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EHD / Every kind of external drive / Desktop RAID and Thunderbolt

2big · My Book Duo · G-RAID · Pegasus · ThunderBay · Drobo

Desktop RAID and Thunderbolt enclosures. Two or more drives that only mean something together.

A two-bay desktop drive is two hard disks pretending to be one, striped for speed or mirrored for safety, behind a Thunderbolt or USB controller that keeps the only record of how they were arranged. LaCie's 2big and 5big, WD's My Book Duo, G-Technology's G-RAID, Promise's Pegasus, OWC's ThunderBay and Drobo's boxes are the ones we see. Each drive can fail in every way a single drive can, and the box adds faults of its own: a controller that forgets its configuration, a mirror that quietly stopped mirroring, a stripe with one member gone. We image every member first and rebuild the set from the images, never from the originals. Two-drive sets start at £500 + VAT and larger arrays at £1,250 + VAT, with one figure in writing after the free look. Network drives with their own operating system belong to the NAS site rather than this one.

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

Array symptoms, and what each one asks of you tonight.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →
One drive clicks, and the volume has goneA striped set with a failed member. Recoverable once the member is imaged. Unplug it.Do not delay
The box says degraded, or one light is redA mirror or RAID 5 with a member down. Do not rebuild.Do not delay
The volume shows the wrong size, or noneThe controller has lost its configuration. Do not re-create it.Do not delay
A Drobo shows all lights red or will not startThe Drobo's board. The drives hold a layout only Drobo understood.Do not delay
A My Book Duo reads as blank out of its boxWD encryption on the controller. Send the whole unit.Everyday job
Packing it and posting it: leave the drive in its own case, unopened, and do not take the drive out of a WD My Passport or My Book, because the board it is fixed to holds the encryption key. Wrap the whole unit in bubble wrap inside a box with nothing able to move, send the mains adapter with a desktop drive, insure it for what the files are worth rather than the price of the drive, 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.

Box by box, and what tends to go wrong.

LaCie 2big, 5big, 2big DockSeagate drives behind a Thunderbolt or USB RAID controller, usually striped by default. One failed member takes the volume; the set is rebuilt from both images.
WD My Book Duo and My Book ProTwo WD Red-class drives, striped by default, behind a controller that also encrypts. The unit's board is part of the data; send it whole.
G-RAID and G-SPEED, Promise Pegasus, OWC ThunderBayProfessional Thunderbolt arrays from editing suites. RAID 0 or 5, and the controller's metadata matters. Send every drive, labelled by bay, and the box.
Drobo 5D, 5C, 5NBeyondRAID, a layout of Drobo's own, on a company that has ceased trading. A dead Drobo is a set of drives that only a reconstruction of that layout can read.

What the box says, and what it means.

Describe yours to us →
What is going on The usual reason for it Where that leaves you
Volume missing, one drive clickingRAID 0 with a failed memberMember imaged on the bench; stripe rebuilt
Degraded, still workingMirror or RAID 5 with one member downImage now; no rebuild
Configuration lost / drives shown as newController metadataDo not initialise; set rebuilt from the images
Drobo: all lights red, or no bootThe Drobo boardBeyondRAID reconstructed from the drive images
My Book Duo blank outside its boxController encryptionRead through the original controller or its key

From the box 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 it the day the parcel is opened, and an engineer settles what has actually failed before anything else happens. A drive that clicks or beeps is not powered again; one that spins is read on our own imaging equipment, never in a computer that will retry and time out and retry. 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 hopeful power-ons
02

The enclosure and its board

Every member is imaged on its own, on our equipment, the failing one in clean air where it needs head work. Nothing is rebuilt, re-created or resynchronised on the originals.

Bridge, socket and power checked firstWD keys kept with their boards
03

The mechanics, in clean air

From the images and the controller's own metadata the set is reassembled in software: the stripe order and block size, the mirror pair, the parity layout, or Drobo's BeyondRAID zones. The volume is mounted from the reassembled images and every folder checked before anything goes home.

Head and spindle work on a clean benchFirmware and service-area repair
04

A full image, then the volume

Nothing is worked on live. The whole drive is imaged once, head by head and weak areas last, with reads timed to what the platters can stand, and the file system is put back together on the image. Encrypted volumes are unlocked there too, with the original board's key or the password you supply, and never on the original.

One careful image, head by headThe volume verified end to end
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 jobFive to ten days at the bench

What arrives most often

  • Label the bays before a drive comes out. A striped set put back in the wrong order will not assemble, and working the order out from scratch adds days.
  • A rebuild is the most dangerous button on the box. On a degraded set it writes across every remaining member. Stop it and image first.
  • Drobo is gone; its layout is not. The company ceased trading, the drives still hold their data in BeyondRAID zones, and the zones are reconstructed from the images.
  • Send the box with the drives. The controller's configuration and, on WD's Duo, its encryption key live on the box's board.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · EHD-2026-0465JOB LOGGED ✓

A LaCie 2big Thunderbolt 2 in RAID 0, one drive clicking, and a year of an edit suite's projects

One of the two 4TB Seagates had failed at the heads; the other was fine. The failed drive had its heads replaced on the clean bench and was imaged head by head; the healthy one was imaged end to end. The stripe was reassembled from the two images with the block size read out of the LaCie's own metadata, and the HFS+ volume mounted whole.

99.9% of the volume recovered8 days here, and back by post
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine case

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Power it down and leave it down
  • Write each bay number on its drive if you remove any
  • Send the box and its power supply with the drives
  • Tell us the RAID mode if you know it

What sets us back

  • Rebuilding, resyncing or re-creating the array
  • Swapping drives between bays
  • Initialising a drive that shows as new
  • Running a repair from the box's own software

Questions answered before you commit.

One drive in my two-bay unit has failed. Is everything gone?

Not if it was mirrored, and usually not if it was striped either: the failed member is imaged on the bench, heads replaced if needed, and the set rebuilt from the images. What loses the data is a rebuild or a re-creation attempted before that.

Should I put a new drive in and let it rebuild?

Not until the data is safe elsewhere. A rebuild writes across the remaining member, and if it is weak too, the rebuild destroys what it was meant to protect.

My Drobo is dead and the company has gone. Can the drives be read?

Yes. The drives hold their data in Drobo's BeyondRAID layout, which is reconstructed from the drive images on the bench.

What does it cost?

Two-drive sets start at £500 + VAT and larger arrays at £1,250 + VAT. One figure for the set, in writing after the free look.

How long does it take?

Five to ten days at the bench for most sets.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

Desktop 3.5-inch →Hardware-encrypted drives →LaCie →G-Technology / SanDisk Pro →Western Digital →

Power it down, label the bays, and send the form.

Every member imaged before anything is put back together. The first look is free, and one figure for the set is written down before any chargeable work.

0800 6890668

Price my jobPacking and posting