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Forum Discussion
PirateRaid
Apr 08, 2020Aspirant
ReadyNas 104 Volume inactive - 1 Drive failure on RAID5
I am hoping someone can help validate my concerns and point me in the right direction. I noticed several similar threads about a volume suddenly showing inactive and I believe I have no choice bu...
PirateRaid
Apr 13, 2020Aspirant
Thank you for the help! Even if it wasn't what I was hoping to hear, it was helpful.
I actually happen to have a RocketRAID card inside my desktop with a RAID 5 array (4TBx6) that had enough free space to store the entire rebuilt NAS array. I hooked up the NAS drives to my PC and used ReclaiME RAID recovery tool based on your suggestion (worked well). Although it took forever (30+ hours) to finish, I now have a 11TB VHDX file of my NAS array.
Unfortunately Windows is allergic to reading it though. It looks like I can't mount the drive because BTRFS isn't supported in Windows. I've tried installing the GITHUB Btrfs driver with no luck.
Is my only option to pay the $200USD to ReclaiMe and run a file recovery on the drive?
I have Hyper V running, so if there's an OS I can run for free that would fix my issue, please let me know.
I've tried ReactOS but couldn't get it to boot properly.
Question 2 - All 4 drives appear to be working fine, what's the best way for me to test/validate they are good/usable moving forward?
StephenB
Apr 13, 2020Guru - Experienced User
PirateRaid wrote:
Is my only option to pay the $200USD to ReclaiMe and run a file recovery on the drive?
I believe you'd need to use the combination of mdadm and btrfs (both available with Windows), and not just btrfs alone. This would require turning off any hardware RAID in the PC. I don't think that will allow you to read the virtual disk you created.
Or pay for the recovery software.
PirateRaid wrote:
Question 2 - All 4 drives appear to be working fine, what's the best way for me to test/validate they are good/usable moving forward?
Not sure how you've checked them, but I generally run the vendor diagnostic (Seatools for Seagate; Lifeguard for Western Digital). I run both the full non-destructive test, and the full write-zeros/erase disk test - as I've found that the destructive test sometimes finds errors that the non-destructive tests miss. Of course that can't be done until you extract the data.
The NAS also has several maintenance functions in the volume settings wheel that can be scheduled. This includes a disk-test, btrfs balance, scrub, and defrag. I schedule each to run quarterly on my own NAS (the tests are spread out over the quarter).
If you don't have a UPS connected to your NAS, then I would recommend that you consider getting one. Also, RAID isn't enough to protect your data, so I'd recommend putting a backup plan in place if the NAS is used for primary storage (and since you are wanting to recover data, it sounds like it is).
- PirateRaidApr 13, 2020Aspirant
StephenB wrote:
PirateRaid wrote:Is my only option to pay the $200USD to ReclaiMe and run a file recovery on the drive?
I believe you'd need to use the combination of mdadm and btrfs (both available with Windows), and not just btrfs alone. This would require turning off any hardware RAID in the PC. I don't think that will allow you to read the virtual disk you created.
I thought the VHDX file I created was free from any RAID? That was the point of using Reclaime to extract the volume off the 4 drive (16TB RAW) RAID 5 and build the 12 TB hard drive image, no?
Unfortunatly I can't turn off the hardware raid without losing access to the VHDX that's stored on the array, and to be honest, I'm scared of breaking my array while it's housing everything.
Thanks for the Seatools suggestion. I've used that tool a few years ago and had forgotten about it. Will definetly use that after I'm recovered.
The NAS also has several maintenance functions in the volume settings wheel that can be scheduled. This includes a disk-test, btrfs balance, scrub, and defrag. I schedule each to run quarterly on my own NAS (the tests are spread out over the quarter).
I do indeed run all these tests as well, at least quarterly. I had the disk-test running monthly I believe.
I do also have a UPS dedicated to my NAS and the only downtime it ever had was planned outtages.
Luckily my NAS was not primary storage and 95%+ of the data on it is redundant and can easily be deleted. It's just unfortunate that every recovery attempt I run has to take 2 days thanks to all the extra data.
Unfortunately my wife had stored some photos and videos on the RAID 5 array, thinking it was protected against drive failure and better then her external drive. This, along with some GoPro videos are really what I'm trying to recover.
- StephenBApr 13, 2020Guru - Experienced User
PirateRaid wrote:
I thought the VHDX file I created was free from any RAID?
ReclaiMe says it can be used for data recovery (there's other others). But they don't give details on how they formated it - and it's not something I've ever needed to do myself.
Part of the puzzle here is that there might be errors in the file system that are preventing ordinary btrfs from mounting it.
- PirateRaidApr 13, 2020Aspirant
Part of the puzzle here is that there might be errors in the file system that are preventing ordinary btrfs from mounting it.
That's my assumption at this point. I'm going the ReclaiMe recovery route and should know in a few days if I've lost anything.
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