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Ready NAS Pro Pioneer RAID 5 Recovery
Hello everyone!
A couple of month ago my Ready NAS Pro Pioneer Edition - 6 disks, RAID 5 - failed me after 6 years of service, not starting up at all. Since my biggest concern was to retrieve the data I followed the guidelines in this thread: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Using-your-ReadyNAS/ReadyNAS-Pro-Data-Recovery-18789299/td-p/924886.
I hooked up the 6 drives (ext4) to a mainboard with 6 sata connectors (one single controller) und booted an ubuntu installation from an usb-stick. After using the commands from said thread I was able to browse and read all files from the RAID 5.
sudo su
apt-get install lvm2
mdadm --assemble --scan
vgscan
vgchange -ay c
mount /dev/c/c /mnt
Everything went curiously well for a non-linux user... until 40 minutes into copying the process stopped with the failure message "i/o error - file not found" (or similar). After that I was able to assemble the volume once more with "mdadm --assemble --scan", but another message prompted "4 out of 6 drives not sufficient to build array". Now the "mdadm"-command does nothing anymore, "vgscan" does not find any volumes. The HDD drives are all healthy and recognized.
A different system (mainboard, processor, PSU), that was displaying the array/data correctly earlier, shows the same symptoms. "mdadm" does nothing at all, just the prompt, no failure, no result.
My questions:
1. Did I possibly - due to lack of linux knowledge - corrupt the data somehow, maybe failing to mount the RAID 5 volume writeprotected/degraded? If yes, what would have been the proper course of action?
2. Is there any chance of fixing a possibly corrupted RAID 5 structure spanning 6 disks? And if yes... *desperate* how? I dont know linux too well, but am willing to invest a lot of research into it. I just need a helpful hint which path to follow.
Best regards!
Seeing that both disks dropped out at the same time it hopefully will work.
However forcing an array online is not without its risks. If it doesn't work out then your array may be left in a state where you can't recover anything.
You may wish to clone your disks first. It's up to you.
There should be info on the OS partition which indicates the drive order.
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When your Pro Pioneer did not start up at all do you mean to say that you had no response when you attempted to power it on? If it did say get stuck with booting on the display that would suggest a bad disk. It's also advisable to power down, remove the disks (label order) and see if you get any response with the disks removed if you get no response with the disks installed. With no disks installed you should get an error indicating that no disks are installed.
It is advisable to check the health of the disks before attempting to start the array and to check that the array is in a good state.You can check the health of the disks using e.g. SeaTools for SeaGate disks or WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for WD disks. This can be done using a boot disk such as the Ultimate Boot CD (a free boot disk). Alternatively if you prefer you can install smartmontools on Linux and use the smartctl command.
To check the update time for the md devices you could use e.g.# cat /proc/partitions
# mdadm -E /dev/sda3# mdadm -E /dev/sdb3
Assuming that the 3rd partition is the large one. It may be sda5 if you last did a factory reset on very old firmware. Furthermore if you have multiple RAID layers there will be multiple layers to check.Mounting the volume read-only is certainly preferable.
Data recovery using an ordinary Linux PC is a last resort.Thanks very much for the quick reply!
The unit did not start up at all, just the Network LEDs on the RJ45 LAN-Ports were flickering dimly, with and without drives installed. Somewhere here a user fixed his ReadyNAS Pioneer with said behaviour by changing the PSU, which did not work for me. With the new PSU still no response.
So i am focusing on recovering the data initiallly. The drives are 6x Hitachi 3TB Hitachi HDS5C3030ALA630, running for about 3 years. What I gathered from the system info (Windows and Linux) the drives look fine (temperature, partitions, etc.).
smartctl indicated no errors, selftests have been ok.
mdadm -E /dev/<big partition> gives the following results (magic numbers match, all states clean, all checksums correct):
/dev/sda3: Device Role: Active device 4, Array State: AAAAAA , Events: 68
/dev/sdb3: Device Role: Active device 5, Array State: AAAAAA , Events: 68
/dev/sdc3: Device Role: Active device 3, Array State: AAAA.. , Events: 75
/dev/sde3: Device Role: Active device 2, Array State: AAAA.. , Events: 75
/dev/sdf3: Device Role: Active device 1, Array State: AAAA.. , Events: 75
/dev/sdg3: Device Role: Active device 0, Array State: AAAA.. , Events: 75
(missing 2 devices on 4 of the disks)
1. How do I proceed from there? Do I have to reconfigure the raid somehow? Is mdadm --assemble --verbose --force a correct approach? As mentioned I just started using linux and am a little nervous to do further damage, so try and error is out of the question.
2. Is the order the devices are attached to the hardware controller in any way important?
What are the update times for sda3 and sdb3?
You may wish to consider purchasing a new ReadyNAS e.g. 316 and purchasing a data recovery attempt rather than try to recover it yourself. It is very easy to get things wrong when attempting data recovery is you are unfamiliar with doing it.
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