£300 + VAT for one drive after the free look, fixed in writing; two to four from £500 + VAT.

How long does it take?

3–4 days at the bench for one drive; 5–10 days at the bench for a set.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

Seagate IronWolf →WD Red →Helium and SMR members →RAID drive clicking →

Nothing gets worse while it is powered down.

Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the server off and the drives in their slots.

0800 6890668

Price my jobPacking and posting