NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
ReadyNas data loss as a result of dead drives (Ultra 4 Plus) - please help
Hi all. Not sure there's much I can do here, but here's my situation.
I have a ReadyNas Ultra 4 Plus that I've been using since 2011 (and I moved all my data from a ReadyNas Duo when I upgraded). I used it mainly for storing video files and music (ripped all my CDs back in the day). However, the stuff that I'm most worried about is my photos that were all on the NAS and unfortunately not backed up anywhere else (I know this is bad - I just never got to it).
Over the years I've had a few HDDs die on me and every time I've bought a new one and swapped it in and the Raid array has rebuilt without a problem (X-RAID2).
Yesterday I swapped in a brand new drive and it started rebuilding as always. It got right to the end of the rebuild and then one of the other drives died and now the Raid status is: "Dead. This volume is no longer available."
Is this just bad luck and everything is gone? Or is there some way that I can recover the data? The photos would be a very small percentage of the total data.
Any help, or simple confirmation that I'm wasting my time would be greatly appreciated.
11 Replies
If the newly failed drive is in good enough shape, you can try creating a clone of it to a new drive with Clonezilla, or similar block-by-block cloning software. Then try that with the other drives in the NAS. If the NAS still won't boot, you can try ReclaiME, which will require you have a way to connect all the drives to a PC via SATA or SATA to USB adapters/docks. You can download ReclaiMe for free and see if it looks like it will do the job before you pay the somewhat high price for a version that will do the recovery.
If the drive cannot be cloned, you can try ReclaiMe with just the other drives, but your chances of success are lower.
Thanks heaps for the advice. I can't believe this but I shut down the NAS and turned it back on a few times and now it's not saying that drive isn't dead at all. In fact it's resyncing the replacement for the first dead drive as if it never tried to do it in the first place. In the meantime I've managed to grab my photos off it. So even if it fails ultimately, I'm happy. Thanks again.
Check the SMART status for the "undead" drive. It may have been just a fluke, but behavior like that is often a sign of a failing drive. Glad you got your pictures just in case. Now, about that backup you never got around to...
NETGEAR Academy
Boost your skills with the Netgear Academy - Get trained, certified and stay ahead with the latest Netgear technology!
Join Us!
