Pegasus R6 · Pegasus3 R8 · LaCie 2big · 6big · 12big · G-RAID · ThunderBay 4 · Drobo 5D · TerraMaster D5-300 · Orico
Thunderbolt and DAS boxes drive recovery. A RAID box on a desk, with the same drives inside as a server.
The Thunderbolt and USB RAID boxes on editors' and photographers' desks hold the same drives as a server: Promise's Pegasus with its own hardware RAID, LaCie's 2big to 12big on Seagate and IronWolf drives, G-Technology's G-RAID and G-SPEED on Ultrastar mechanics, OWC's ThunderBay on software RAID, Drobo's DAS units on BeyondRAID, and the TerraMaster, Orico and Sabrent enclosures with a bridge chip doing the striping. The drives are imaged here one at a time, and the set is reassembled from the images: Pegasus and Drobo layouts on the array bench, LaCie and G-RAID mdadm or bridge stripes likewise. One member imaged is £300 + VAT after the free look, fixed in writing; a set of two to four is £500 + VAT upwards.
Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
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Models we see, family by family.
Which kind of drive is it →| Family | Model strings | Interface, capacity and notes |
|---|---|---|
| Promise Pegasus | R4, R6, R8, Pegasus2, Pegasus3 | Hardware RAID · Thunderbolt |
| LaCie | 2big, 5big, 6big, 12big | Seagate and IronWolf inside · bridge RAID |
| G-Technology / SanDisk Pro | G-RAID, G-SPEED Shuttle | Ultrastar inside |
| OWC and Drobo | ThunderBay 4 and 8; Drobo 5D, 5D3, 8D | SoftRAID or BeyondRAID |
| Enclosures | TerraMaster D-series, Orico, Sabrent | Bridge-chip RAID 0, 1, 5 |
What tends to go wrong on a Thunderbolt box.
Thunderbolt and DAS boxes symptoms, and how long each gives you.
Not listed? Describe it on the form →What the message means on a Thunderbolt box.
Describe yours to us →| What you see | The usual reason | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| Virtual or logical disk degraded | One member out; still readable | Image the weak drives before rebuilding |
| Virtual or logical disk failed | Too many members out | Every member imaged; set reassembled from images |
| Foreign configuration | Metadata the controller does not claim | Do not clear; import only with every member present |
| Predictive failure | A drive crossed its thresholds | Replace on a healthy set; image first on a degraded one |
From the parcel arriving to your files going back.
Work we have closed →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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
From the bench
- Export the controller log first. It is the best record of what failed when, and the bench reads it.
- The drives are the job; the controller is context. Send the controller only if we ask, or if it holds a SED key.
- Keep the failed drive. It holds the stripes the rebuild could not compute, and the warranty courier takes it away.
What helps, and what harms.
Do this much first
- Export the log and photograph the screen
- Power down and label every slot
- Send the weak drives, or the set
- Tell us the controller, the RAID level and the slot numbers
What sets us back
- Rebuilding with a second drive flagged
- Clearing a foreign configuration
- Force-onlining failed drives
- Letting the engineer take the failed drive first
Questions answered before you commit.
Can I put the drives from my Pegasus in another Pegasus?
Sometimes, if every drive is healthy and the order is kept. If any drive has a fault, the new unit rebuilds into it. Send the set here first.
Do I send one drive or the set?
One drive where the set is healthy and you want it imaged for the rebuild; every member, labelled by slot, where a second drive is flagged or the set has failed.
What does it cost?
£300 + VAT for one drive after the free look; a set of two to four from £500 + VAT; eight-bay units from £1,250 + 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.
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.