Taking work now — the first look is freeWhole sets posted in from anywhere in the UK, or handed in at ten drop-off pointsQuicker still, give us a ring:0800 6890668
RARRAID Array Data Recovery 0800 6890668 Price my job
RAR / Every level and layout / RAID 1

RAID 1 · mirror · BOSS · Intel RST · Storage Spaces two-way · Windows mirrored volume

RAID 1 data recovery. Two copies of everything, and a rebuild that can copy the wrong one.

RAID 1 writes every block to two drives and reads from either. It tolerates the loss of all but one member and it fails in three ways: both drives fail, which on drives bought together is less rare than it sounds; a stale copy is rebuilt over the current one, when a drive that dropped out months ago is reinserted and the controller is told the wrong direction; or the thing that went wrong was mirrored faithfully, which is what happens to a deletion, a ransomware run or a file-system fault. It is the easiest level to recover and the one most often ruined by trying, because a PC that sees a mirror half offers to initialise it and a controller that sees two halves offers to rebuild them. A pair of two is £500 + VAT after the free look, fixed in writing, 5–10 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, do not force a drive online, do not import or clear a foreign configuration, do not initialise, and do not run chkdsk, fsck, zpool import -F or mdadm --create on the members. A rebuild reads every sector of every survivor and writes to the replacement; each of the commands writes to the drives. On images, all of them are reversible. On the originals, none of them is.

RAID 1 symptoms, and what each means.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →
One drive failed; the other running aloneThe only copy. Image it before a replacement is fitted.Do not delay
Both drives failedTwo imaging jobs and a comparison. Send both.Do not delay
Rebuilt, and the data is months oldThe stale half was copied over the current one. Stop; the source may be recoverable.Do not delay
Files deleted or encrypted on both halvesMirrored faithfully. A file-system and snapshot job, not a RAID one.Everyday job
PC offers to initialise the driveIt sees a mirror half with controller metadata. Say no.Do not delay
Halves disagree; volume corruptDivergence after a dropped member. Both imaged; the newest blocks chosen.Do not delay
Packing it and posting it: power down, photograph the controller's screen or export its log, and write the slot number on each drive with a marker before it comes out of its carrier. Send every member of the set, including the one that failed first; it holds the stripes the rebuild never reached. Each drive travels in an anti-static bag inside its own padding, in a box with nothing able to move. Send the controller if it was replaced or holds an encryption key; otherwise it stays. Insure the parcel for what the data is worth, use a tracked service, and know that 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.

What it tolerates, what fails it, and what the bench has to find.

Which half is newestControllers count events; file systems keep timestamps and journals. The bench reads both from each image and uses the current half, keeping the stale one for blocks the current cannot give.
The offsetSome controllers put their metadata at the start of the drive and the data after it; most put it at the end. A mirror half read on a plain host with the offset unknown looks like a drive with no partition table, and gets offered an initialise.
Rebuilt the wrong wayA drive that dropped out and was reinserted looks, to the controller, like a candidate to rebuild from or onto. Told the wrong direction, it copies stale data over current. The source drive's original content is sometimes still readable underneath.
Mirrored faultsRAID 1 protects against a drive failing. It mirrors a deletion, an encryption run or a corrupted MFT perfectly. Those are file-system jobs on the parent site, and the mirror gives two copies to work from.

What a reconstruction has to determine.

Describe yours to us →
Unknown Where it is read from What goes wrong when it is guessed
Newest memberEvent counts; journal sequence numbers; file timestampsStale data restored as current
Data offsetMetadata; the partition table's position on the imageVolume will not mount; host offers to initialise
DivergenceBlock-by-block comparison of the imagesCorruption spread across the volume
Controller formatDDF, RIS, IMSM or LDM metadataWrong host reads the drive as blank

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 member the day it is opened, matched to the slot you wrote on it. Each member goes on the imager its interface needs, never on a controller, and its metadata is read before a sector is: the level, the order, the stripe size, the event counts that say which member is current and which dropped out first. An engineer settles what has happened to the set and how much of it can honestly be read back. 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 initialise
02

Every member imaged, including the one that failed first

Every drive in the set is imaged sector by sector, weak areas last, on hardware that controls every retry, with a map of what could not be read kept for each. Members with failed heads go to the clean bench first; that is the drive site's work and the same bench does it. The drive that dropped out first is imaged too, because it still holds every stripe written before it dropped, and a rebuild that stalled part-way never reached them.

Sector by sector, weak areas lastThe first-dropped member included
03

The geometry, from the metadata or from the parity

A mirror is not assembled so much as compared. Both images are read block by block, the newest copy of each block chosen from the event counts and the file system's own sequence numbers, and the result mounted as one volume. Where the halves diverged after a dropped member, the comparison says exactly where.

Metadata first, parity secondOrder, stripe, rotation, offset
04

Assembled in software, and repaired on the virtual volume

The set is put together from the images in software, with nothing written to any of them: the current members in, the stale member used only to fill holes a survivor could not give. The file system is checked and repaired on a copy of the virtual volume, VMFS and CSV volumes opened and the virtual machines' disks extracted, databases repaired where they need it. The originals are not touched again.

Nothing written to the imagesVirtual machines and databases opened
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 job5–10 days at the bench

What arrives most often

  • A running mirror with one drive failed is a single drive. Image it before the replacement is fitted and the rebuild reads it end to end.
  • Do not let the controller decide the direction. If a drive has been reinserted, stop before any rebuild starts and say which one dropped out.
  • Say no to the initialise. A PC that sees a mirror half is seeing a drive with metadata where it expects a partition table.
  • Boot mirrors are the commonest RAID 1 here, BOSS cards and Intel RST pairs, with the operating system on them and nothing else backed up.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · RAR-2026-0604JOB LOGGED ✓

A two-drive RAID 1 on an Intel RST controller in a small office server, one drive reinserted after a loose cable and the rebuild run from it, leaving the accounts three months old

The owner stopped when the dates looked wrong. Both drives were imaged. The reinserted drive was three months stale; the current drive had been partially overwritten by the rebuild, but the rebuild had run from the start of the disk and stopped at 40 per cent. The current data beyond that point was intact, the first 40 per cent was reconstructed from the stale drive's copy plus the file system's journal, and the accounts database was repaired from its log.

99.9% of the volume recovered6 days here, and back by post
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine case

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Power down and label which drive is which
  • Send both members
  • Say which one dropped out, and when
  • Tell us whether a rebuild ran, and which way

What sets us back

  • Fitting a replacement before the surviving half is imaged
  • Rebuilding from a reinserted drive
  • Initialising a mirror half a PC cannot read
  • Running chkdsk on a diverged mirror

Questions answered before you commit.

Both drives of my mirror failed. Can it be recovered?

Usually. Both are imaged and compared, the newest copy of each block used. Two drives bought together often fail close together, and the second usually reads on the bench.

The rebuild made my data three months old. Is the new data gone?

Not always. The rebuild copies from the start of the disk and stops where it stopped; what it had not reached is intact, and the file system's journal can restore some of what it had. Stop at once.

Can you recover deleted files from a RAID 1?

Yes, from either image, the same as from a single drive. The mirror does not protect against deletion; it gives two copies to work from.

What does it cost?

£500 + VAT for a pair after the free look, fixed in writing.

How long does it take?

5–10 days at the bench for a pair.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

RAID 10 →Intel RST, RSTe and VROC →Windows Storage Spaces and dynamic disks →JBOD, spanned and dynamic disks →

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