ReadyNAS: lost data after removing a drive : case #17927967

First of all, I didn't mean to be aggressive but I came on here to get advice on how to fix my problem, not to be criticised and told to read documentation on how to backup.

As I said before I didn't 'experiment' with the device. My landlord (who is a friend of mine) paid a visit to my flat while I wasn't there. He explained the situation but should have known better as we are both programmers. but that doesn't change the situation does it.

By this I mean it was done without asking. Once I realised the data was gone and my house mate told me that my other friend was 'fiddling' with it I called my friend and asked him what he had done.

The ReadyNAS and the drives are 3 weeks old. I would not expect any of them to fail but yes they could but it is unlikely (relatively speaking) given they are 3 weeks old. The Samsung drives that I have ordered have the highest reliability rates for their capacity and given it wasn't DOA then I would consider it highly unlikely and coincidental that one died at the same time as this incident occurred.

It wouldn't have destroyed one of your drives. If one of your drives was already failing it could've finished it off though due to the heavy stress on the disks that was initiated.

Is your definition of failing being removed and then being reinserted? E.g., a failing disk with being rebuilt? That isn't sarcasm by the way.

Well it's not. Read the article on preventing catastrophic data loss I linked to. High-availability or redundancy whilst it does provide some protection for your data should never be considered backup due to a variety of possible problems it does not protect against including things like accidental file deletions.

It is definitely a form of backup. It is a replication of data, whether that is defined as highly available is another matter. If it's not a form of backup why I don't just have one hard drive that copies remotely on a schedule. If the hardware that facilitates / houses the redundant hard disks (ReadyNAS) is not stable and is able to lose all your data (other forum posts also mention this issue) then redundancy onto another drive counts for nothing. As I stated; the guide you mentioned said you backup in case of drive failure, mistake and natural disaster. A mistake wasn't made and the drives are 3 weeks old and it was not an accidental error (see below). I shouldn't have to consider the product that is meant to assist / play a part in the backup picture actually losing all my data.

As I also said earlier: I have remote storage with sugar sync that I was intending to write an addon for my ReadyNAS to integrate with. The really important data (photos) is already backed up remotely. My music which I had very recently aggregated from many drives onto the ReadyNAS (and was going to backup remotely) was not. There was no fire, I didn't accidentally click delete and now it's is seemingly gone from both drives. So much for redundancy.

What has happened in my opinion is a system fault. If you deliver something for the home market then it should be robust. This is not robust. The data has been lost (unless I can recover it) from a fairly trivial sequence of actions. This sequence is not accidental file deletion. That implies a accidental action of actually deleting the files. What actually happened is a 'side effect' of the system. A highly undesirable one. The ReadyNAS unit has a sophisticated processor in it and relatively significant hardware, it is effectively a mini server capable in my opinion of detecting or preventing these type of issues. It isn't a dumb unit with a couple of hard drives in it.

I was trying to point out the error of what was done. Removing a drive and putting it back is not something to do for fun

http://southpark.wikia.com/wiki/Captain_Hindsight