Two Failed Drives: RAID 5 Data Recovery from a Netgear NAS in Hyderabad

This RAID 5 data recovery for a Hyderabad media agency started when two drives failed in their Netgear NAS. The NAS held 8.97TB of their work: raw shoot footage, edited ad films, photos and design files. A RAID 5 array survives one failed drive, but not two. So the shared volume went offline, and the whole team lost access. Our engineers repaired and cloned the failed drives, rebuilt the RAID in our lab and recovered all 8.97TB.

We handle NAS and RAID data recovery for businesses in Hyderabad, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and all over India, with free pickup from your office.

For years, the 4-bay Netgear NAS ran quietly in the agency’s office. Their editors saved every project to it, and the team opened files straight from the shared folders. Inside, four 4TB Seagate IronWolf drives worked as one RAID 5 volume, which can survive the loss of any single drive.

Then one drive failed, and the NAS reported a degraded volume. Because RAID 5 keeps working with one missing drive, the team carried on while they waited for a replacement. However, a few days later, a second drive began to click and dropped out too. At that point, the volume went offline.

Next, the admin page showed the message “Remove inactive volumes to use the disk”, and a local vendor suggested a factory reset. Fortunately, the agency’s IT team knew that both steps would erase the disks. So they powered the NAS off and called us.

The symptoms included:

• A “degraded” warning after the first drive failed
• Clicking from a second drive, then constant disconnects
• The shared volume offline, so no editor could open a project
• An offer to remove the inactive volume, which would have destroyed the data

The photo above shows the NAS and its four drives at our lab. Our engineers wrote the bay number on each drive before the Netgear NAS data recovery began. We also blurred the drive labels and serial numbers for privacy.

RAID 5 spreads data and parity across all the drives. Parity is extra information that lets the NAS rebuild the contents of any one missing drive. So with one failed drive, every file is still there. However, when two drives fail in RAID 5, the parity is no longer enough, and the NAS cannot assemble the volume at all.

That is why RAID 5 with two failed drives is so risky. The data still exists on the disks, yet one wrong repair step can destroy it. For example, a factory reset creates a new, empty volume over the old one. Likewise, a forced rebuild can overwrite good data with wrong parity. Recovery software cannot help either, because it needs drives that read reliably, and these two had physical faults.

Moreover, the drive that failed first held older data. The array kept running for days without it, so the newest projects existed only on the other three drives. As a result, a correct rebuild had to use the right three drives and leave the stale data out.

The same rules apply to a server with a RAID card. Read more about why a RAID 5 rebuild can cause permanent data loss and what to do when a NAS beeps or becomes inaccessible.

For this NAS data recovery, we collected the NAS and all four drives from Hyderabad for free. Then our engineers followed our step-by-step process:

• Numbered each drive by its bay, because the drive order matters in a RAID
• Tested every drive. Two had hardware faults: one had a failed read head, and the other had a weak head and thousands of bad sectors
• Replaced the failed head assembly with a matching donor part in our clean-room workstation
• Cloned all four hard disks sector by sector to healthy lab drives, and read the weak areas slowly
• From then on, worked only on the clones, so nothing was ever written to the original drives
• Read the RAID details that the NAS stores on each drive: disk order, stripe size and parity layout
• Rebuilt the RAID 5 array virtually from the three up-to-date clones, then used the older drive to double-check the result
• Opened the NAS volume read-only and copied all the folders out

A Netgear ReadyNAS uses Linux software RAID, so a Windows PC sees only unreadable partitions on each drive. That is one reason why Netgear NAS data recovery needs every drive, the right bay order and lab tools. In fact, plugging the drives into a PC often makes things worse, because Windows offers to format them.

Next, we checked the result. We compared the folder tree and file counts with the agency’s list, and we played sample videos from every project folder. Everything opened, including the last edits saved before the crash.

Most NAS data recovery jobs with healthy drives finish within 24 to 48 hours after quote approval. Cases with failed drives take longer, because the drives need repair first. Our data recovery charges page explains how pricing works.

This Netgear NAS data recovery returned 100% of the agency’s data: all 8.97TB, with every folder, file name and project intact. Also, the raw footage, finished ad films, photos and design files all opened normally. For media teams, our video recovery service also repairs single damaged clips.

We copied everything to new drives that the agency supplied, and then we sent them back to Hyderabad. Our security measures kept the client’s footage confidential from start to finish, and we erased our copy 7 days after delivery.

More NAS and RAID cases: Synology NAS RAID 6 in Shillong, WD My Cloud Home Duo in Delhi, Seagate IronWolf 14TB NAS drive in Mumbai and Dell R740 server RAID 6 in Amritsar. For more data recovery in Hyderabad, see the Seagate Exos 12TB and Samsung 980 Pro 2TB cases, or browse all data recovery case studies and customer reviews.

RAID 5 protects you from one drive failure. It is not a backup. Therefore, every business NAS needs a few simple habits. In fact, most Netgear NAS data recovery jobs we see begin with one of them skipped:

• Replace a failed drive at once, and keep a spare of the same size on the shelf
• Back up the NAS to separate drives or to the cloud, and test a restore now and then
• Act on the health alerts that the NAS sends, and learn the signs of a failing hard drive
• If a second drive clicks or drops out, power the NAS off. Do not rebuild, reset or run recovery software (see what to do when a hard drive clicks)
• Label each drive with its bay number before you take it out

For a full overview, read our guide to RAID and NAS recovery.

Power the NAS off and leave the drives in their bays. Do not rebuild, reset or run recovery software. Instead, call our engineers. We check every drive for free and tell you what we can recover before you pay anything.

We offer free pickup for NAS and RAID data recovery from Hyderabad, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and anywhere in India. If you courier the drives yourself, follow our packing instructions and mark each drive with its bay number.

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