A Buffalo NAS is a small Linux computer running a software array behind a web page, so when one stops the fault is nearly always in the firmware, the array or a single disk rather than in the data. This page covers the flashing lights, the reformat prompt that should always be refused, why the unit travels whole, and what separates a network unit from a single USB DriveStation on the price list.
A LinkStation or TeraStation is the array band: from £500 + VAT, rising with the disk count. A single-disk USB DriveStation is £300 + VAT. The unit travels whole, disks left in their bays, and the diagnostic that produces your figure costs nothing.
Buffalo boxes are Linux machines with a friendly front end, and they fail in Linux ways. The flashing light on the front tells you something has gone wrong but very little about what, so these are the states people actually describe on the phone.
The lights look normal, the network cable is fine, and the discovery software finds nothing. Usually the firmware has failed to bring the array up and the box has stopped short of starting its network services. The disks inside are generally untouched, which is why nothing here needs opening.
Buffalo signals faults by blinking, and the codes point at a failed disk, an array that will not mount or firmware that will not load. Note the pattern down before you do anything else. What matters more is what you do next: the answer is not to reformat, and it is not to let the unit rebuild onto a disk it has just rejected.
The Buffalo utilities are generous with the option to set the unit up again, and a tired administrator at the end of a long day will take it. A reinitialise rewrites the array and the file system on top of your data. If a Buffalo is asking you to reformat and the data matters, that is the moment to switch it off.
A mirrored pair loses one disk and keeps working; a striped pair loses everything the moment either goes; a four-bay parity set survives one and not two. Whatever the level, the rebuild is the risky operation, and running one on disks bought as a set on the same day is how a one-disk fault becomes a two-disk one.
There is no recycle bin between a Windows machine and a network share unless one was configured on the unit, so a delete over the network is immediate. It is also very often recoverable, provided the unit is powered off quickly rather than left serving the rest of the office while the blocks get reused.
The single-disk USB units are a different animal from the network ones. Inside is an ordinary SATA disk behind a bridge board, and the fault is usually either the bridge or the disk itself. That is the single-drive band at £300 + VAT rather than the array band.
Under the web interface, a LinkStation or TeraStation is a small Linux computer running a software RAID and a Linux file system — older units on ext3, later ones on XFS, with the array managed by the same md layer used on Linux servers. That is good news, because it means the array is described by superblocks on the disks themselves rather than by anything unique to the Buffalo hardware. A unit whose electronics have died has not taken its data with it, and the disks can be read here without a working chassis.
It also means the failure modes are Linux failure modes. A dirty XFS log after a power cut. An md array that will not assemble because two members disagree about which is current. A volume that mounts and presents a directory tree with holes in it. All familiar, all worked the same way as any other Linux storage: image every disk first, reconstruct the array on copies, then repair the file system on the copy rather than on your disks.
The first is accepting an offer to reinitialise or reformat. Buffalo's tools ask this question fairly readily when they cannot mount an array, and it does what it says. If your unit is asking, the correct answer is to power it off.
The second is repeatedly power-cycling a unit with a failing disk in it. Every restart makes the box try to assemble the array again, which spins up the dying member and reads from it hard. On a disk that is losing surface that is measurable damage each time. If the unit will not come up after one restart, a second and a third will not fix it.
There is a third, which is subtler. Pulling all the disks out to look at the labels and putting them back in a different order confuses both the unit and the eventual recovery. If they are already out, write down what you know and say so honestly when you send them; the order can be worked out from the data, but knowing it saves time.
This is the exception to the usual rule. Most equipment stays at home and only the drive travels, but a NAS goes in the box complete — the chassis, the disks inside it in their existing bays, and the power supply. The same applies to an external drive in its own enclosure. It saves you dismantling a unit whose bay order matters, and it means nothing arrives here as a bag of unlabelled disks.
If the unit is too heavy to post comfortably, or a rack-mounted TeraStation, ring first and the practical options can be talked through. What is not on offer anywhere in this network is a collection service.
Anything with more than one disk in it, and any network unit, is the array band: from £500 + VAT, rising with the member count. That covers LinkStation and TeraStation units of every size, and it is the band because each disk is imaged separately and the array has to be reconstructed before a single file is visible.
A single-disk USB DriveStation is a different thing. That is one hard drive behind a bridge board, so it sits in the single-drive band at £300 + VAT. If you are not sure which you have, the test is simple: if it plugs into the network it is the array band, and if it plugs into a computer by USB it is almost certainly the drive band. The diagnostic settles it either way and costs nothing.
The rest of the table for completeness: memory cards and USB sticks £250 + VAT, CCTV and DVR recorder disks £400 + VAT, encrypted volumes with the key supplied £400 + VAT, forensic work £800 + VAT with a written report or £400 + VAT for a binary image with deleted-file extraction and no report. Ransomware on a NAS is priced as ordinary array work, from £500 + VAT.
The diagnostic is free and closes two working days after the unit is booked in. It produces a fixed written figure and a realistic completion date, and nothing is started until you have agreed to both. Single drives are typically finished within two to four working days of authorisation; multi-disk units take longer for the obvious reason.
Logical work carries no fix, no fee — a failed array with healthy disks, a corrupt XFS volume, deleted shares, ransomware. Electronic failures, mechanical failures, chip-level work, DVR jobs and forensic jobs sit outside that guarantee, and a physically failed disk takes 50 per cent of the quoted figure upfront.
The Buffalo boxes that reach this bench from Leicestershire are mostly the ones that were bought to solve a problem and then forgotten: the office server replacement in a small practice, the shared drive in a design studio, the CCTV or camera archive in a shop on the Golden Mile, the family photograph store in a spare room in Oadby or Wigston. They run for six or seven years without anybody touching them, which is a compliment to the hardware and the reason nobody has a current backup when one finally stops.
Post it insured or drive it over: Compass House, Vision Park, Chivers Way, Cambridge CB24 9AD, drop-offs Mon–Fri 9:00am–5:30pm, about 70 miles down the M1 to J19 and then the A14 east, two minutes off Junction 32 with parking at the door. There is no counter in Leicester and nobody collects.
That is good news: the layout is written on the disks, so a Buffalo whose electronics have died has not taken your data with it.
Multi-disk jobs travel as a set of bare drives in one box, and they travel by post far more often than by car. Tracked and insured is the sensible choice for a parcel holding four disks of company data, and something handed over in Leicester before the last collection is normally logged in at Cambridge the next working day.
The general rule is the drive travels and the machine stays behind — out of the laptop, out of the tower, out of the iMac, out of the recorder under the counter. This bench does not dismantle equipment, and a repair shop will do it while you wait. Three things are the other way round, and getting them wrong costs you the recovery: an external drive stays sealed in its own case, a NAS comes as a complete unit, and a WD My Passport or My Book travels whole with its cable, because on those the encryption key is held on the bridge board rather than on the disk — separate the two and the data becomes unreadable even to us. A Fusion Mac needs both of its drives, each labelled. The one thing nobody can work round is flash soldered onto the mainboard, as on Apple Silicon machines: if it will not come off, there is nothing to post.
↓ Print the shipping & booking-in form (PDF)
Address it to Cambridge Data Recovery. It is about seventy miles from Leicester if you fancy driving it — M1 south to Junction 19, then the A14 east — and the lab is two minutes off Junction 32 with parking at the door. Posting costs you a stamp and a day instead. Whichever you choose, you hear from us the moment it is booked in, and the free diagnostic closes two working days after that.
Not certain what belongs in the box? Ring 0800 689 0668 before you tape it up, or let the free online diagnostic ask the questions for you.