DAS Data Recovery
Your storage hub went silent. Your files did not.
Portable SSDs, multi-bay RAID enclosures and professional storage hubs recovered in-house — dropped, corrupted, RAID-failed or simply not mounting. Media professionals and businesses trust one lab, one chain of custody, no outsourcing.
The problem
Fast storage. Limited options when it fails.
Direct Attached Storage — drives or enclosures connected straight to a workstation by USB, Thunderbolt or eSATA — trades cloud-style redundancy for speed. When it fails, there is no sync copy sitting elsewhere.
DAS devices routinely hold terabytes of work that exists nowhere else — video edit projects, RAW photography, music sessions, business archives and research data. We see the same failure patterns again and again:
- Not mounting or not detected — the drive or enclosure no longer shows up on the desktop at all
- Failed RAID in multi-bay enclosures — RAID 0, 1 or 5 sync lost after a drive failure or power event
- Accidental deletion or formatting under deadline pressure
- Corrupted partitions or file systems — exFAT, NTFS, HFS+ and APFS volumes that stop mounting cleanly
- Physical damage — dropped enclosures, damaged USB-C / Thunderbolt connectors, power surges
- Encryption and password lockouts — including ArmorLock and other hardware-encrypted drives
If it has stopped mounting, stop there. Do not reformat, do not run repair utilities, and do not attempt a RAID rebuild yourself — each of these is the single most common cause of a recoverable case becoming a permanent loss. Power it down and talk to us first.
Coverage
Find your device.
DAS recovery is brand and model specific — jump to the page that matches your device for detail on models, connectors and typical faults.
Process
Straightforward, honest, fixed-price.
- 01
Diagnosis
Send the drive or the whole enclosure. We identify the actual fault — logical, RAID, encryption or physical — and report back with a clear verdict.
- 02
Fixed quote
You approve a fixed price based on the real fault before any recovery work begins. No open-ended bills.
- 03
Laboratory recovery
RAID reconstruction, firmware repair or physical work as the case requires — always carried out on verified images, never the original media.
- 04
Verified return
Files verified openable and returned on encrypted media, typically within days of approval. Read-only forensic imaging and chain-of-custody documentation available on request.
Transparent pricing
DAS recovery pricing.
Multi-bay RAID enclosures are priced by array size and drive count below. Single-drive portable DAS units follow our standard hard drive and SSD pricing. Prices exclude VAT — your fixed quote is confirmed after diagnosis.
All prices below are net (before VAT). We add VAT at 20% on top — shown beneath each price as “inc VAT”, which is the total you actually pay. For example, a £425 net recovery is £510 including VAT. VAT-registered businesses can usually reclaim it.
RAID, Server, NAS & DAS
| Array size | 2 drives | 3 drives | 4 drives | 5 drives |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 TB – 4 TB | £1,000£1,200 inc VAT | £1,500£1,800 inc VAT | £2,500£3,000 inc VAT | £2,900£3,480 inc VAT |
| 4 TB – 8 TB | £1,200£1,440 inc VAT | £1,800£2,160 inc VAT | £2,800£3,360 inc VAT | £3,200£3,840 inc VAT |
| 8 TB – 12 TB | £1,500£1,800 inc VAT | £2,750£3,300 inc VAT | £3,100£3,720 inc VAT | £3,800£4,560 inc VAT |
Covers RAID arrays, servers, NAS and DAS enclosures. Larger arrays and 6+ drives quoted individually.
See the full price list, including single-drive pricing and turnaround options.
Questions
The honest answers.
My DAS enclosure just is not showing up any more. Is that fixable?
Usually, yes. A drive or enclosure vanishing from the desktop is most often a bridge, controller or file system fault rather than dead storage inside — all recoverable failure classes in the lab. Diagnosis tells you definitively where you stand before you commit to anything.
One drive in my multi-bay enclosure failed. Should I let it rebuild?
No — power it down and stop. A rebuild attempted on a degraded array is the single most common cause of a recoverable case becoming a total loss. Send it to us as-is and we will reconstruct the array from verified images of each member drive.
Can you recover an encrypted DAS drive, like ArmorLock?
In most cases, yes, provided you have the correct credentials or recovery key. Encrypted drives are treated as a distinct fault class in diagnosis, priced accordingly, and handled with the same chain of custody as every other case.
We need this for a legal or compliance matter. Can you handle that?
Yes — read-only forensic imaging, documented chain of custody and expert witness reports are available alongside recovery. See our digital forensics & eDiscovery page for the full detail.
How much will DAS recovery cost?
It depends on whether the fault is logical, RAID-related, encryption-related or physical, which is exactly why diagnosis comes first and the quote that follows is fixed. You always know the price before we start.
Two minutes to describe the failure — an engineer responds with an honest recoverability view, fixed pricing and next steps.