Readynas 104 lost volumes

mwielin wrote:

Within a couple hours of the resync, disk 4 and system went from degraded to dead

Do you know if the resync completed?

Was disk 4 the new drive?  Guessing not, since you put the original in Bay 1, but want to confirm.

mwielin wrote:

I did remove the new 4 TB drive and put the original back into bay 1.

Was the NAS powered down when you did this?

The next step is to download the full log zip file from the logs page.  If you have trouble analyzing it, you can upload it to cloud storage and PM me a link.  Make sure the permissions are set so anyone with the link can download.  You send a PM using the envelope icon at the top right of the forum page.

The resync didn’t complete and the new drive was in bay 1.  
When I put the old drive back the NAS was powered down.

I’ll get the log file and send you a link.  Thank you.

What you experienced is why Netgear (as well as StephenB​ and I) recommens a backup before expanding.  In fact, we recommend you always have a full backup.  The sync process puts a lot of stress on the remaining drives, so the failure possibility of of them is increased during that time.  And if one fails before the sync completes, as yours did, then your volume becomes dead.  I'm not saying this to chastise you, but as a warning to anyone else reading this thread.  Too many think RAID is a guarantee against data loss, which you have found the hard way not to be the case. 

That said, most of your volume is likely recoverable since the replaced drive was not due to failure.  The removed and re-inserted drive is "just" out of sync with the ones that remained, but that's usually fixable when there is only one drive failure.  So don't panic and do something that may make things worse.  Do you know if you made any changes to files while the unit was re-syncing?  Any file modified or added is probably not recoverable.  Once StephenB​ has your logs, he can likely guide you through a successful recovery.

Once recovery is complete, you need to think about backup.  With all ReadyNAS being EoL, you may want to think about buying another brand of NAS and relegating your 104 to backup duty.

That sounds rough. Definitely avoid creating a new volume, as it could overwrite your data. Try using a RAID recovery tool or connect the drives to another system that can read the RAID. Backing up the drives first is safest. Hope you can recover most of it!