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Forum Discussion
Data Recovery on a RN528 with X-Raid configuration
Hello All - I have an RN528 that is less than 5 years old. I have lost all power to the unit except for the ethernet port LEDs in the back (they still flash). The internal fans do not run, the driv...
Hello StephenB.
I appreciate your input above, and your assistance in helping me find a solution.
StephenB wrote:
If you can have a way to mount the disks in a Linux system (or a PC that you can boot up from linux using a USB drive), then you can mount the array manually and off-load the data.
I have been doing a lot of reading but I still have many questions that I have been unable to resolve.
The fundamental question being; if I install the HDDs into a USB enclosure and connect it to a LINUX system will it be able to read the drives that were configured as a single X-RAID? Do I need some special software such as TrueNAS?
I have found a lot of information on how to build a NAS, but nothing on how to recover the DATA from an X-RAID setup. I am very hesitant to blindly experiment, as for all I know this may be a one shot deal, and I may corrupt the configuration if I do this wrong.
Netgear is not providing me any assistance, so this is my only chance to save this data. I would greatly appreciate your feedback as to any other considerations that may be needed to actually read the data.
Thank you for your time.
As far as using another NAS, you would need to purchased used, as all models are end-of-life.
You wouldn't need to exactly match the model. RN316,RN426,RN426,RN516,RN526,RN528,RN626,RN628 would all work (the RN316 and RN516 being the oldest models).
A Pro 6 or Ultra 6 (older still) could also be used, but you would need to convert it to run OS-6 first.
Some used NAS aren't fully functional, so it is important to test them before migrating your disks. I suggest doing a factory install on a single test disk, and then booting up the NAS with that disk in each slot.
nasmmx wrote:
The fundamental question being; if I install the HDDs into a USB enclosure and connect it to a LINUX system will it be able to read the drives that were configured as a single X-RAID? Do I need some special software such as TrueNAS?
XRAID is an application package built on top of mdadm and btrfs that simplifies RAID and volume management. mdadm are both standard linux tools, and can be easily installed on any current linux system.
A standard linux system with mdadm and btrfs installed can mount assemble the array and mount the volume. We can give you the commands needed once you get to that point.
It would take a bit of investigation, particularly if you vertically expanded the volume in the past (starting with smaller disks, and then replacing them with larger). Did you do that, or is the array using the original disk sizes?
Hello Stephen - Thank you for the reply.
StephenBwrote:
XRAID is an application package built on top of mdadm and btrfs that simplifies RAID and volume management. mdadm are both standard linux tools, and can be easily installed on any current linux system.
A standard linux system with mdadm and btrfs installed can mount assemble the array and mount the volume. We can give you the commands needed once you get to that point.
It would take a bit of investigation, particularly if you vertically expanded the volume in the past (starting with smaller disks, and then replacing them with larger). Did you do that, or is the array using the original disk sizes?
This information is what I needed to get started.
I did perform a vertical expansion about a year ago. One of the original HDD was old and starting to fail, so I replaced it with a larger drive and I also added 2 new drives to previously empty bays.
nasmmx wrote:
I did perform a vertical expansion about a year ago. One of the original HDD was old and starting to fail, so I replaced it with a larger drive and I also added 2 new drives to previously empty bays.
It the 3 new drives were all the same larger size, then you will have two RAID groups in the data volume (plus RAID groups for the OS partition and swap)
These are each set up in matching partitions on the disks.
- partition 1: md0 (OS partition)
- partition 2: md1 (swap)
- partition 3: md127 (part of data volume, on all disks)
- partition 4: md126 (part of data volume, on the largest disks)
You can see the partition details using
cat /proc/partitionsBasic commands to assemble the RAID groups for the data volume are
mdadm --assemble /dev/md127 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb3 ... mdadm --assemble /dev/md126 /dev/sda4 ...using the appropriate disk names you see in the system you are using (sda, etc). The order of the disks in these commands doesn't matter - the ordering info is in the superblocks stored on each disk partition.
Then you can concatenate the two raid groups and mount the volume using
btrfs device scan mount -t btrfs /dev/md127 /dataYou can of course substitute any convenient mount point for /data
These commands assume the RAID groups and volumes weren't somehow damaged by the failure.
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