Readynas 104: Second Seagate Barracuda to fail

That may be true but does that compensate for the non-existent support? And, you could implement this functionality with additional software in the system (I've seen snapshot functionality implemented outside the file system). Yes, it's more work and yes, it may impart system performance, but hey, at least we could recover our precious files! Actually, the failed drive had Snapshot/Bit Rot on, but how did that help me with a failed drive?

I've been using another NAS with ext3/ext4 for more than 5 years now, never had a single problem (I'll spare you the make & model). And I can take a HDD from that NAS, connect it via an USB interface to my Windows computer and use Ext2fsd to read, write, modify any and all files on that HDD. Or use data recovery software to rescue contents because nearly all data recovery software supports Ext2, 3, 4 etc. How's that for support & security?

Sorry that I sound a bit p*ssed, but losing 3TB worth of contents is no joke.

Anyway, as a last resort I'm going to try install OpenSuse on an unused PC as it seems to include the btfsr file system. Then hookup the failed drive via USB and see if I can rescue any files. I'll post here if this gets any results.

Thanks for your attention!

Marco

Not sure if you've seen this already: https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Btrfsck

Also, livecd claims btrfs recovery support: http://www.livecd.com/partition-recovery.html

---

Mediasail wrote:
 Sorry that I sound a bit p*ssed, but losing 3TB worth of contents is no joke.

  

---

I do understand that pain, and I do hope you recover the data.  Though the better answer would have been to have a backup plan in place.  Data recovery is expensive and uncertain no matter what file system you use.  And often disks that fail can't be read at all. 

As far as I'm concerned, if you trust your data to a single device (disk or NAS) you will at some point lose it.  Though you had good luck with your ext setup on the other NAS, it is in fact just that - good luck.  Plenty of people here (and in other NAS forums) have lost files stored in ext file systems.

BTRFS is at most a side-bar here.  Most (perhaps all) new linux distributions include it, and other NAS vendors (e.g. synology) have also begun using it. Recovery tools might be lagging, but that seems to be already changing.

---

Mediasail wrote:

 And, you could implement this functionality with additional software in the system (I've seen snapshot functionality implemented outside the file system).  

---

You can do snapshots externally, but only CoW file systems (btrfs, zfs) can provide snapshots with the features that OS6 has.  

WOW! Looks like exactly what I need. I'm going to try it. THANKS, Stephen!

As I said before, I'm sorry if I sound p*ssed, but I was very frustrated, particularly as it was the second drive to fail. I could not help but feel that the file system played a role in all this grief, as there was no advance notice of failure, only after it had already failed. But that's pure speculation on my part and probably uncalled for.

I post my findings with the recovery software here.

Thanks!

Marco

In my experience BTRFS is a more reliable filesystem than EXT4.

And there are good free native Linux tools for BTRFS for attempting to recover data if it is necessary.

The drive model is the problem not the filesystem. There can be a tendency to blame anything perceived as new as causing problems that are encountered, but that is jumping to conclusions.

Disks can and do fail at any time. We use SMART stats and tests to get warning if a disk may be starting to fail, but disks can fail without any warning. That's one reason why backups are important. Never store important data on just the one device, no matter what that device is.

Your 104 came with a 90 day limited support warranty from the date of purchase, the limited hardware warranty is 3 years.

With an expired support warranty you can purchase additional support if you need it.  Depending on the hardware warranty status, there may be per incident support and/or support contracts available. We have a separate contract for data recovery.

In any case the support warranty doesn't cover data recovery. We sell data recovery services in the rare cases where it is needed because there are customers that want it, and it is better for all concerned than not providing data recovery services at all.

You can purchase data recovery from us, but data recovery may be unsuccessful. We cannot do physical repairs to disks. Our data recovery is software based. If physical repairs to disks are needed then 3rd party data recovery is the only option.

Of course you can try recovering data yourself, however if you fail and make things worse it may make professional data recovery more costly and less likely to succeed.