Forum Discussion

Aspirant

Oct 13, 2011

Planning for major recovery

Just converted client over to Readynas NV+ from an old 2bay NAS from another manufacturer. The old NAS failed along with one of the drives. We were able to recover data from the remaining drive by installing on a LinuX machine and setting it up to read an old XFS format used by the manufacturer.

IF we have the same problem here, how would we recover. Situation is more complex as we'll be using 4 drives with x-raid. IF we lose the NAS and one of the drives, what do I do with the remaining drives to recover the data. I'm worried that installing them into any NAS will cause them to be wiped out. Do we:
1) Install them into another Readynas NV+?

2) What if ReadyNAS NV+ are no longer available? Do we install in a Netgear successor? Will it recover or will it wipe?

3) Do we install in Linux or other system with a Raid 5 setup? What tools/procedures should we use?

(NETGEAR! - This might be a good software offering in future netgear NAs offerings - automatic recover assuming only 1 drive has failed in a Raid setup)

Hw & Hw Compatibility

Other

13 Replies

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mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Oct 13, 2011
With 4x2TB disks in the ReadyNAS you would have a 5.4TB X-RAID volume. 3TB disks are not supported either internally or externally as Sparc ReadyNAS does not support GPT.

However a home user that doesn't want to spend much on a NAS etc. probably doesn't have more than 2TB of data anyway.
BMach
Aspirant
Oct 13, 2011
Sorry - my mistake yes you would have 5.4 TB. I had not considered that 3TB discs were not supported externally.

Let us refine mdgm's comment to say that a home user probably does not have more than 2 TB of critical data that is not available elsewhere.
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Oct 13, 2011
sefiro wrote:

However, homeowners and very small businesses are not likely to a) buy a backup device or b) implement the backup on a regular basis.

If some of your clients are looking to upgrade to newer NAS models, you could perhaps offer to purchase their old units for a small amount and then set them up as backup units for some of your clients who wouldn't otherwise have a backup. Or at the very least you could try to ensure you have a spare chassis so you can easily recover data in the event of a chassis failure outside of warranty.

Frontview backup is quite powerful and can be scheduled to automatically run (no need for user to remember to backup).

Of course an on-site backup isn't going to protect against fire, theft etc. but it's better than nothing.

Rotating USB drives off-site is a cheap method that is good but it does require the user to remember to do backups.